Sorting the Future: Memory, Education, and the Quiet Return of Authoritarian Logic
Today’s article explores how education is becoming a tool of exclusion under rising authoritarianism, drawing on personal experience, historical patterns, and the urgent need to resist the return of sorting and systemic inequality.
Introduction
I came across a quote recently that has stayed with me: “Expecting kids to thrive academically without first addressing their emotional needs is unrealistic. Love, safety, and connection lay the groundwork for learning. When a child feels seen and supported, they’re far more likely to engage and succeed. Instead of focusing solely on performance, we should prioritise creating environments where kids feel valued. Academics will follow, but only after the foundation of trust and security is in place.” At its core, this statement captures something I’ve long believed as an educator—that learning is not merely the transfer of information, but a profoundly relational process. Children are not empty vessels into which facts are poured; they are human beings whose capacity to learn is shaped by the extent to which they feel safe, connected, and valued. Without this foundation, academic achievement becomes not only difficult but often irrelevant to their lived experience.
Many educators, myself included, draw upon the ideas of Paulo Freire, whose work in Pedagogy of the Oppressed profoundly shaped our understanding of teaching as an act of love, liberation, and shared humanity. Freire warned against what he called the “banking model” of education—the notion that students are passive recipients of knowledge handed down by those in authority. Instead, he urged us to see education as a co-creative process, rooted in dialogue and mutual recognition. To teach in this way is to stand for a view of education that centres care, justice, and the full dignity of every learner. It also means recognising that education cannot be separated from the social, emotional, and political conditions in which it occurs.
In contrast, what we are seeing now in the United States—particularly under the influence of Trump’s policy agenda and those aligned with it—is a marked departure from this view. There is a turn, not toward greater support or equity, but toward scarcity, competition, and control. The vision emerging is one where education is no longer regarded as a universal right but as a tool for sorting—an instrument to identify who is “fit” to survive in an imagined harsh reality, and who is not. For the children of the wealthy and powerful, nothing will be denied. But for everyone else, education begins to resemble a trial by combat, a gauntlet of adversity through which only a few are expected to emerge. As teachers committed to Freire’s vision, we find ourselves in conflict with this approach. We are asked to uphold systems that increasingly run counter to the very foundation of our practice: that love and connection are the soil from which learning grows. This raises a troubling question: what happens to a society when it abandons the belief that all children deserve to learn, and begins instead to use education as a mechanism for exclusion, control, and survival of the fittest?
Memory and Professional Experience: The Sorting Cane
Years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a project that would eventually be released by National Geographic under the title Scrapbooks from Hell: The Auschwitz Albums. The documentary examined a rare collection of photographs from Auschwitz, discovered in the estate of SS officer Karl-Friedrich Höcker. These images offered a chilling juxtaposition: moments of leisure and camaraderie among the Nazi officers and staff, set against the backdrop of the machinery of genocide. My role in the project was technical—I worked on the rectification of the photographs, preparing them for inclusion in a photogrammetry exercise, and validating the results. It was work that required precision and detachment, but even through the lens of my technical responsibilities, the gravity of what I was handling was impossible to ignore. One image, in particular, has remained with me. It depicted an officer at Auschwitz, holding a cane—what was known as the sorting cane. With that cane, he decided who among the newly arrived prisoners would be selected for forced labour and who would be sent immediately to their death. It was, in the most literal sense, a tool of sorting—life and death determined not through chaos or passion, but through the quiet efficiency of a bureaucratic system.
I do not recall this to provoke shock or to suggest a simplistic comparison, but to reflect on how systems come to normalise decisions of profound consequence. The image of the sorting cane is one that speaks to the dangers of institutionalising hierarchy and reducing human beings to categories of usefulness or expendability. What struck me then—and strikes me even more now—is how easily such systems can operate in plain sight, with their moral weight obscured by routine, authority, and the belief that “someone else” is responsible. These moments of sorting, though extreme in the context of the Holocaust, are part of a broader pattern in history: when human value is contingent upon one’s perceived utility to the system, the door to atrocity, or at least to abandonment, is opened.
