Children Suffer; If Adults Truly Cared, They Would Address the Obvious Cause
Life can be cruel; therefore school must be cruel to prepare students, right?
School students are subject to panic attacks or anxiety attacks much more frequently than has been recognized or acknowledged by adults, including by many professionals within and outside the schools. The term “pressure cooker” environment in reference to schools has become unexceptional. Stress levels both among teachers and students are reported with increasing regularity, although stress is certainly nothing new to school students. Readily available research studies and statistics tell the pathetic story and they do not lie. Irrefutable evidence is available upon request.
The stats on the reprehensible over-use of psychiatric drugs to mitigate the symptoms of extreme anxiety and to control children who are over-stressed, frustrated, angry, and feeling harassed in schools under the pretense that they will be better educated as a result tells us all that we need to know about this topic. The quote below is one bit of evidence that significant harm is being done and then covered up by drugging and pacifying kids with the help of irresponsible professionals. These drugs are not appropriate for children and have lasting negative effects. Another consequence is the creation of a dangerous habit of turning to chemical substances as a quick and easy way to calm nerves and redirect attention.
“In 2012, the Archives of General Psychiatry reported that between 1993 and 2009, there was a sevenfold increase in children 13 and younger being prescribed antipsychotic drugs and that disruptive behavior disorders such as ODD and CD were the most common diagnoses in children medicated with antipsychotics, accounting for 63% of those medicated.”
Bruce E. Levine, Resisting Illegitimate Authority: A Thinking Person's Guide to Being an Anti-Authoritarian—Strategies, Tools, and Models.
Everyone knows that school must be demanding and difficult. When young people graduate and go out into the real world, they must be able to take orders from superiors, work independently without constant close supervision, and accept the conditions of employment even when they find them unpleasant or difficult both to maintain a reliable income and advance in a career.
This system of reward and punishment and learning and earning through satisfying the demands of superiors is how the world of employment (and “higher education”) works. Then there are those rules of society, as well, with laws and certain consequences for violating them. That thinking underpins even the most tolerant and liberal of educators, parents, and people on the street.
The idea that school must mirror some particular version of reality or the world of adults and burdensome responsibility is merely one popular theory which appeals to a great many people who have been indoctrinated into a common cynical mindset. However, even if the adult world IS so terribly brutal and cynical as proposed by the theory, that is no reason to program children for twelve years to accept that as the immutable and inevitable unhappy norm for their future and to create a sick self-fulfilling prophecy thereby. There can be no hope of a better world if the one we experience is artificially made to model and perpetuate one which is vicious.
Next is a citation for an article from a prominent education journalist and commentator, writing at the ADDitudemagazine.com website. The title says it all. “Stress at School Harms Kids: Why Stress is Devastating for Our Children”, Jerome Schultz, Ph.D. (9/13/2021). This is hardly accidental. There is no logical reason why this should be so universal and so pervasive that it should be considered a normal or natural problem to be solved piecemeal in a million different locations over decades, and then only partially. Everyone has assumed that relief requires miracles, and no one is naïve enough to actually expect miracles to materialize.
While Dr. Schultz documents what is happening and identifies important factors relative to school practices, dynamics, and pathology, he fails to get down to the reasons why the problems have been exacerbated by educators rather than resolved or reduced. He is just one in the chorus of thousands of professionals who recognize the seriousness of the problems and hope to ultimately fix them with the same sort of superficial solutions that have always benefited just a few.
One often hears about bullying in school. That problem is chronic, also. Innumerable strategies and programs have been tried to reduce bullying. Yet bullies find plenty of opportunities to harass vulnerable peers.
The issue of bullying by teachers is likewise a very sensitive one, and one that is rarely acknowledged. But if you suppose that it is not a serious problem in their perception and in their experience you might want to ask the kids. Bullying happens a lot, and we all know that it happens a lot.
The “School-to-prison pipeline” is a very real thing which has not gone away either, although there have been serious efforts, some successful, to reduce the number of students affected. Discrimination in overt ways, as well as in subtle ways against certain children with certain characteristics is an open secret. Those characteristics may relate to class or race or a tendency on the part of “hyperactive” or attention-seeking students to disrupt the prescribed routine, leading to escalating levels of discipline, exclusion, or humiliation. Implementing effective measures to remedy this situation means changing policies at the top and subsequently somehow translating those changes to transform the environment in classrooms and in relationships between live participants. Good luck with that in windowless, lifeless boxes.
