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Thanks so much for your post on the Education forum! How amazing that you escaped the grasp of our crazy police state-mind meld schools to write a post that is totally your own thoughts!
It wasn't of my own thoughts. If you had learned critical thinking and reading comprehension in school, you could see i was pretty half assed about it and just copied and pasted!
I wanted to see what other people think about it nonetheless
It all stems back to our willingness to impose liability on teachers and school officials for any and all harm that comes during school hours. When the only way for school employees to protect themselves from career-ending and life-savings-taking liability is zero tolerance, standardized testing, and police officers in schools, then what you get is zero tolerance, standardized testing, and police officers in school.
I think that is a good point, to talk about liability and the fact that the school looks at the students not like customers, but like an enemy. They have to get them through the system without incurring any damage or having any sorts of ripples on the surface, so the school hammers the children to just get through it or face extremely harsh consequences.
It really reminds me of the Pink Floyd movie "the Wall" the song We Don't Need No Education, and it shows the kids being squished in meat grinder, being on a conveyor belt, etc., and that movie was made in the 70's. Seems little has changed since then, only now with all the high tech available, schools are able to put together a digital profile of misbehaving students when they are even as young as 5, and that record of misbehavior follows the kids throughout their school career.
Not hard to imagine that record being used against them later in life like when they apply to college, or to a job, or to the military...It's the creep of the surveillance state.
It wasn't of my own thoughts. If you had learned critical thinking and reading comprehension in school, you could see i was pretty half assed about it and just copied and pasted!
I wanted to see what other people think about it nonetheless
Really?? I understand that sarcasm is hard to convey on-line, but I did think you would understand that my post was sarcastic.
: the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really want to say especially in order to insult someone, to show irritation, or to be funny
Yes, irregardless" is a word.
No, that doesn't mean you should use it. »
Full Definition of SARCASM
1
: a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain
But seriously kids are awful from 11-15, and since everyone is a unique snowflake what else can we do but lay out punishments that don't open up our schools to lawsuits. Standard punishments are blind to sex, gender, and race. Yes, certain demographics break the rules more often, and thus will be punished more often, but what's the alternative?
If literally any other institution, aside from ones such as school and daycare whose behavior we normalize when we're kids, that had charge of kids daily was institutionally incapable of doing anything but mindlessly punishing, its reason for existence would be judged insufficient and a bad influence on children.
The conditioning (or brainwashing, if you will) aspect is quite obvious here, in that because of survival mechanisms inherent in children with regards to their caretakers those who grow up in schools (usually) convince themselves the behavior and environment of the schools is normal, good, and natural. That survival mechanism is generally a very good thing for children within the family, but it creates extremely perverse effects within institutions, discouraging any challenge or change to their environments, behavior, and practices, even when they need to be changed. Worse, it inhibits thought processes that could recognize behavior, practices, and environments that were bad or needed change, and increases the chance of future generations being subjected to these institutions and all their bad aspects, wherever they exist.
Like everything else in human psychology this effect is not total and complete, but rather is damaging to children's minds in myriad ways and produces an obstacle that handicaps people's thinking on this issue. Snarking about "you seem to have survived your conditioning ha ha ha" misses the point and builds a strawman argument that the conditioning and damage is 100% effective - even North Korea's Kim cult doesn't come close to 100% effectiveness, and ordinary school is much less severe than that. It doesn't mean that damaging conditioning isn't going on, though, and part of the OP's link argues that it has taken a sinister turn as American public schools and the conditioning and damage they produce become integrated into a (emerging) police state. Events and newly introduced practices over the past decade or two provide ample evidence in support of this argument.
I should note that in most psychologically harmful environments the people that do make it come out less than they could have been, and for every person that makes it there are a few more who didn't. The contention that schools and other institutions, at least as they exist today, are harmful shouldn't be dismissed just because of the existence of people who made it out in good shape.
It's also worth noting that systems do not need sinister, malevolent people to produce sinister or malevolent effects - if people of the best of intentions function as a component of a bad system then the system will have bad effects regardless of the intentions of its participants.