In the years following my involvement with that project, I read Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State by Götz Aly. The book offered a sobering analysis of how the Nazi regime maintained popular support—not merely through propaganda or fear, but through tangible economic benefit. Wealth and goods plundered from occupied territories and the victims of the regime were redistributed to the German people. The regime’s crimes were not concealed; they were integrated into daily life, justified by a sense of entitlement, superiority, and the promise of personal gain. Aly’s argument is unsettling because it shifts our understanding of complicity from the realm of fanaticism into something more mundane—and more universal. People went along with atrocity, not always because they hated or feared, but because they benefited and feared the loss of that benefit.
This analysis continues to inform my understanding of the present moment. It is tempting to view historical horrors as distant and anomalous, but the logic that underpinned them—the logic of sorting, of selective value, of complicity through comfort—has not vanished. It takes on new forms, often quieter ones, and finds expression in policies and practices that, whilst lacking the overt brutality of history, still serve to divide, exclude, and maintain the comfort of some at the expense of many. As I reflect on the changes I see in education policy today, I cannot help but feel a familiar disquiet. The question is not whether we are witnessing the same thing, but whether we recognise the patterns before they deepen, and whether we are willing to act before the sorting becomes irreversible.
Pattern Recognition: How the Past Echoes in the Present
As an autistic gestalt processor, my mind is drawn to patterns—the way certain logics reappear, reshaped by time but consistent in their function. I do not experience events or policies as isolated or incidental; instead, I see the web of connections between them, how they fit within broader systems, and how those systems move, often predictably, through cycles of inclusion and exclusion, of consolidation and control. It is in this way that I have come to recognise, with growing unease, a familiar framework taking shape in education policy today—one that echoes the sorting logic I encountered in my work on the Auschwitz photographs, and the economic complicity Götz Aly described in Hitler’s Beneficiaries. Though the context is vastly different, the structural patterns are disturbingly familiar.
What stands out most prominently is the increasing focus on sorting children through education—not for their benefit, but for the system’s. The dominance of standardised testing, performance metrics, and quantifiable outputs has transformed education into a competitive arena, where children are ranked, measured, and valued according to narrow criteria. These tests, often presented as objective measures of merit, in fact reflect and reinforce existing inequalities. They become tools for allocating resources and opportunities in ways that privilege those already advantaged, whilst those who fall behind are not offered support, but rather blamed and discarded. This obsession with data and outcomes reduces education to a series of hurdles, where only the most “efficient” or “productive” are deemed worthy of investment.
Alongside this, we see the deliberate devaluation of public institutions—particularly schools in marginalised communities. Cuts to Title I funding, which exists to support schools serving low-income students, are not just budgetary decisions; they are value statements about who is worth supporting and who is not. When this funding is removed or restricted, it disproportionately harms students who rely most on these resources—children from communities already impacted by systemic neglect. It is a withdrawal of care, masked as fiscal responsibility, and it signals a shift away from the idea of education as a public good toward something far more selective and exclusionary.
At the same time, policies such as voucher schemes and the expansion of charter and religious schools represent a quiet but powerful transfer of wealth. Framed as “choice,” these schemes allow public funds to flow into private hands—often those of corporations or religious institutions—whilst giving wealthy families a tax break for decisions they had already made. These policies do not create new opportunities; they reinforce old divisions, funnelling resources away from the public system and deepening the stratification between those who can afford access to quality education and those left with what remains. It is a grift, plain and simple, disguised as reform.
In observing all of this, I am not claiming equivalence to the past, but I do recognise an echo—a repetition of mechanisms that sort, devalue, and manage populations under the guise of efficiency or necessity. The historical tools of sorting were overt, brutal, and final; the tools today are quieter, embedded in policy and practice, but their effect is to divide lives into those deemed investable and those deemed disposable. These patterns should give us pause. They ask us to consider whether we are willing to confront the systems that make such sorting possible—or whether we, too, will become complicit through silence, convenience, or the belief that it cannot happen here.