The most common and possibly most insidious injury students suffer, however, is being led to believe with great conviction that they have received an adequate education, when in fact they are semi-literate at best. When many of these students enter the ‘real world’, they often discover that they are painfully inept and incapable of independent thought or “critical thinking”. The term “miseducation” best describes what happens to millions of children in traditional schools.
In many instances graduates cannot function well or perform ordinary job functions when applying for employment and they are typically woefully unprepared for college or university classes, as well. Employers must do the job the schools are pretending to do. Remedial classes for college students are now just a regular part of the process. A shocking number are not accepted for military service because of intellectual or academic and other deficiencies. This is shameful.
It is impossible to become aware of what children are thinking or how they are feeling in school and about their schooling without conducting extensive and comprehensive interviews under circumstances where the students are not intimidated and feel able to express themselves freely. Few adults recall their own past school experiences accurately and few ever take the trouble to investigate. This is not an indication they did not suffer in myriad ways, however. We all forget much more than we remember, and we commonly suppress such negative events in our memory as a defensive mechanism.
The tendency for most adults is to brush off complaints or issues and to repeatedly admonish children to persist, to “suck it up” and to passively accept the rules and conditions, regardless of how they feel. The attitude is that, ‘if I could get through it you can get through it’, and there is simply no other option.
The reality is that thousands upon thousands of research studies and comprehensive interviews have in fact been done for generations with no shortage of data and analysis about what children experience in traditional schools, how their experiences affect them, and what the larger implications are for individuals and for society. Reviewing the available research is an overwhelming task to be sure, especially since much of it is duplicative and inconclusive.
Invariably - that is - without exception, there is debate and discussion about what has been reported at the conclusion of these studies, regardless of the focus or scope. There is endless analysis and speculative projection. There are statements of intent and promises to use the information garnered to address problems and concerns. In every instance it is noted that “further study is sorely needed” and that something MUST be done to improve the school. There is talk, talk, and more talk. ‘We must get this right for the children’. ‘They are the future’. Yada, yada, yada.
Now, wait for it --- and then, after all the folderal and sincere hand wringing about the issues, absolutely no decisive or meaningful action is taken. The hot air cools and everyone knows that there is no place to start a meaningful change process and no valid action which will be feasible. The monolith will not be moved. The “system” is impervious.
There is never anyone to blame for failures and fiascos. So, on with the show and on with the positive and banal attitude! Onward Christian soldiers. The kids are surely learning something. Further studies will end with the same paralysis, nonetheless.
Tradition, custom, and the powers that be will always reflexively remind of the barriers to significant change and the inherent resistance to anything which might disrupt the status quo. Any actions which are taken at the local and individual level are isolated and of little notice or consequence to anyone outside of a small circle. The road to hell will be traversed once again, and few if any will be paying attention or care.
How Many Children Are Critical Thinkers When they Enter School?
One hears a great deal these days about the need to teach students how to be critical thinkers. No one has thought to inquire as to whether some children might have acquired a good deal of critical thinking skill before starting school. Without another extensive study it is impossible to state how many children have developed such skills or how sophisticated they are.
What we can say with certainty, however, is that traditional schooling not only is NOT conducive to critical thinking on the part of students, but that such schools are structured and organized in ways which actively undermine and discourage independent thought and autonomy. What else could anyone possibly expect in schools based on a top-down hierarchy with power allocated by the state according to a formal legal framework designed to implement laws spelling out every imaginable aspect of the institution? Obedience WILL ALWAYS BE the number one priority. The child who thinks critically must be cured of that habit to succeed in school.
Schools are clearly hostile to too much critical thinking because when there are large numbers of students present, when the adult is required to maintain order, discipline, quiet, and decorum, and when the teacher must be recognized as a person wielding significant authority, it is not tolerable for students to question the teacher, the rules, or the authority of those higher on the Totem pole. This observation is not new or radical. It has been well-established and complained about for a century or two.
The way the term “education” is carelessly bandied about has become offensive and obnoxious. If a child spends six hours out of 24 hours of a day in school and eight hours sleeping, that child’s education may very well have been impacted more during the other ten hours and during the eight hours of sleeping than by time in school. During sleep and dreaming, learning is consolidated and the brain is forming semi-permanent pathways. Simply put, once again, school is not education and education seldom happens on the premises or because of the forced attendance.
Life is education and education is life. School is an artificial, improvised, and greatly constrained version of life which fails in many ways to accommodate the needs, natures, and logical preferences of children.
