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The Hidden Social Commentary of the Kindergarten Series

Welp, it would seem that the court of public opinion has spoken (please put the gun away lady-with-rabies I am very scared)

Kindergarten is a series that, in case you didn't notice, I have a certain level of fondness for. On the surface it just seems like a silly set of games that isn't meant to be taken seriously, and in a sense that is exactly what they are.

But, being the neurodivergent little goblin I am, I have gleamed a message from these games, a message about the school system, the failings of adults/authority figures, and the world's treatment of those with disabilities. So if you're willing to sit down and hear what I have to say, allow me to make my case for why series where you play as a nameless, homicidal child helping other homicidal children carry out their murder plans can actually be read as a commentary on modern day society.

TW: Bullying, Child Abuse, Ableism, mentions of Rape. If any of this makes you uncomfortable, I suggest not reading this post.

Part 0: What is Kindergarten?

If you're reading this post then I am going to assume you have a basic understanding of what Kindergarten is, but for the sake of those who aren't in the know, allow me to give a brief rundown.

Kindergarten has you playing as this kid:

He's never actually given a name, but for the sake of simplicity (and the fact that it's what most of the fandom calls him) I will be calling him Kid.

As Kid, you find yourself attending a preschool full of children (and adults) that are... let's just say not the most mentally stable individuals.

The game itself places you in a sort of groundhog day-like scenario where you are constantly repeating the same day (the first game is Monday, second game is Tuesday, third game is Wednesday) with your ultimate goal being to complete all the assignments given to you via doing different things each repeated day and using the special items rewarded to you at the end of each assignment that you're able to carry over into the next, or rather same day.

Sounds pretty simple right?

Well... I mentioned how the kids you share a school with aren't exactly mentally sane didn't I? Yeah well, that's where the main appeal of these games come from.

The kids in this series are... for lack of a better term, completely insane. They will happily kill you and others for the pettiest of reasons.

Despite their innocent exterior, the Kindergarten games are INCREDIBLY violent. They are primarily known for the sheer amount of violence, blood, and gore to the point where it's absurd, but that's kind of the point.

Kindergarten at its core is a series that uses absurdist humor to tell a story that is both completely nonsensical, yet oddly engaging at the same time.

It's something that really doesn't feel like it should work as well as it does, but Connor Boyle and Sean Young executed it in a way that almost makes you forget how dumb and stupid a lot of it is.

But if Kindergarten was little more than a series of games filled with shock humor I wouldn't be making this post. Because as stupid as it may sound, I do genuinely think these games have something to say about the real world and I am going to do my best to explain why I believe this. Will I do a good job at it? I have no fucking idea lmao, but, enough of you were interested in seeing my takes so really, this is your fault. You have only yourself to blame if this ends up being shit.

Anyways enough rambling, let's get into this shall we?

Part 1: The Modern Day School System BLOWS

Allow me to tell you a little tale. During my school years I dealt with undiagnosed ADHD, and it fucking sucked. I was frustrated, I had low self-esteem, I felt like I was simply incapable of doing the things that everyone else could do with ease.

I also dealt with my fair share of bullying throughout my college years and found myself in a friend group that enabled my worst habits and made me into a bit of an asshole for awhile.

To really put into perspective just how bad my friend group was, one of my "friends" quite literally admitted to me once that I was the easiest to make fun of which was why I ended up being the butt of a lot of their jokes.

It's an experience I don't look back on particularly fondly. I didn't really feel like I could do anything about it because without those people, I would literally have no one, and while I did eventually cut ties with them, the scars have still yet to fully heal.

All of this is to say, my experience with school wasn't a very positive one, and I think a big reason for that is because of how little it really did to help me deal with a lot of my problems.

Instead of being in an environment that accommodated my own personal needs I was instead shoved into a class full of strangers and expected to learn things the exact same way as everyone else, leaving me to feel broken and incompetent when I wasn't able to do it.

