Epistemicide Part 2: The Classroom as a Battleground

September 11, 2025

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How Modern Education Shapes What We “Know”

There’s a reason school (particularly traditional mass schooling) often feels like mindless gruntwork. It was, in some respects, designed to be just that.

Not literally, of course, but conceptually. The majority of the iterations of the modern education system, among public and private schools alike, were not designed to cultivate creativity or inquiry. With a few notable exceptions, we see you Steiner and Montessori methods, we see you John Dewey and other voices who defended the real value of education! The prevailing system was engineered to produce efficient, obedient citizens (preferably those who are A+ consumers). And the cost of that efficiency has actually been a devastating one: the narrowing of knowledge, the silencing of dissenting voices, and the slow suffocation of curiosity, plus the devaluation of learning itself.

This is what happens when epistemicide, which is the deliberate erasure of entire systems of knowledge, moves from blatant conquest of spaces and cultures into a more nuanced battleground: the classroom. It seems wild to consider that epistemicide could happen within an educational setting, but it can, and it has.

The Industrial Model of Education

I think it’s a prevalent misconception that some things can be neutral. Schools are often imagined to exist as a neutral good, or maybe they have been in the past. It seems evident to me that things are more polarized these days. In any case, when we trace the roots of modern mass education, we find something more strategic than benevolent, and one with a clear bias. To be clear, I don’t think anything can actually be neutral. I believe this to be especially true in the case of something as impactful and influential as an educational system. Within education, every choice matters and has significance: all silences, all inclusions, and exclusions. John Taylor Gatto argued in Weapons of Mass Instruction that compulsory schooling in the 19th century wasn’t simply about teaching reading and math. It was a tool of social engineering. If schools served as social engineering back then, we can be sure they still do today.

Drawing on the ideas of Prussian theorist Johann Gottlieb Fichte (we’ve written about him here about his contributions to education and here where we compare his point of view to that of John Dewey), the industrial model of education aimed to produce predictable, obedient workers, people who wouldn’t question authority, wouldn’t challenge power, and wouldn’t ask too many “why” questions. He specifically said, and I paraphrase, that the goal was to form people who would never think otherwise than their school master would have wanted. This is just the tip of the iceberg; other goals of his included separating the children from their families, labeling reading as damaging or unnecessary, etc. This model was disseminated to the United States and Europe during the Industrial Revolution, influencing how schools were constructed (rows, bells, rigid schedules) and how knowledge was imparted (standardized, hierarchical, test-driven). The idea behind this educational system was never to liberate minds; it was to control them. Now, to me, this is the crux of it: if an educational system is not expanding minds and demolishing limitations, but instead building up more walls, ensuring that some knowledge is left out or labeled as dangerous, then it is partaking in epistemicide.

Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, called that sort of educational model the “banking model” of education, where students are treated as inanimate empty vessels into which knowledge is deposited, rather than as active co-creators of understanding. Freire argued that real learning involves dialogue, reflection, and a sense of agency. But those don’t fit well into an industrial framework.

“For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.”

– Plutarch

What’s Missing from the Curriculum?

Education should strengthen, stretch, and expand the mind, period. That is the point. But more often than not, mass education ends up narrowing it. It’s pretty sad, really. This is not down to teachers; most teachers are in their profession because they care so deeply. They give a great deal of themselves and consistently go above and beyond. While some individuals who work as teachers can cause significant harm, many more are trying their best within the only system they’ve ever known. We have to keep in mind they were once students of that system as well. And then there are the few who have managed to open their minds, the ones whose goal is to teach for liberation. They have reached this point against all odds and through incredibly hard work.

The knowledge presented in most Western classrooms is overwhelmingly Eurocentric and centered on patriarchal beliefs. It is not an exaggeration to say that the history that is widely known and understood is framed around European empires. Science is told as a march of Western discovery. Philosophy begins in Ancient Greece and hops directly to the Enlightenment. The “canon” in literature, art, and music reflects quite a narrow cultural scope (not to say it isn’t invaluable and fascinating).

What gets left out? Oh my goodness, it is astounding how much. Here I’ll add just a few examples.

I’ve been reading an amazing book to my kids at bedtime called Rewild the World at Bedtime. It’s a beautiful book written by Emily Hawkins and magically illustrated by Ella Beech. It is about projects that are rewilding the world and helping restore the environment. After a while, what became evident to me is that the impact of people who lack the millennia of experience, connection, and knowledge of a landscape is enormous and incredibly damaging. Had we embraced that knowledge and lived more in line with it, much of the environmental damage we have done could have been avoided. Most of the stories focus on restoring respect and connection with the environment to make conservation possible.

