As a young adult who experienced the British state education system in the UK, I often look back at my experience in school with a slight of bafflement. Experiences that felt completely normal at the time are now uncomfortable for me to think about, and conversations with my peers indicate that I am not alone in this perception.

I’m talking about the fact – which I discovered only in retrospect – that British schools state enforce discipline on students in ways that are either shocking or completely inexplicable to many that have not experienced the system directly or through their children. In fact, some of the disciplinary rules and procedures that you are likely to find in the average British state school do not differ much from a low-security prison.

The notorious example of this is the requirement to wear uniforms. The specific requirements that this entails are generally absurd, such as socks being a certain shade of grey, bags being from a specific supplier, and coats being black. Students are also commonly required to walk in silence around corridors in a single direction, line up rigidly by classroom doors, stand behind desks before sitting down, and march like soldiers during fire alarms. During lessons, schools frequently proscribe banal tasks that are strictly enforced as mandatory, such as drawing margins in books, filling out ‘target sheets’, writing ‘C/W’ for ‘class work’, and colour-coding their work.

On the surface, this doesn’t seem so bad. Is this not just a neurotic but quaint way to preserve some elements of Victorian society? What stands out the most to me is the way in which schools enforce these rules. It is common for students to be reprimanded for violations on a scale that ranges from detentions all the way to solitary confinement, or what is known as the ‘isolation room’. This medieval sounding punishment is roughly what it sounds like, and is used routinely. Schools also often use surveillance cameras to find offenders and even designate a team of staff to be ‘on patrol’, acting as a small police force. What is clears is that process of creating rules and distributing punishments used in British state schools is consciously designed to be systematic and rational, and not merely the result of a disposition for strictness.

A noticeable feature of many of the rules outlined is that they do not seem to bear a direct relation to school order, but still lead to frequent punishment. For example, a rule to wear your school jacket all day does not have any tangible impact on reducing conflict or improving learning. I would go as far to say that there are many rules which exist only because they enable punishment. That is, there are rules which are very hard for students not to break at least once, which let schools punish students without a reason directly grounded in the functioning of the school order.

While the rules that are ‘made to be broken’ do not directly relate to the school order, they have a discipling effect on students. By giving them the impression that they are always being watched, and that punishment for violations is not optional, they become generally more obedient. This process is similar to the concept of panopticism theorized by Michel Foucault. A separate but related effect of this system is that there is significant alienation between students and teachers. While to some extent this is not unique to the UK, enforcing rules in such a systematic way necessitates that there can be no sense of personal relationship between students and teachers at all.

Given the importance and scale of this system in British state schools, there should be a conception of justice underpinning the distribution of punishments. Much like a state, a school with this many laws needs a way distinguish between the innocent and the guilty and punish accordingly. Since this is an extra-judicial system of punishment where the usual civil standards for justice do not apply, we could use the analogy of a military court. However, my observation is that the system of punishment in British state schools does not appear to be grounded in any conception of justice at all. Typically, when a teacher decides to punish a student, there is no trial, and no possibility for appeal. This sound hyperbolic in relation to short detentions, but schools can also operate this way when it comes to placing students in isolation. With this in mind, the system bears striking similarities to what might happen in an authoritarian or fascist state.

So why do British state schools operate in this way? A common defence to many of the rules related to students’ interactions with teachers is that they enforce a desirable moral code among students. To foreigners it might seem strange to call your teacher ‘Sir’ or ‘Miss’, or to have to wear a suit and tie every day, but this a cultural norm in the UK.

While I don’t a big problem with this view per se, it risks missing the ways in which the system also instils many undesirable morals within students. Although there is virtue in being able to wear a suit and tie well, many of the other more arbitrary rules do not seem to have anything to do with morality at all. And in addition, the heavy-handed punishment of any kind of dissent by students can even subvert morality. For example, when students are shouted at for wearing the wrong colour of coat, or failing to underline their titles, the moral lesson is in favour of deference rather good manners or virtue. And perhaps, an even more sinister consequence is that that students are taught to see their peers as immoral when they break these rules.

Another view is that if students are more obedient, at the cost of justice, they will perform better academically. A defender of this position is Katherine Birbalsingh, the self-proclaimed ‘strictest head teacher in the UK’, who cites the role that discipline plays in educational attainment, specifically for socio-economically disadvantaged groups. If students are disciplined, they are more likely to follow the rules that are important to the functioning of the school, with respect to both general orderly behaviour and learning. Similarly, limits on the relationship between students and teachers make it easier to enforce rules forcefully as teachers will empathise less with students.

In my view, the necessity of such a trade-off appears to stem from a conception of children’s behaviour found in something like Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. According to this view, children are more likely to lack empathy than adults and will therefore quickly descend into anarchy without any authority. Schools are therefore best placed to engineer systems that discipline students to maintain order, and to scientifically promote good academic achievement by coercing them to learn in a way that they would not do otherwise.

Even if this conception is true, an unintended consequence of this approach is often the abue of power by teachers over students. Because the system creates and increases power dynamics between students and staff, it is easier for punishments to become extremely cruel and inhumane. This is exacerbated by the alienation between students and staff, as teachers lacking empathy for students will be more likely to a lash out, especially if they know that there are limited ways for students to hold them to account directly.

Beyond the harms that the system has caused in practice, I think that any justification that relies are reductionist conception of human psychology is probably false. But even if we put both of these concerns to one side, I think there are good reasons to believe that restricting children’s rights in such a drastic way is inherently problematic. It is of course hard to contest that that children should be treated identically to adults, but when this system is outline in clearer terms, it seems like many parents would be hesitant to put their children in such an environment.

A good way to look at this issue might be in terms of what rational adults would be willing to impose upon their past selves. At first this might seem unusual, as we cannot literally impose something on the past. However, if we begin with the premise that the arrangement faced by children is inevitably imposed on them, a fair way to determine this arrangement should involve considering what children would resent – or remember fondly – when looking back at childhood in the future. The question we must ask is therefore whether they would want their past self to experience this kind of totalitarian system, assuming that they would not want it for their current self.

By presenting my thoughts on this topic, I am not trying to get sympathy or complain about my personal experience, which was undoubtably fortunate and privileged. Much like in an authoritarian state, school institutions can never be truly totalitarian, and there is more to school life that discipline. It’s more the case that I feel a sense of regret for at times succumbing to the moral brainwashing that the system imposes. Unconditional deference is not a virtue.