To give credit where it was due, there was a Special Ed class in my college and we did have assistants that would help us out with work, but the only thing that really did is make me feel worse about myself because from my perspective, I was so broken that I needed to have someone help me just to get the work done. I'm also 90% sure I was dealing with internalized ableism back then, so instead of seeing Special Ed class as a place to help disabled people, I saw it as "the stupid class". Certainly doesn't help that I have memories of teachers basically telling me that if I kept slacking off on my work I would end up in that class, as if it was somehow a punishment to be there.

All of this is to say that the school system, or at least the one I had to deal with did a piss poor job of actually helping me learn and only really made me feel horrible about myself because everything and everyone around me was basically telling me that I was wrong, that I was broken.

As for the bullying? Well they barely did anything about that either. Sure they held assemblies where they preached about how bad bullying is, but they didn't actually do anything to crack down on the problem. They let these bullies run wild with little to no consequence. It is instead being the kids' jobs to call it out when it's happening, which is stupid because if a kid is being bullied, they aren't gonna immediately call it out, because then they risk making the bullying worse.

All of this is to say, the school system is outdated and it's bullshit, something which the Kindergarten series seems to agree with.

The most obvious example of how Kindergarten represents the garbage school system is how negligent its staff are. We constantly see characters like Buggs and Cindy bully others while receiving basically nothing in terms of consequence from the adults.

Cindy is an especially egregious example of this because she does literally nothing to hide her bullying. She is completely out in the open about it, it's obvious that the faculty sees what she's doing, and yet they do nothing about it.

I'm not saying we should blame all of Cindy's behavior on the school, obviously she is still the one choosing to be actively cruel, but bullies like her wouldn't be this big of a problem if the staff cared more, and they just don't.

By allowing this nasty behavior to continue, the school is effectively enabling and facilitating cruel kids to be the absolute worst they can be without consequence.

As for how this school treats students who are deemed as less "competent" than everybody else... well Kindergarten 2 literally has a smart class made for kids that are deemed "not stupid", effectively telling everyone who doesn't get into that class that they are dumb and incompetent, I don't really think I need to explain that one.

With all this talk about how terrible the staff are at doing their job, this leads pretty well into the next part of this essay.

Part 2: Adults Are Terrible

Adults in the Kindergarten series tend to be portrayed in one of two different ways. Either they're decent individuals who actually seem to care about the kids, or they're just as bad if not worse than the kids, and unfortunately for us, the latter is far more common.

When it comes to how adults are portrayed in the Kindergarten games, their actions tend to be treated with a lot more gravitas than the kids are and the reason why should be obvious.

As bad and cruel as the kids can often get in this series, a lot of them can be given at least a little bit of plausible deniability. They're just kids after all, young kids. Expecting them to fully grasp how bad their actions are when they are literally five years old is pretty nonsensical, and while it is true that these kids are smarter than your average preschooler, the point remains the same. Their actions are never going to carry the same weight behind them as the adults. Especially when a lot of the time, the kids being as bad as they are is a result of bad parenting.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the kids whose negative characteristics are their most prominent character traits also tend to be the ones who are either implied to have or outright confirmed to have poor upbringings.

Cindy is a cruel, narcissistic bully who torments others for her own amusement. She also has us play out incredibly disturbing and oftentime depressing scenarios whenever we play house with her. The fact that a five year old is able to play out a realistic scenario of a mother and father getting a divorce should really speak volumes of the kind of environment she lives in. We also can't forget that she will literally scream that Kid raped her if we piss her off enough. Sure she might not actually know what that means but the fact that that word even exists in her vocabulary is uh... not exactly great considering her age.

Buggs is a bully who will beat you to death if you don't give him half your money at the beginning of the day and picks on characters like Nugget for no real reason. He also has a dad who left him behind and was implied to be an alcoholic.

Felix is arguably the most blatant example of how most of cruelty can being attributed to poor parenting, more specifically father, seeing how we literally meet the guy in Kindergarten 3 where we learn that not only is he pitting his two children against each other to win his approval, but he isn't even able to tell them apart without their color-coded suits.

There are a lot more examples I could list of how this series generally portrays parents as horrible people (I didn't even mention the principals of the first and second games yet because holy shit) but you get my point.

