"Why have we put our children into education prisons called public schools?”
Because ignorant and clueless is a harsh way to go through life. And I can tell from your first sentence that this is what we call “Biased Rhetoric.” You probably learned how to use that very useful technique
in school.
“Why do we condemn almost 45 million innocent children to this punishment?”
Because ignorant and clueless is a harsh way to go through life. (I have a horrible suspicion I should just macro that sentence
)
“Do I exaggerate by calling these schools “prisons?”
Yes. Yes you do. It is very rare for students to be anally raped during their weekly shower. The students don’t have their cable TV taken away if they shiv their lab partner. It is not necessary for the students to post 12 consecutive months of good behavior to be allowed in the wood shop. It is hard to find any student who is confined to a solitary 8x10 cell for 23 hours a day. Students generally do not spend a significant portion of their day pumping iron in the “yard.” Students may earn their way out of school by applying themselves and working hard; rarely do they have to please a parole board. It is pretty much unheard of for a student to show up at school in leg irons.
I have to stop or I could be typing this all weekend.
“Well, let’s compare prisons and public schools.”
Oh, let’s do! This should be fun. I wonder if they have home ec in prison?
”School authorities force millions of children to sit in boxes called classrooms with 20 other children-inmates for six to eight hours a day, five days a week, for up to ten years.”
Up to 10 years? Only 10? Cause you know that means we let them out in their sophomore year of high school, their freshman year if they went to kindergarten, and in the 8th grade if they attended preschool. “Up to” 10 years seems to imply that that’s the upper limit, and we really let them out earlier. 16 is the age at which a student may drop out of school with parental consent, so it seems that the absolute minimum number of years of compulsory schooling is actually 11 years, not 10. And the minimum number is 13 years if mom and dad don’t sign your “Hi, I’m a Loser” papers.
Perhaps if you had actually gone to school, you could do simple math.
“The children must obey the adult education wardens (teachers and principals), who they may fear or dislike.”
God forbid a child should learn how to deal with an authority figure they may “fear or dislike.” Heaven knows they will never have to deal with or work with anyone they
shudder
dislike. And God will never let someone like that be their boss. Many kids dislike their teachers because the teachers give them work and expect them to do something with their time besides chug Mt. Dew, chat on their cell phones, and pop caps in virtual asses on the X-Boxes.
Come to think of it, many kids “fear and dislike” their parents for the exact same reasons they do teachers. I think we should take all children away from their families, too. I mean, why stop at schools?
“They must study subjects they may hate or that bore them to death.”
God forbid they should learn something they might not be interested in. I personally hate and detest math. Math is my nemesis. But I’m damn happy I learned it. Because ignorant and clueless is a harsh way to go through life. (Damn, I knew I should have macroed that.)
If you only required students to study things that interested them, you will graduate a large number of professional video game players and cell phone chatters who have no idea how to balance their checkbooks or write a resume.
And as for “boring?” Ask a teenager what is boring. The typical answer? “Everything.”
“They must associate only with other children their same age who may be bullies, violent, or emotionally disturbed”
Sounds like life to me. I have to associate with you on the internet. If you shelter a child from everything, you will get an adult who can handle nothing. I’m not saying you throw them to the wolves, but come on, bullies exist. Adult bullies exist. You have to learn how to deal with them. I’m dealing with you, so I’m happy I wasn’t too sheltered as a child. The violent and emotionally disturbed children are generally separated out into special needs programs fairly quickly.
And you know what? The vast majority of students are neither bullies, nor violent, nor emotionally disturbed. Columbine was the anomaly, not the norm.
“They must do homework and study for tests they must pass or be left back in school.”
Um
yeah. You have a problem with this? You do? OK, next time you go to the doctor, you take the one who didn’t pass the tests. Do it when you get your vasectomy. Have him use the tiny scalpel.
”The children are removed from their loving parents and put under the control of teacher-wardens who may not love them, care for them, or simply even have the time to pay attention to them.”
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong. Teaching is such a low paying profession in the United States that you just don’t find anyone doing it for the money. Most of us do it because we love teaching. And there is no more of a guarantee that parents will be “loving” than there is that the teachers will be. You do realize that don’t you? You are leading up to recommending home schooling, I assume, would you want children of abusive parents to be home schooled?
“They are stopped from being a free-spirited child.”
No they aren’t. You are confusing “free-spirited” with “out of control.” And by control, I mean self control. They have to learn it to survive in the world. You are beginning to sound like a very, very, very liberal hippy named “Moonbeam” or “Peace.” You sure you want to go that direction? When you are at the grocery store, and the child in line with their mom in front of you is running all over the place, yelling and screaming and begging for candy and putting things in your cart and basically making a Biblical-level peat of themselves, do you smile gently at them and say, “Oh, what a free spirit!”
“They are told to obey the rules.”
Like you aren’t told to obey the rules? Drive 120 down the freeway tomorrow and tell the pissed off State Trooper that you shouldn’t have to “obey the rules,” because you are a “free spirit.”
“They are told to march from classroom cell to classroom cell every 50 minutes to study different subject that may mean nothing to them.”
You apparently are under the impression that we live in Nazi Germany.
"Well, millions of kids, and probably your child, must sit through this agony of boredom or frustration for 6 to 8 hours a day for 10 years in public-school classrooms. Yet, to repeat, what crimes have your children committed to warrant this horrible punishment?"
Well, your child committed nothing more serious than showing a horribly tragic lack of judgment at selecting parents. And you are setting your child up with a terribly skewed view of the world by telling them that everything must be interesting or it isn’t worth doing. The simple fact of life is that many very necessary things are actually quite boring. Taxes. Job applications. Quarterly reviews. Senate hearings. And so on.
”Parents, if you thought you had no choice, you are wrong. Happily, you can homeschool your child or give your child a fun, quality, rewarding, low-cost education with Internet private schools. You have many education options. If your child hates school, listen to him or her. Don’t let school authorities put your child in a public-school prison for ten years. You have a choice, and your child’s life is at stake."
Ahhh, there it is. The whole thing is just a sales pitch for home schooling. Very few parents have the freedom, time, resources, and confidence to handle their child’s total education. You whole post essentially calls them idiots.
