NO TO FORMATTING AND COMPETITION 

We can talk about formatting at every stage of life, and for the child it begins very early indeed — practically from birth. A child's mind can be compared to virgin wax that parents, society, the system and school will mould as they please. This process is almost universal. The variants of formatting may be cultural, religious, and even civilisational, but it remains formatting all the same, and it is so easy to format a child.

So what, in fact, is the common core of this supposedly civilisational formatting?

Fierce competition, elitism, the cult of success, the glorification of achievement, the exaltation of the fighter, the devastating myth of the winner (what becomes, after all, of the vast majority of losers?), the race for power and wealth, the indecent spectacle of brutal immoralities, double-talk, duplicity, the ordinary hypocrisy that colours certain acts of social life: such intensive formatting that a certain youth, whose critical gaze has already been impaired, does not realise soon enough that the dice are loaded. And of course it is not the golden youth of the smart neighbourhoods — the children of the propertied elite — who are subtly prepared to take their place in the hereditary machinery of domination.

Police mugshot of a two-year-old child accused of stealing pears from a basket, 1893, France. Formatting comes from very far back — much further still than this photo — and it starts very, very early.

 AI's comments on this photo are very interesting (see below). 

Thus, in France, while institutional façades still display lofty ideals and a generous principle of "equal opportunities" is unanimously proclaimed in so-called developed countries, disadvantaged young people realize that they will have to adapt to this state of affairs and that school has been the stepping stone toward it. Indeed, where is the equality for young people who live in neighborhoods reputed to be difficult, periodically plagued by outbreaks of urban violence, and whose families have neither economic nor social capital to pass on to them?

School is certainly a place of learning, but it is also a place of competition, continuous assessment, and judgment. We must say NO to this school, say NO to the multiple forms of conditioning, NO TO COMPETITION, to the constant rivalry, to comparison in learning and in everyday life. Instead, we should promote solidarity, encourage mutual assistance and cooperation through listening, with respect for others and for oneself.

The biologist and geneticist Albert Jacquard (1925–2013) highlights here the suicidal nature of competition, which he describes as the destruction of some by others. As he said in 1994, even 30 years later we are still "selecting the most dangerous people."

More contemporary, and closer to home, are these young people who, although they may be exceptions, are no less clear-sighted. Take, for example, this young man in a baseball cap, an anonymous figure on the web who, in just a few minutes, paints an uncompromising picture of the absurd world in which we do nothing more than survive. 

Or consider this other young person, so young, who wishes to address "intelligent people," and whose warnings are so pertinent when it comes to the dangers of schooling when it imposes an ideology and insidiously deprives people of the ability to think for themselves. 

Yet the overwhelming majority of people have been through school… So why is 80% of the population so lacking in critical thinking? 

Need we revisit the ongoing deterioration of the French institution known as the "National Education" system? On his website, Le Libre Penseur, Salim Laïbi gives a damning assessment.

An industry that churns out idiots on an assembly line. The words may be somewhat harsh, but are they really so outrageous in light of France's ranking in the PISA studies*?

And Salim Laïbi drives the point home by publishing, beneath this brief article, a short video that might bring a smile (albeit a bitter one) to one's face, in which a young man asks children a few simple questions. And yes, we are then forced, as he is, to ask ourselves: "How is it possible to spend seven hours a day at school for several years and end up illiterate, unable to conjugate simple verbs correctly?"**

And of course, one feels pity for these children, but there are millions upon millions of them, and the speeches claiming to offer solutions are always the same: political waffle, empty words, hot air.

It is clear that the deterioration of education is extremely serious. Salim Laïbi, once again, goes so far as to speak of "decivilization": "When we understand that four- and five-year-old children today in France are thinking about suicide or attempting suicide, we understand that our society has failed. It is a disaster, it is historic, it is unprecedented."

A psychiatrist gives her testimony…

Risks that had already been highlighted in this article dated March 18, 2022:
The Consequences of COVID-19 for Children: From a Health Crisis to a "Mental Pandemic"

Yet the only voices offering anything remotely sensible come from psychologists. Who would be surprised, when one considers the poverty of today's intellectual sphere whenever it presumes to speak about education?

In just a few minutes, Marie-Estelle Dupont highlights The Dangers of Our Society's Spiritual Emptiness:

And in a 23-minute interview about her book, Parenting in Times of Crisis: How to Restore Our Children's Psychological Balance, she explains how to prepare our children for the collapse of society—a collapse that we will soon no longer be able to avoid…

Sonia Delahaigue, for her part, warns us: (46 minutes). "With today's education system, we are all ready for social credit."

Finally, if you're in the mood, here's a brief minute of pure sarcasm about the baccalauréat and "school": a hastily made little film by Laurent Firode.

*PISA studies: Programme for International Student Assessment

 AI Commentary (photo above of little François Bertillon):

Yes, this photograph does indeed exist.

It is an anthropometric photograph (a "mugshot"-style portrait) taken on October 17, 1893, by Alphonse Bertillon, the French police officer who standardized the modern judicial portrait (front and profile views).

Who is the child?

• First name: François Bertillon
• Age: approximately 23 months (almost 2 years old)
• "Crime" recorded: gluttony — having eaten all the pears from a basket.

The real context (rather than the sensationalized story)

This was not the actual arrest of a two-year-old child. Alphonse Bertillon had no children. François was his nephew (the son of his brother Jacques Bertillon). Alphonse and his wife spoiled him considerably.

The photograph was part of a series of technical trials and family experiments that Bertillon conducted while perfecting his method of forensic photography. There are even earlier photographs of the same child in the same pose. It was therefore more of a joke / exercise in style than an actual criminal procedure.

The photograph is held, among other places, by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and has circulated extensively online with the sensationalized caption you quoted.

Connection with your reflection on conditioning

Even though the anecdote is lighter than it might initially appear, it remains meaningful in the context of what you are describing:

Formatting comes from very far back — much further still than this photo — and it starts very, very early. 

As early as the late nineteenth century, we can already see a young child being treated, even in jest, according to the conventions of criminal identification.

This perfectly illustrates the idea that the "shaping" of a child's mind (and body) by institutions begins extremely early—long before school, and sometimes in forms that seem absurd or disturbing to us today.