Education as a Site of Ideological Contest
Education is never neutral. It is a reflection of the values, priorities, and power structures of the society it serves. What is taught, how it is taught, and who has access to that teaching are all shaped by ideology—whether openly acknowledged or not. In times of social stability, this ideological character may be less visible, but during periods of upheaval or transition, it often comes sharply into focus. We are living through such a period now. The recent shifts in education policy in the United States, particularly under the Trump regime and those aligned with its ideology, mark a clear departure from the notion of collective uplift. Instead, we are seeing a reorientation toward individual survival, competition, and the reinforcement of existing hierarchies—a view of education as a mechanism not for liberation, but for discipline and control.
Historically, authoritarian and fascist regimes have treated education as a tool to mould obedient citizens, not as a space to cultivate critical thought or shared humanity. The role of the teacher in such systems is not to support students in exploring the world or questioning their place within it, but to instil a narrow set of approved beliefs, ensuring loyalty and conformity. This view of education is at odds with traditions of teaching grounded in care, community, and the pursuit of truth—traditions deeply influenced by thinkers such as Paulo Freire and, crucially, by the Marxist canon, which offers some of the most incisive critiques of power, inequality, and the material conditions shaping human life.
It is no coincidence, then, that we are witnessing an orchestrated pushback against so-called “Marxist teachers” and the spectre of “Marxism” in schools and universities. The administration’s rhetoric casts Marxism as a threat to children, to families, and to the “American way of life.” But beneath this fearmongering lies a strategic effort to suppress the best tools we have for analysing the current moment. At its core, Marxism is not about dogma but about understanding the dynamics of class, capital, and exploitation. In Capital, Marx showed how the value of labour is extracted to create profit, and how systems evolve to justify and perpetuate this extraction. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels warned that ruling classes will seek to shape every institution, including education, to maintain their dominance. And in The German Ideology, they demonstrated how dominant ideas in any era are the ideas of the ruling class, sustained and transmitted through structures like the school.
When the state moves to ban or discredit these ideas, it is not because they are irrelevant—it is because they offer clarity. They expose how austerity, competition, and privatisation serve the interests of those already in power, and how policies like the defunding of public education or the expansion of voucher schemes are not neutral reforms, but acts of class warfare. Marxist analysis reveals that the current trajectory is not accidental; it is the logical outcome of a system that values profit over people, and control over liberation.
To teach from a place of care, to invite students to question and understand their world, is increasingly framed as dangerous—subversive. The classroom becomes a site of ideological contest, not because teachers are imposing beliefs, but because any attempt to centre community, justice, and shared prosperity challenges the foundations of a system built on competition and exclusion. The move to restrict what can be taught, to erase critical theory, and to target teachers who advocate for equity, is not simply a culture war. It is an attempt to ensure that the next generation remains compliant, uncritical, and resigned to a world of permanent stratification.
In this context, the struggle over education is not just about pedagogy—it is about the future of society. Will education serve as a means of maintaining inequality, or will it remain a space where we can imagine and work toward something better? That question is at the heart of the ideological battle being waged in classrooms across the country today.
The Broader Tension: Fascism and Its Antagonism to Collectivism
Beneath the surface of current education policy—and indeed many contemporary political struggles—lies a deeper, older conflict, one that has shaped the course of modern history: the tension between fascism and collectivism. This tension is not merely academic; it is ideological, material, and existential. A key historical example illustrates the stakes of this conflict. Hitler’s war of aggression to the east was not only about territorial expansion or Lebensraum—it was also driven by a profound and violent opposition to communism and any form of collectivist social order. For the Nazi regime, the Soviet Union represented more than an enemy state; it embodied an idea that was anathema to fascist principles: the notion that society could be organised around equality, solidarity, and shared resources rather than hierarchy, domination, and private accumulation.
Fascism, at its core, is a reactionary force. It does not simply oppose communism or socialism in practical terms—it exists in opposition to the very possibility of egalitarian systems. Fascism thrives on the belief that society must be stratified, that power and privilege are the rightful domain of a select few, and that others must be ruled, exploited, or eliminated. It draws strength from mythologies of purity, strength, and destiny, and it fears, above all, the collective power of ordinary people to organise and claim their share of the world.
