adults, while forcing all children above the age of 5 to sit still, be silent, and obey orders for 7-8 hours a day with minimal breaks, reducing their exposure to fresh air and sunlight to almost nothing, forcing them to alter their natural sleeping patterns to increase productivity, and repeatedly telling them their self worth depends on their being able to follow these instructions perfectly for 13 or more years: kids these days are so lazy! they never go outside! they never want to do anything! clearly it’s not because of us!
It is honestly so heartbreaking to see how many conversations in the notes are comparing who gets 30 minutes for lunch
and an afternoon or two off or no homework until they’re 12 years old.. as if that in ANY way compares to being able to run out in the sun whenever you feel like it and sleep as much as you need in your own rhythm and be in control of what your day looks like and who you spend it with and not being subjected to an environment that is designed to train discipline.
Experiencing true autonomy and freedom isn’t being able to go to the bathroom without asking, or having wednesday afternoons off. Slightly ‘better’ school systems are still designed to acclimatise kids to the drudgery of wage labour.
What would be the solution to this? Because kids still have to learn obviously. Homeschooling?
A better public education system with a focus on actually learning instead of making good grades.
Sorry, I was talking about @queeranarchism‘s response, because it seems to say that wouldn’t be sufficient?
Well, no; what queeranarchism is saying is that the problem is the end goal. As long as we’refocused on drudge labour, you’re going to get an environment that’s shitty for actual child development. We need to make child development itself the primary goal, rather than training a useful worker.
TL;DR: The solution, as always, is “smash capitalism.”
I wish I knew the answer. There are co-op schools around where I live that address this issue really well. They are $45K/year or so.
Schools in countries that have smashed capitalism do not address this problem – just ask anyone who went to school in an ex-Soviet country (or China, Cuba, Venezuela etc), its this plus uniforms, military training from young age, rote memorization and strict gender separation (shop classes for boys, housekeeping for girls).
The only places where this may have been addressed and worked well at scale were agrarian collectivist communities made up of refugees from Eastern Europe, North Africa and Yemen that existed in a certain small Middleeastern country no longer fashionable with social-justice set, but I don’t think I’d want to move there now for my child.
Maybe Nordic countries – but their immigration restrictions are tight and they wouldn’t want outsiders like us.
tinfoilparachute 