Dumb Kids' Class
As humans, we are prone to classify anything and everything: this goes here, that goes there. We learn it from an early age, I presume, when we are asked to decide which item does not belong. It is not long before this philosophy becomes a way of assessing people. However, it is not until later that we learn that those being underestimated or misclassified are the ones that make life better, that change society, that innovate and progress our society. Mark Bowden acknowledges that people are put in a box, being assumed to be one way when in reality they really are not, and how we should not underestimate people: through examples of his past, Bowden illustrates the manifestation of microfascism in schools. The reality that micofascism “can be seen in social atomization” cannot be denied. At any school, “each grade level [is] divided in two. Teachers observe [students’] performance, and sort them accordingly…There [is] the smart kids’ class, and there [is] the dumb kids’ class.” Schools have classified the elites and the commoners: they have placed students in boxes where very few can escape. Schools are restricting students from reaching their full potential because it is challenging to make your own positive behavioral box or to spot the boxes others have put you in when you are conditioned to think that they are either smart or dumb. Rooted in despair over the “absence of justice on Earth,” humans presumes to shoulder the “obligation of imposing a uniform design of perfection on all natural but imperfect expressions of human life.” When those that are underestimated and placed in a box labeled “dumb,” it leads to a fascist impulse because they are unjustly classified. When Bowden was “anointed with academic potential, a designation all the more meaningful because [he] had earned it,” he became “the most feared and respected student in [his] new classroom.” He thought too highly of himself that his “head was so big” that it could be popped by a pin, which shows