In our time, education has become one of the battlegrounds where this conflict continues. The debate is not only about what is taught in classrooms, but about the role of education itself: is it a means of reproducing hierarchy, or a tool for collective uplift? When public education is attacked, when funding is stripped from schools serving marginalised communities, when curricula are sanitised to remove critical thought, the goal is not simply budgetary or ideological hygiene—it is to prevent education from becoming a space where egalitarian ideas might take root. It is a move to ensure that some children—those from affluent, connected families—receive every opportunity, whilst others are left to navigate a deliberately under-resourced and punitive system. The sorting logic reappears, and with it, the old antagonism: between the few who benefit, and the many who are meant to accept their place.
A great deal of misunderstanding surrounds the concept of collectivism, much of it fuelled by deliberate misinformation. One common refrain, often used to dismiss Marxist thought, is the notion that “the Marxists want to take your toothbrush.” This type of claim reveals more about the speaker’s ignorance than any truth about Marxist theory. A basic distinction—one Marxists are well aware of—is that between personal property and private property. Personal property includes the things we use and enjoy in daily life—our toothbrushes, clothes, homes—whereas private property, in the Marxist sense, refers to the means of production: factories, land, resources, and infrastructure that generate wealth. The critique is not about individual belongings, but about the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few who exploit the labour of many. To conflate these categories is not only inaccurate but a deliberate tactic to obscure the real issues at stake.
The reality is that most people making these arguments have never read Marx, Engels, or any serious political theory. Their views are shaped by caricature and fear, not understanding. If you want to know how to recognise a true Marxist, it’s simple: they’ll offer you a reading list. They’ll hand you a stack of books and encourage you to read them, to think critically, and to engage with the ideas directly. Marxism, at its best, invites dialogue, reflection, and analysis—not blind allegiance or soundbites.
In the present moment, as education becomes a site of restriction and control, we must ask what lies behind these efforts. Whose interests are served when children are denied critical tools for understanding the world? Why is there such urgency to suppress collective ways of thinking? The answer is clear: because collective power challenges the foundations of hierarchical systems. Education that fosters critical thought, empathy, and solidarity threatens the structures that uphold inequality—and for those invested in maintaining those structures, that is intolerable.
Looking Ahead: A Quiet Concern for Students and Self
As a Special Education teacher, I occupy a complicated position—simultaneously an agent of the system and an advocate within it. As a case manager, I am charged with upholding the structures of compliance, documentation, and legal adherence, ensuring that the school fulfils its obligations under the law. At the same time, I am called to be an advocate for students and their families, many of whom are navigating a system that was not designed for them and often works against them. It is a constant tension: enforcing the mandates of a system that prioritises data and accountability, whilst striving to centre the human needs of students who are too often reduced to labels, scores, and deficits. This dual role is exhausting, and it’s no wonder so many positions in Special Education remain unfilled. The weight of being both gatekeeper and advocate, of trying to soften a system that is inherently rigid, wears people down.
My journey into the classroom was anything but straightforward, and it was that path—marked by obstacles, gatekeeping, and a persistent need to justify my presence—that led me to write my book, No Place for Autism?, which was published in 2023. The book emerged from a deep need to reframe how we understand autism, not as a deficit or disorder, but as a natural and valuable part of human diversity. Drawing on a wealth of references, I grounded the work in two key theoretical constructs: Reser’s Solitary Forager Hypothesis, which situates autism within an evolutionary context as a naturally occurring cognitive style, and William Glasser’s Choice Theory, which offers a framework for understanding behaviour rooted in the pursuit of basic human needs. Together, these perspectives allowed me to challenge prevailing narratives and propose a view of autism centred on agency, context, and belonging.
One of the factors that compelled me to write No Place for Autism? was the resistance I encountered whilst trying to enter the teaching profession as an autistic person. A particularly insidious challenge came from a group often referred to, somewhat colloquially, as the “martyr mums”—well-meaning parents of disabled children who often position themselves as the ultimate authorities on who is “fit” to teach their children. Their influence frequently extends beyond their own families, subtly shaping hiring decisions, professional norms, and the broader culture of Special Education. In assuming the role of protectors, they often become gatekeepers, deciding—implicitly or explicitly—who is acceptable to serve in educational roles, and who is not, especially when those educators themselves are disabled or divergent from the expected norm.