If literally any other institution, aside from ones such as school and daycare whose behavior we normalize when we're kids, that had charge of kids daily was institutionally incapable of doing anything but mindlessly punishing, its reason for existence would be judged insufficient and a bad influence on children.
The conditioning (or brainwashing, if you will) aspect is quite obvious here, in that because of survival mechanisms inherent in children with regards to their caretakers those who grow up in schools (usually) convince themselves the behavior and environment of the schools is normal, good, and natural. That survival mechanism is generally a very good thing for children within the family, but it creates extremely perverse effects within institutions, discouraging any challenge or change to their environments, behavior, and practices, even when they need to be changed. Worse, it inhibits thought processes that could recognize behavior, practices, and environments that were bad or needed change, and increases the chance of future generations being subjected to these institutions and all their bad aspects, wherever they exist.
Like everything else in human psychology this effect is not total and complete, but rather is damaging to children's minds in myriad ways and produces an obstacle that handicaps people's thinking on this issue. Snarking about "you seem to have survived your conditioning ha ha ha" misses the point and builds a strawman argument that the conditioning and damage is 100% effective - even North Korea's Kim cult doesn't come close to 100% effectiveness, and ordinary school is much less severe than that. It doesn't mean that damaging conditioning isn't going on, though, and part of the OP's link argues that it has taken a sinister turn as American public schools and the conditioning and damage they produce become integrated into a (emerging) police state. Events and newly introduced practices over the past decade or two provide ample evidence in support of this argument.
I should note that in most psychologically harmful environments the people that do make it come out less than they could have been, and for every person that makes it there are a few more who didn't. The contention that schools and other institutions, at least as they exist today, are harmful shouldn't be dismissed just because of the existence of people who made it out in good shape.
It's also worth noting that systems do not need sinister, malevolent people to produce sinister or malevolent effects - if people of the best of intentions function as a component of a bad system then the system will have bad effects regardless of the intentions of its participants.
Thank you for sharing, interesting insights.
I really agree with your second to last paragraph. The knee jerk reaction is to say " well we went through it, and we turned out ok! " or "look at how many successful people made it through basic schooling" but i think that those people are the exception.
It's funny that as kids there is so much pressure to conform and fit the mold, but then as soon as we graduate high school or college and begin working, we see that fitting the mold is terrible and means that you will have next to no control over your life. Then the ambition changes to "think outside the box" and "do something different". The unfortunate thing is that by that time, we are already so conditioned to accept and fear authority, to fear change, to NOT think creativity, that it becomes very stressful for us to try to do things that would probably come naturally to a human who had NOT been through such extensive brainwashing.
Think about a hundred years ago or more, in the early 1800's up until the early 1900's, when many people didn't finish school beyond the 8th grade. They left and started their lives very young. Think of how much creativity and free thinking they had, how little fear they must have had based on actually living and learning in the "real world" from such a young age and learning to rely on themselves....
So much schooling nowadays teaches people to rely on "the system" and to always fall back on dependence and submission to authority.
You can't teach self reliance. Self reliance has to be learned through trial and error, and that doesn't happen in school.
I don't think police officers in schools are a good idea. Armed security is a good idea, but it should be private. All the police seem to do is give citations to students misbehaving when really the matter should be dealt with by detention/suspension not legal action.
Also the bullying witch hunt needs to end. A lot of this anti-bullying crap infringes on the first amendment.
Schools prepare little inmates for the "real" corporate world, or they rather provide real corporate world with worker drones. It is only natural when schools emulate real world to condition the future worker bees better. TS points apply to American life in general.
When a poptart is considered a gun you might have gone off the deep end.
But seriously kids are awful from 11-15, and since everyone is a unique snowflake what else can we do but lay out punishments that don't open up our schools to lawsuits. Standard punishments are blind to sex, gender, and race. Yes, certain demographics break the rules more often, and thus will be punished more often, but what's the alternative?
Know your battles. Life is a choose you're own adventure book, not every choice works out, and there might be limited choices, but you still get to pick.
How are kids awful from 11-15?
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