My first example is Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), also known as Indigenous ecological knowledge or Native Science, which has sustained ecosystems for millennia. This is a body of knowledge that has been acquired by Indigenous Peoples through observation and interaction with nature, and then passed down orally, in writing, through innovation, practices, and beliefs. Knowledge of this nature has historically been dismissed as “unscientific”.

It is applied to phenomena across biological, physical, social, cultural, and spiritual systems. Indigenous knowledge can be developed over millennia, continues to develop, and includes understanding based on evidence acquired through direct contact with the environment and long-term experiences, as well as extensive observations, lessons, and skills passed from generation to generation.

– Guidance for (United States) Federal Departments and Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge

Another example Eastern medicine and metaphysics are also often tokenized or dismissed as superstition. Eastern medicine, particularly Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is deeply intertwined with metaphysical principles that influence its understanding of health, disease, and healing. TCM has evolved over thousands of years, and combines a psychological and physical approach to health. It utilizes Tai Chi, Acupuncture, and herbal products to prevent, diagnose, and treat illnesses, reflecting a holistic view of the human body and its connection to nature. Interestingly, it doesn’t have to exclude Western medicine necessarily, as TCM is actually integrated into the Chinese healthcare system, which also includes modern medical treatments.

Recognizing the connection between nature, energy, science, the human lived experience, and how it manifests physically in the body is mind-opening. In the classroom, this could be relevant in developing a more practical understanding and development of mindful practices like meditation and body movement to benefit both physical and mental well-being, which in turn will have a positive impact on children’s experience in school.

There is a school in Baltimore, Robert W. Coleman Elementary School, that has replaced detention with meditation. Suspensions have dropped to zero for two years in a row. Instead of punishment, students have learned to breathe, to use mindfulness techniques to calm down and reset. What a remarkable shift away from a shame and punishment-based system toward a holistic one that recognizes that the mind and body are connected. It might not be a subject in a classroom (though it could be, such as in P.E., comparative religions, etc.), but it affects how people exist in the classroom, the curriculum, and performance. There are many ways to apply and examine this knowledge.

We can also discuss how certain histories of revolution and resistance are often left out of the history books. One example could be the Haitian Revolution, one of the most significant and successful uprisings against slavery. Like this, there are many others. We aren’t really taught about any enslaved people’s uprising in school; we don’t learn about Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey. However, we do know about Harriet Beecher Stowe and, undoubtedly, about Andrew Jackson. There were many smaller-scale uprisings, acts of sabotage, and non-compliance, which can also affirm that enslaved people weren’t passively accepting of their fates.

Native American resistance movements, starting as early as 1680 with the Pueblo Revolt, carried against Spanish colonization. And as recent as the Standing Rock protests in 2016-17, a resistance accent the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatened water sources and sacred lands. Indigenous communities have continuously resisted oppression for over 530 years through protests, legal challenges, direct action, and cultural preservation. These are often reduced to a footnote, if mentioned at all. There is a clear whitewashing of history. The history of race and systemic racism is also usually deliberately excluded or misrepresented in American history textbooks. And this is in the US alone; internationally, there were many more revolts and uprisings we never hear about.

Another group often ignored or left out of history, and consequently, the classroom, is the women’s role in revolutionary movements. Women played a crucial role in the American Revolution, for instance, through boycotts, fundraising, espionage, and even disguised participation in combat, notes EBSCO. We are mostly underrepresented in historical narratives. Women’s contributions to political movements are frequently underreported due to factors such as media bias and societal expectations, according to the Harvard International Review. As well as in the fields of science, art, business, and other areas. We all know of women who were erased from history.

The issue here isn’t just representation; it is who gets to define what counts as knowledge. Who and what is worth learning about? If the school curriculum were a mirror, it would be one that distorts the world and hides entire continents and people from its reflection. The point being that it misses out on so much good stuff!

From Socrates to Standardized Testing

Socrates asked questions, encouraged others to do the same, and was killed for it (technically, it was for impiety and corrupting the youth, but really, it was because he was a pesky inquiring troubemaker!). His method of learning and teaching through dialogue, introspection, and contradiction is still one of the most powerful models we have. Ah, the magic of the Socratic Method! His was a philomathic approach to learning... one with no beginning or end, but ongoing and ever-changing. And yet… today’s education system has very little room for it.

Most classrooms employ the filling of the cup banking method, as discussed by Freire, rather than one that allows for meaningful discussion and introspection. Apprenticeships, mentorships, storytelling, communal learning, these were all dominant forms of education before industrialized schooling. They were localized, adaptive, and often deeply rooted in lived experience.

The rise of standardized testing pushed more organic methods of learning further and further aside. We can catch occasional glimpses of them in the classrooms of those teachers who are determined to teach for liberation. In most classrooms here in the U.S, instead of curiosity, the focus is on compliance. Instead of learning how to think, students are taught what to memorize and to compete. More and more, the focus is on disjointed tidbits specifically for testing, which are in turn linked to funding, etc, etc. The children’s well-being doesn’t seem to be a top priority.

Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that “children have the right to an education that helps them develop their personality, talents, mental, and physical abilities, respect for others, and an understanding of the world.” Suffice it to say that it is not ratified by the U.S. Youch!

This shift away from the Socratic Method is not accidental; it’s a purposeful redesign of the framework that guides the field of study. This means it employs specific methods and adheres to certain principles when engaging with knowledge and beliefs. In this case, it is one that teaches students that there is one correct answer. One test. One way. Anything outside that is “not on the exam” and therefore irrelevant, or worse, dangerous.

Another way in which epistemicide materializes or is starting to materialize in education today is in the transition toward AI schooling. Who gets left out? In this case, the real (human) teacher. The new urge toward AI in teaching is a further disconnect from human-to-human learning. It is the definition of being poured into. A child sits in a cubicle, learning from an AI for a few hours a day. The system adapts to them, their pace, and more, which seems like a great advance toward personalized education. But is it? There can be no real discourse here. (Also, what is this AI trained on? Could this not be an even more effective way of applying a bias in education?) Later, said child does move on to do hands-on activities, directed by “guides”. In the few schools I’ve heard about adopting this method, these individuals are called guides and not teachers, in part because they are not trained in education and its complexities. What I wonder about is this: personalized education is essential, but don’t the goal and materials covered matter just as much? The process in education is very much the product, right? And so, in many of these new AI models, they tout excellent test scores, speak proudly of bribing their students or rewarding them with money, and teach them practical business skills (not that this is all bad!) For me, this is just taking the industrial model of education (Fichte, Frederick Taylor et al.) and modernizing the method without changing the goal: to have A+ efficient consumers who don’t “waste time” on learning, a productive citizenry that falls in place exactly where the system needs them to—learning is completely devalued. The goal of the learning in this case, is to achieve the right test scores, and to do it all as quickly as possible in order to produce or earn but to contribute to the system as it needs them to do now. The goal is not truly about knowledge, understanding, or rethinking the status quo, but about developing connection and empathy with others. This education fails to guide young people in questioning their world and exploring and working toward different possibilities.

Epistemicide and Intellectual Dependence

When students grow up in a system that rewards regurgitation over reasoning, efficiency over mindfulness, productivity over enjoyment and reflection, it trains them to look outward for answers rather than inward for questions.

This is intellectual dependence. It trains us to trust institutions before intuition, to defer to authority rather than critique it. The goal isn’t to be contrarian, but it is essential to be critical; there is a difference. And it punishes those who resist: the child who asks “why” too often, the student who sees through the cracks, the teacher who dares to go off-script. Critical thinking often becomes an extracurricular activity, if it’s taught at all.

Another thing that happens is that the dependence on exterior gratification ends up pitting people against each other and deep down against themselves. In this system, our worth doesn’t come from within, but from the achievements within a system that doesn’t value empathy, imagination, creativity, etc, but those more mechanical and material aspects of capital and labor.

This is one of the most insidious forms of epistemicide. It doesn’t just erase knowledge; it erases the confidence to seek it.

The Need for Intellectual Self-Defense

The good news is: this system can be subverted. Systems can always be subverted! Although it feels so big and makes us feel so small, it seems impossible, it isn’t. Parents, teachers, and learners all have the power to resist epistemicide in education. That resistance might look like:

• Seeking out missing histories and voices.

• Encouraging questions with no easy answers.

• Valuing intuition, emotion, and creativity alongside logic.

• Engaging with the arts and humanities not as “extras,” but as essential tools of thought.

• Recognizing and naming the biases embedded in the system itself.

Our intent isn’t to throw out all of modern education; it also isn’t to end public education (this would be a tragedy). Everybody having access to education is crucial; now, what that education looks like is another question. Our goal is to reclaim what was lost in learning, to challenge what’s unexamined, and create new ways of knowing. Yes, to fight epistemicide for the ways it warps and limits learning, but also to unveil what real learning can do and how filled with vitality and emotion it can be.

And it all starts by realizing that the classroom isn’t a neutral space. It’s a battleground.

Coming Next:

Epistemicide Part 3: Who Got Erased, And How to Recover What Was Lost

We turn our focus to the arts (music, literature, visual culture, and storytelling) to uncover how entire creative traditions and thinkers have been erased, rewritten, or sidelined to serve dominant narratives. But this isn’t just a reckoning, it’s a recovery mission. We’ll explore how we begin to reclaim what was lost, revive forgotten voices, and build new ways of knowing through curiosity, creativity, and cultural resistance.

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