'I'm a Saboteur.'

Provisional self-esteem. Self-respect depends on expert opinion, measured down to a single percentage point on tests, grades, and report cards. Parents would be "surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these mathematical records," but the system teaches children to measure themselves based on "the casual judgment of strangers."

Conspicuousness. Children are always under surveillance, in the classroom and even beyond. There are no private spaces for children and no private time for them. "Changing classes lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels." Teachers assign "a type of extended schooling called 'homework,' too, so that the surveillance travels into private households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn something unauthorized from a father or a mother or by apprenticing to some wise person in the neighborhood."