Ranking Children Like Cattle: A Nietzschean Reflection on Modern Schooling and the Biology of Belonging

Rise Above the Herd

Some days I can’t help but feel rage—not a destructive rage, but the kind that simmers beneath a deep knowing: that something is profoundly wrong with the way we treat children.

Our school systems rank children like cattle. Assigning numbers to minds. Sorting spirits by test scores. Measuring value through conformity and obedience. It's no wonder that so many young people grow up not knowing who they are—only what they were told to be.

Friedrich Nietzsche saw this coming. He warned us of the danger of slave morality—a value system built on fear, submission, and resentment. A morality that punishes the exceptional and rewards the obedient. The system doesn’t educate sovereign individuals; it manufactures compliant citizens. It does not awaken a fire within—it snuffs it out and rewards the ashes.

But the roots of this problem go even deeper. Biologically, we are tribal beings. For hundreds of thousands of years, survival meant staying close to the group. To be cast out meant death. So we evolved with a nervous system wired for safety through belonging. We learned to scan the eyes of others for approval. We internalized the rules of the tribe to avoid exile.

And in today’s world, that tribal drive still runs deep. But the modern “tribe” is not the close-knit circle of kin it once was. It’s the institution. The system. The school. The workplace. The state. And that tribe—our surrogate safety net—is what’s making us sick.

Children don’t thrive in systems designed for control. They are medicated, monitored, and measured into submission. And we call this normal. But it’s not. It’s trauma disguised as discipline. It’s obedience dressed up as education. It’s the slow death of the soul in exchange for approval.

To truly heal, we must do something radical.

We must recognize that you can’t heal within the system that made you sick. Healing requires stepping outside the herd. Turning against the values that broke you. It requires courage—because leaving the tribe still feels dangerous to the nervous system. But it’s only outside that old system that we can begin to reorient, to remember who we are beneath the programming.

Nietzsche spoke of the Übermensch—the one who creates new values, who walks alone through the desert of unlearning to give birth to something higher. This is the path of healing. Not rebellion for its own sake, but re-alignment. Choosing a new tribe—one aligned with truth, freedom, and the dignity of the human spirit.

I believe if adults truly stepped back—left the children alone, stopped poisoning their minds and bodies—they would unfold into something extraordinary. They wouldn’t need ranking or reward. They would build something better.

Let the wild spirits rise.