All of this is to say, Kindergarten sends a pretty clear message that these kids should not be entirely blamed for their poor behavior when its really the adults' who failed to raise and educate them to not be so horrible who are at a fault, a reality which unfortunately holds very true for the real world.

It's like they say, every kid deserves a parent, but not every parent deserves a kid.

Part 3: Ableism

I've talked in depth before about how Kindergarten handles the subject of ableism and for the sake of not repeating myself, I will simply link the original post so that you can read it for yourself.

That said, while Monty is the most blatant example of ableism in the Kindergarten universe, he is not the only one. Because it isn't just the physically disabled who are represented in these games, there's also the mentally disabled as well.

One character that is often brought up when it comes to the discussion of neurodivergence in the Kindergarten universe is the golden boy himself, Nugget.

(Don't mind the GIF, I just thought it was funny)

Now, technically speaking, Nugget is not confirmed to be neurodivergent, he is however widely interpreted as such and it's not exactly hard to see why.

To list some of Nugget's core traits that are often associated with those on the autism spectrum there is:

His hyperfixation on chicken nuggets.

His difficulty reading social cues.

Having "strange" and distinct speaking patterns.

He is very particular about how he likes his nuggets and will literally have a breakdown and begin bashing his head against a wall until he bleeds because the chicken nuggets you gave him are cold. Similarly he will also freak out if you try putting a knife in his Nugget Cave without his permission.

He seems to have difficulty in expressing himself as well, to the point where characters like Lily are surprised that he is even capable of having complex emotions.

Now, to be perfectly clear, I am not at all saying that the traits listed above automatically make you autistic or anywhere on the spectrum. Disabilities like autism are incredibly broad and to attribute them to a single trait or behavior is at best ignorant and at worst incredibly harmful.

The reasons I bring this up are not to diagnose Nugget or anyone else who acts like him with any sort of neurodivergence, I am not an expert in that field and if you are wondering if you're on the spectrum, you should take it up with a professional, not some random idiot on the internet.

The point I am trying to make here is not that Nugget has autism, rather that a lot of the traits he exhibits are those common with autistic people, hence why a large portion of the Kindergarten fandom view him as such, many of which happen to be on the spectrum themselves.

This is all to say that because of how many people see Nugget as autistic-coded, not only do they provide a lot more clarity to some of his behaviors, but it also makes the way he is treated by others hit that much more close to home.

In the first Kindergarten game, Nugget is an outcast who everyone sees as creepy and weird. The guy has no friends and the people who acknowledge him either talk down to him, or straight up bully him.

Buggs throws slop at his head every morning, Lily sees him as weird, Ms. Applegate outright hates his guts, no one aside from us and Billy seem to show him any kind of respect specifically because of how "weird" and "abnormal" he is.

This reflects how neurodivergent people are often treated. They are bullied, ostracized, even those who aren't aiming to hurt them will often infantilize them as seen with Lily.

Even the principal acts nasty towards him. Not only did he plan on using Nugget as an experiment, likely because he didn't think anybody would care if he was gone, but he also gives him pills that "fix" him, implying that there is something wrong with the way Nugget acts. Something which, again, a lot of abled people do. They will treat disabilities as a problem that need to be fixed, often acting as if what they're doing is actually for the better, when in reality they're only causing more harm.

Nugget may not be a confirmed autistic character, but he is one who represents how a lot of neurodivergent people struggle with fitting in and are ostracized and infantilized by others.

While Nugget is definitely the most prolific example of a character that is seemingly coded as neurodivergent, there are also other cases of this happening. Take Ozzy for example.

Not only is Ozzy asthmatic, but he's also strongly implied to have some type of OCD with how he refuses to let you give him Felix's note if his hands are dirty and will freak out of his anything about his routine such as always using the left stall in the boy's bathroom is broken, and just like Nugget it is these behaviors that leads him to being picked on and bullied by others, including his own bloody teachers.

So while Monty may technically be the only confirmed disabled character (unless you wanna count Nugget and the Janitor losing an arm in which case go ahead), characters like Nugget and Ozzy do mirror the very real struggle of neurodivergent people living in a world in which they are treated as problems.

