Some good friends of mine, a tight-knit family with parents in human support fields, both working with adults who are struggling to function (imagine that) were telling me how difficult it is to drop their 5-year-old daughter off at kindergarten. She screams and resists and they pretty much have to drag her into school.
Red flag?
I think it should be. Yet, we’re brainwashed into believing there are no other options. This is what kids are supposed to do. They go to school where they’ll learn everything they need to know to function as human adults in our society, right? So what is it they need to know?
Historical facts and dates? They’ll forget those. How the world works? I learned everything I know about physics when I became a second grade teacher because I’d forgotten every little bit of science I learned in school. How to read? When I was a third grader, I sat silently terrified, surrounded by “big kids” in a sixth grade reading class because I had already discovered a way to escape my life in highly engaging chapter books and devoured them voraciously. That’s all I remember about “learning to read” in school—oh, and that I was “smarter” than my classmates because of how quickly I sped through the colors of the SRA reading program. Algebra and geometry? What I learned in my high school algebra class was that I hated math; in geometry, I developed my social skills by convincing the kid behind me to let me cheat off his work so I could avoid my creepy perv of a teacher’s hand on my waist when I went up to his desk to get help. What do you remember learning in school?
I’ll bet you remember learning how to sit still and raise your hand when you wanted to speak. I’ll bet you remember paying careful attention to the bathroom policy so you’d know how long you’d have to hold it. Or maybe, you remember coming up with clever ways to convince your mom you were sick so you could stay home. I remember thinking if I took the thermometer out of my mouth when my mom was out of the room, the reading would be off enough that she’d have to keep me home—clearly all that science was paying off!
I remember getting antsy when someone else turned a test in ahead of me because it meant I’d lost the race and someone else might be “smarter” than me. I learned that there’s only one right answer and not to ask too many questions. In high school, I learned really well how to fly under the radar, how to be invisible, how to cram for tests the night before so I could get away with ignoring my homework. I learned exactly how little I could do to still graduate, so I guess I learned efficiency?
I also figured out the best time of day to leave campus and walk across town to my boyfriend’s house. (Though there was that one day my dad randomly drove by and I was busted!) I learned that my hair and make-up mattered and that my wardrobe was insufficient. In fact, once when a boy was picking me up for our first date after I had agonized for hours about what I could wear, he looked me up and down and asked if I could change. I learned that the best way to get through high school was to be in the popular crowd, yet I never seemed able to quite break into that. The next best way was to always have a boyfriend, whether I really liked the boy or not.
So what did I really learn? I learned that using my resources was cheating, my worth was determined by how well my teachers liked me, needing others was bad, my thoughts and feelings held no weight, attractive people did better in life than nice people, that my gut was not to be trusted. I learned to please the adults who were always right and that authority figures had total control over my life.
I learned that anything I studied could be forgotten after the test, mistakes were punished and there were no do-overs, failing was to be avoided at all costs. I learned to study my teachers so I knew exactly what they wanted and just how little I could do to keep their favor or at least not attract their contempt.
And I learned what freedom means. It means giving up control over the majority of your time so you can have the freedom to buy a house and toys. It means busting your ass to build someone else’s dream so one day when you are old, you can stop working and be free to finally figure out what your dream is. It means sacrificing your childhood and your sense of self so you can appreciate living in a free country where you get to watch other people live their lives on reality TV.
There’s a powerful reason that five year old girl screams when she’s dragged into that classroom. Children know what true freedom is…and what it isn’t. Alarm bells are ringing in her head and heart; she recognizes that environment has no real interest in who she is and its sole purpose is to suck away her one and only childhood and educate her how to be in this free world of ours.
I hope you had a wonderful visit to So Cal (weather couldn’t have been nicer!) and all was well at home. I know you’re not “a believer”, but, fwiw, you’ve been in my thoughts and prayers over the past few weeks.
I’ve written countless comments that I end up deleting, so I don’t remember what I’ve posted and what I’ve deleted at this point, but are you familiar with the School Sucks Podcast? I started listening to it back in 2010, when it was first getting started, and I learned SO much from it! The host, Brett Veinotte, has spent his entire adult life in a variety of functions within education, and he came to the same conclusion as we have--school sucks! Though it came to an end in 2021, he’s currently re-editing/remastering some of his best/most important work conducted over the past decade.
If anyone is interested in the history of schooling, the following is a good episode to try. It gives—among other things—a *fantastic* overview of Outcome Based Education. (If the link doesn’t work, search you podcast platform for “School Sucks: Higher Education”, Ep. 9, “Who Controls Our Children”):
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/school-sucks-higher-education-for-self-liberation/id326517856?i=1000565043213
“...that I was “smarter” than my classmates because of how quickly I sped through the colors of the SRA reading program. Algebra and geometry? What I learned in my high school algebra class was that I hated math; in geometry, I developed my social skills by convincing the kid behind me to let me cheat off his work so I could avoid my creepy perv of a teacher’s hand on my waste when I went up to his desk to get help. What do you remember learning in school?”
This. Is. Me. (For perspective, I was born in ‘68.)
“Honey! Put your book down, it’s time for school!” I was the first 10 year old in our library who had written permission by my mom to check out ANY book(s) I wanted, from any section. I read wildly inappropriate books far too young: Judy Blume at first, then Harlequins I traded with the mean middle school math teacher. I quickly moved on to Roots, VC Andrews, Stephen King, Sidney Sheldon, Rona Jaffe, Jacqueline Susann... The librarian would shake her head and chuckle. “Well, we have it in writing,” she’d say.
I, too, went to the “big kids class” for reading and zoomed through SRA (see https://omigods.com/11-tiers-of-frustration-what-the-sra-reading-levels-really-meant). Later, in 10th grade, I ran away because of being constantly grounded by my dad for my poor grades in Algebra and Geometry. Turns out, I had raging, undiagnosed ADHD. Who knew?
So, what did I learn in school? I learned to do as little work as necessary to garner the greatest return. That being “cool” was THE most important thing. “Not caring” = “cool”. I learned to cheat, lie, ditch, and give blow jobs. And I learned how to do drugs.
You know, I was “socialized”.
I’ll be in touch. 😉