The Hidden Agenda and Unarticulated Purposes of Traditional Schooling
There are many varied reasons or causes for social problems such as homelessness, crime, drug addiction, domestic abuse, chronic unemployment, mental illness, racial discrimination, and xenophobia, etc. However, should we pose the question of whether these bothersome issues could be lessened over time by better schooling and by more authentic, effective, or organic education, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
Should we ask a slightly different question, namely whether our schools should be directly addressing the factors leading to these kinds of social and personal problems or whether it is specifically a part of their responsibility to reduce the negative influences and experiences which we know will frequently lead to these problems, the answer again is yes. So, then, I must ask why do schools do not do a much better job of inculcating children into the social order and economic order, or why do they not focus on things other than academics?
How many of the people living on the streets would not be homeless if schools were not authoritarian bureaucracies, for example? How many more of those children who resist, rebel, or merely become disengaged and withdrawn would graduate after twelve years and be better able to deal with stress and adversity and avoid homelessness or any of the other problems on our list if obsessive grading, testing, and busy work were not so indispensable to the institution? How many lives might we save by refusing to deny the reality about our deplorable school environments and their neglect, solely because they are rigid hierarchies under destructive state laws?
Oh, let’s not be so dramatic! Surely I have been hyperbolic. The kids are happy for the most part, most of the time. We have been to their proud staged performances during the holidays and at their graduation ceremonies. It is all love and kisses and congratulations and such enormous relief in the end. They do not appear to suffer. And, they are so smart, creative, and sociable!
What nonsense to say that many of them have suffered or will suffer because of their anxiety at school about grades, expectations, or embarrassment about not measuring up to their peers. There you go again.
If only all that lovely sentimentality just referenced and as often cited by school supporters represented the true picture. If only my criticisms and facts were just the fabricated and malicious delusions of a malcontent.
Of course, those glorious things are true in our minds and our delusional media as long as we continue to deny and ignore the unpleasant things which stare us in the face, and as long as no one challenges us on our foolish Polly Anna musings. They are not true only if we insist on honesty and responsibility for failure, traumas, and discouragement, which we have in spades in our schools.
I, for one, am sick of the cowardly refusal to admit that children suffer often, and often severely. To be perfectly honest, I am disgusted with the indifference I see and the people who turn a blind eye to the misery and degradation caused by harmful school policies and practices. How many centuries will it take for “educators”, professionals, people in the media, and ordinary citizens to stop deluding themselves about these prison-like schools?
The taboo against rethinking compulsory attendance laws has been total and debilitating. My heresy has been discounted as the ravings of a zealot and crackpot. I will soon be gone. Yet the suffering and gross miseducation of children has profound and lasting consequences which stand out and demand attention.
Many of the adult survivors of inimical school practices have some level of awareness of what has been done to them. Much residual anger towards school still simmers and at times flares up when their own children are dealing with the trials and tribulations of an immutable and frustrating system or when something triggers bad memories. The scars are always there.
There are people and organizations focused on the rights of students creating hope, also. Unfortunately, it is false hope. They accept the arbitrary authority of the state and school administrators to set parameters and define what is permissible based on the myth that schools are actually educating all children to some minimal extent. They settle for next to nothing as the rarified rights out on the margins. The rights that they defend are weak tea and all but meaningless. Student autonomy remains a fantasy about 99% of the time.
Children who are classified as having a serious and limiting condition that has been called “school phobia” and who are now said to suffer (they do use the word suffer) from “school avoidance” or “school refusal” are subjected to a relentless campaign to overcome their anxieties. Nevertheless, nothing is ever done to make the school a hospitable and less misanthropic place.
What will it take for someone with resources and capabilities to finally take a stand and fight to end this paradigm of misallocated power? How many more students must take their own lives because they were made to compare themselves with their peers academically or because of bullying, demoralization, or aloneness?
The next time you hear a school administrator, teacher, or board member speak breathlessly and with emotion about how much they love their students, ask about the kids who were made to feel inadequate or stupid. Ask about those “lazy” or ostensibly unmotivated students who were flunked, intimidated, suspended expelled, or unfairly punished. Ask about those who have self-contempt and those who merely faded into the background as if they never existed.
All teachers love their students who toe the line and sit quietly. But what about the child who cannot stay in his seat or the teen-ager who skips class because of her intense boredom or an irresistible invitation from friends to engage in forbidden activity which leads to status offenses and delinquency with criminal implications? Pretending that those kids do not exist or that what happens to them does not matter is criminal negligence. Those who see all of this and fail to speak out are criminally negligent.
Children suffer. They will continue to suffer and a high price will be paid until someone breaks through the fog and the smoke and has some impact with a message of truth. Where is that person who will not merely claim to care and then step back into line and march with the crowd? Where is that respected and professional person who will demand that the game of charades be halted and that the laws leading us to ruin be eliminated? Is there no one with a conscience?