This experience of gatekeeping, of being judged not on my qualifications or commitment but on the discomfort my difference seemed to provoke, was a formative part of my journey. It reflects a broader sorting mechanism within education—not only sorting students by perceived ability or compliance but also sorting adults by conformity and acceptability. Those who do not fit neatly into expected categories are often sidelined or excluded, all under the guise of “what’s best for the children.” Confronting this reality motivated me to write the book—not only to reframe autism as a natural and valuable part of human diversity, but to challenge the systems that control access, suppress difference, and call it care.
These experiences—of gatekeeping, exclusion, and the policing of difference—were not only part of my path into the profession, but they mirror what I see happening to my students every day. My concern for them is both immediate and profound. The system they are navigating was not built for their flourishing; it was built to measure them, sort them, and manage them. In schools that serve the most vulnerable, funding is often the first thing to be stripped away. Despite this, these same schools are expected to perform to the same standards as those with abundant resources, as if the playing field were level. When they inevitably fall short of arbitrary benchmarks—benchmarks designed without their context in mind—they are labelled as failures. The result is a familiar cycle: underperformance leads to further funding cuts, then the loss of programmes, and eventually, school closures. What remains for the students in these communities is not opportunity but abandonment. They are blamed for outcomes shaped by structural neglect, and denied the very tools they need to succeed.
I worry deeply for the students who have yet to enter this system. If we continue down this path, what will be left of public education? Will it remain a space of possibility and growth, or become one of constant scrutiny, where children must prove their worth at every turn in a system designed to privilege a few and discard the rest? Increasingly, I see education prioritising compliance over curiosity, survival over development. Children are expected to adapt to scarcity, rather than question why scarcity exists at all. They are taught to accept the limitations placed upon them, rather than imagine something more just, more equitable, more humane.
As someone who is trans, autistic, and reflective, I feel the precarity of my position within this system acutely. I am not what the system expects, nor am I easily accommodated by it. I am tasked with enforcing rules I often find troubling, representing a structure that does not fully accept or value people like me. At the same time, I advocate for students who are different in ways the system resists—students who, like me, do not conform neatly to imposed norms. It is a difficult and often isolating line to walk, being both within and at odds with the very system I serve. Yet I remain, not because it is comfortable, but because I know the alternative. To leave would be to cede the space entirely, to leave others—students and colleagues alike—to bear the weight alone. Remaining is not without cost, but it is, for now, a necessity—a quiet act of resistance, of solidarity, and of hope.
Final thoughts …
Memory, for me, is not confined to the past—it is a living lens through which I interpret the present. The experiences I have carried, the patterns I have seen, and the histories I have studied all converge in how I make sense of the world unfolding around us. Recognising patterns is not a matter of alarmism; it is a form of responsibility. It is the work of noticing when certain logics—those of exclusion, control, and hierarchy—begin to reassert themselves in familiar ways, even if under new names or guises. When we see sorting, stratification, and the devaluation of human life being normalised through policy and practice, we are called not to panic, but to reflect—and then to act.
The tension between fascism and collectivism, between hierarchy and community, is not new. It is a struggle that has shaped modern history, and it remains unresolved. What we are witnessing now, particularly in education, is not simply a policy shift but an ideological one—an effort to re-establish hierarchy, to reinforce the privileges of the few, and to limit the horizons of the many. This tension plays out in classrooms, in funding decisions, in what is taught and what is forbidden. It manifests in who is supported and who is left to struggle, in who is welcomed and who is pushed to the margins.
By recognising these patterns—the return of sorting, the suppression of critical thought, the narrowing of opportunity—we create the possibility of imagining something different. We do not have to accept the repetition of past errors as inevitable. There are alternative futures, grounded in care, equity, and community, that we can choose to build. But that work begins with recognition—with seeing the patterns clearly, understanding their consequences, and refusing to let them go unchallenged. In that refusal lies the seed of change.