Do you think we should do the same with adults? Many of these arguments are also used by proponents of military service.
The funny thing about school is that almost no adults would be willing to be subjected to it. Confined to a building every day for the best years of your life, required to study what the government decides should fill your head, and a persistent risk of being beaten up. Delightful.
Ultimately the main reason that schools exist in their present form is because they are economically useful. Parents need somewhere to park their kids, while they go to work. As a child I could never understand why adults would inflict the barbarism of school on their own children, were they not aware? As an adult it all makes a lot more sense.
>Do you think we should do the same with adults? Many of these arguments are also used by proponents of military service.
I'm well aware. There is an irony to the arguments I make, because I also detest the idea of forced erasure of identity.
Military service? No. I would be in favor of some 1-yr mandatory civil service. I believe its important to interact with all classes of the society you inhabit. How else can you gain true perspective if you only live in a bubble? Life is about being uncomfortable.
>The funny thing about school is that almost no adults would be willing to be subjected to it.
Its interesting you say this, because at the same time we see adults also long for their school days as they grow to hate the 40 hour work week. Now it could be that what they really long for is childhood and youth, but people also long for their college days as well. They long for the environment where they freely mingled with people of their age, and the camaraderie they established in their "shared suffering". They miss structured periods like "recess" and "lunch" or "gym class", even though as an adult you can do these things freely.
> How else can you gain true perspective if you only live in a bubble? Life is about being uncomfortable.
95% of the country has to deal with being uncomfortable, without any mandatory civil service. What privileged background do you come from where you do not realize this?
My sincere condolences to anyone who thinks their teenage years were or were supposed to be "the best years of your life".
As for the blanket cynicism disguised as analysis, you're wrong. Schools were not originally conceived of as a capitalist daycare system, even though people love to say that. It's first and foremost a capitalist training system, or at least socialization more generally. Daycare was not necessary for most people during the first hundred years or so of public schooling.
The funny thing about school is that almost no adults would be willing to be subjected to it. Confined to a building every day for the best years of your life, required to study what the government decides should fill your head, and a persistent risk of being beaten up. Delightful.
Ultimately the main reason that schools exist in their present form is because they are economically useful. Parents need somewhere to park their kids, while they go to work. As a child I could never understand why adults would inflict the barbarism of school on their own children, were they not aware? As an adult it all makes a lot more sense.