Part 4: Child Exploitation

We've discussed some pretty dark subject matter thus far, but this one is arguably the most fucked up of the bunch.

Without getting too far into specifics, there are people out there who are depraved enough to use children as means for profit. It's incredibly disturbing shit and stuff that not even I feel comfortable with getting into.

That said, adults exploiting children to fulfill their own depraved desires is an incredibly common theme in this series. From characters like Ms. Applegate and the Janitor using Kid as a means to further their own murder plans to of course, the principals.

I haven't really talked about the principals up until this point, and that's mainly because I was saving it for this section.

The principals are far and away the most disturbing villains in this series, at least in my opinion. They don't just pull a bunch of violent crimes for no reason, they're all masterminds using and mutating children for their own nefarious purposes.

The first game's principal, AKA Jerome's dad, was essentially a drug lord who kidnapped Billy and attempted to use him as a way to reproduce the chemicals found in strange monsters beneath the school to create pills with highly addictive qualities, said pills have proven to have the ability to basically ruin people's lives. It turned Ms. Applegate into a drug addict, and it made Nugget forget what happened to Billy. It's some incredibly messed up stuff that somehow only gets worse.

The principal of the second school, Penny's mother, is even more depraved than the first. She kidnapped three children (possibly more if the monster in the sewer is anything to go by) so that she could mutate them into monsters and enforce a hostile takeover of other schools in the area. Worse yet she literally turns her own daughter into an android that does her bidding and heartlessly blows her up when she begins to rebel.

Finally there's Regis. His plans aren't quite as clear as the principals, but he's still pretty fucked up in his own right. From mutating animals into hostile beasts, to taking principal David captive so that he could take over the school. And we can't forget what he did to poor Kevin, because if there's anything we've learned from the Kindergarten series it's that the main villain is always kidnapping children.

All three of the villains listed above share a common theme of using incredibly young children, mutating them beyound recognition, and then using said mutations to profit, whether it be through the mass productions of a highly addictive drug, trying to take over other schools, or whatever the hell Regis was up to.

These guys are portrayed as the worst of the worst, they're one of the few parts of the games that are played straight and their crimes are always presented as the most depraved. Because it isn't just violence anymore, it's grown adults using young children to fuel their own twisted regime, an unfortunately very real thing that happens to kids all around the globe. Sure there might be a lot of fantastical elements to how these characters are portrayed, but the horror of their actions are rooted in realism.

Conclusion:

I came into this post wanting to accomplish two things. The first is that I wanted to prove that even the silliest, most lighthearted of series that don't seem to be rooted in reality at all, can actually have things to say about the real world.

In Kindergarten's case, I feel like the main lesson to be taken from this series is that a lot of kids aren't given the proper care or education they deserve. Instead they're stuck with people who either don't care about their struggle and will ignore the constant bullying and abuse they go through, or they're like the principals and will actively exploit them.

I don't want the conclusion of this post to be that all adults are bad, cause that's obviously not true. Even in the Kindergarten games there are adults who are genuinely good people. What I do think viewers should take away from this is that there are a lot of bad people out there, bad people who shouldn't be allowed near kids, and yet they are, obviously these people will always exist, but that's why I think it's important to talk about it. Same goes for the flaws of the school system or how disabled people are often discriminated against for things that they can't control.

It's important to talk about these things because if we don't acknowledge them, that will only lead to more of this stuff happening.

I don't know if Connor Boyle or Sean Young ever intended the Kindergarten games to be looked at this deeply or if any of the messages they portrayed were intentional, they probably weren't, but hey, that's the beauty of art isn't it? Everyone can interpret it in their own ways, ways that are molded by our own personal experiences.

What you see in these games is unlikely to be the same as what I see in these games. Maybe you see nothing at all, but I do hope that with this post, you might be able to at least appreciate them a little bit more than you already did, if you did at all.

Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to make this post, I hope it was worth it.

See you later Splonknation.

#kindergarden game #I LOVE TS

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