School Shootings are a Tragedy. It's Time to Ban Schools.
Every time I hear about "school shootings," I wonder why the focus on completely on the shooting, with no talk about the schools.
Modern schools are essentially prisons. Architecturally, they even look like prisons, with bare concrete walls and yards fenced in with razor wire. Students march to the ringing of a bell, pass through security checkpoints, answer unquestioningly to authority.
And in their relationships with each other, success and recognition can only be found through prison-yard psychology. The girls have to be conniving and political, and the boys have to be brutal.
A nearby prison school. Photo by John Phelan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
The biggest lesson I took from my public education was that violence is always on the table. If you don't stand up to bullies with force, you're doomed.
It's a fair enough lesson, I suppose. But I'm not sure it's what we should be taking into adult life. In any case, I got into some scrapes and sat through some detentions. Thank God my family supported me in this. My mother said "you've got to fight your own battles," and my grandfather showed me how to win them. (Here's the trick: when someone goes to shove you around, punch them in the soft spot just below the lungs. When they gasp for breath, go for the jaw and knock them over. It works!) After that, school got better, and I actually had a decent time in High School.
Except now, kids aren't even allowed to stand up to bullies. Zero tolerance and all that - any physical confrontation means mandatory expulsion for both parties, and likely a criminal record. There's no consideration for history or motivation.
So what are these kids supposed to do? Finding the courage to fight back is hard enough. Having an institution tell you that fighting back is criminally wrong is just another level of psychological torture. It's a mental prison with only one escape.
So, of course all that testosterone is going to build up to a point of no return.
I'm not saying that what a school shooter does is forgivable. I'm just saying that, for a child who is a victim for that long, and who is denied every conceivable means of overcoming his suffering, ending his life in an act of mayhem might seem downright logical. If school is meant to prepare them for the "real world," why should they ever expect anything different from life?
So go ahead and talk about banning guns if you like. But I think we'd save a lot more lives (and improve education in the bargain) if we banned public schools.
And since we're not going to do that, at least let these boys fight their battles with fists. Those injuries heal.
Sean-king provides a balanced opening to a part of the discussion on school shootings that needs to be had, and provides some interesting detail on gamma males and testosterone. His discussion was my motivation for this post.
That is really good idea. I like it. Banning the school is the best solution. I support this idea. On internet age everyone can study at-home. Thanks. Upvoted and followed happily.
In terms of resources, there's never been a better time to self-educate at home!
Interesting post. But why schools in other countries don’t have as many school shootings as in US? They also have strict rules regarding physical fighting in school.
I'm not sure, but I suspect they may be a little more open to examining a situation before condemning both parties. And maybe they still offer programs like arts, drama, and music (which are being cut in the US as we focus on the "common core" fiasco) that allow kids to find other ways to be successful and popular.
I'll tell you one thing, European countries are not happy if you decide to pull your kids from school and teach them yourself. Check out @markwhittam's blog if you want to see some hair-raising adventures about keeping your kids free from the influence of the state!
My experience wasn't like that, there were never fist fights (rarer for girls), but there was plenty of meanness, especially from older kids. Looking back, it seems petty, but then, I remember it seemed huge.
You are so right about banning school, because nobody seems to notice the jungle that these kids are coming from.
This is the best post I've read in a while, upvoted and resteemed. Respect.
Oh wow, thank you so much for your kind words.
I'm glad that violence wasn't part of your daily experience. In a way I think it's worse for girls. They have to react with their minds exclusively, and there's no "easy" outlet for them to handle their rage.
I agree. I think one of public school's greatest successes is instilling great insecurities and crippling self-doubt in both girls and boys.
banned public schools.
good plan..I like it.
Homeschooled kids out do public school educated kids, on average, all the time..every time..in every criteria..
Right. And the only thing anti homeschoolers come up with is "Your kids need to be socialized!"
Yeah, socialized into a thug mentality! Or at best a compliant twerp.
kids DO need to be socialized...properly.
unlike public schools.
I have been saying for years that brick and mortar schools are going to be gone in a generation or two, who wants to pay for heat and books and lights and janitors and busses and run the risk of violence?
I hope you're right. But there's still the problem that half of the families out there are single parent, and the rest need both parents to work to make ends meet. So I'm thinking schools might continue to fulfill their role as day care centers for a good while longer. At least until working from home becomes more commonplace.
Come to think of it. "A generation or two?" You might be right on the money.
I think universities will probably go first, though. The higher education bubble is way overdue for a popping.
It's just a matter of time until the parents of the kids in school went to an online school and so the accept it for their kids. The school app will act as a babysitter as well, it will track the kids locations and activities.
I hope more parents consider the risks of having their children in schools and pull them out.
Even if people are calling for "gun control", you would think that a lot of them would also see the trap that school can be and want to have their children experience something different.
Right. And to be honest being shot isn't even the greatest risk. The bigger worry is all the psychological damage that occurs there.
Have you read "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Illich? I recently read it and it got me thinking. Since then, I've been experimenting with some of the ideas he presents in the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling_Society
That sounds like a fascinating book. I haven't heard of Ival Illich. He sounds like a fascinating character!
Hmm . . . in order for this proposal to be effective in establishing a stable society, several social factors must also be adjusted. First would be repudiation of child labor laws, which gave rise to the conceptualization of "adolescence." Once a person can be integrated into a work-setting, then he is saddled with responsibilities, which essentially ends childhood. The modern society, having created an entire class of humanoids without responsibilities but with all the previleges, is experiencing inevitable disintegration.
Second, establishment of public transportation and internal travel limits (as a secondary benefit to subjests' increasing reliance upon government transports) that serve to decrease the psychological horizons of the common classes and facilitates regional loyalties. Those who can not conceptualize life beyond their regional and class boundaries will lead a more content life, living within the means of their aptitude and resources.
Third, central regulation of information media to propagate adherence to a monoculture, occupational stratification, and class distinctions. Current sensational media that spews forth fear, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, and egotism serves only to destabilize social unity.
Once these changes can also accompany closure of public schools, then the vision of social stability will be closer to reality.
Adolescence is wicked over-rated. Why doesn't anyone ever remember how eager they were to grow up, have both responsibilities and freedoms, and do meaningful work?
I'm confused, though. Are you saying that ending public education would de-stabilize society if it's not accompanied by central regulation of media and reduced expectations for travel and experience? I would think a self-educated populace would be apt to go further in their pursuits, as their world would not have been circumscribed by 13 years of indoctrination (followed by 4-8 more of higher education and the crippling loans to pay for it).
The difference between a child and an adult is transitioning from life of imagination and fantasy to acceptance of reality and responsibility. Modern media is extremely proficient at producing and propagating fantasy to extend "adolescence," since adolescents tend to waste most resources acquiring baubles of little to no value because they are lost in their virtual worlds.
At least with public education, these humanoids can be imprisoned for much of productive hours, so that adults can perform their jobs. Set these entitled, self-absorbed drones free, and there are no limits to the evils these humanoids can inflict upon civil society. When the only source of information these drones passively receive is the current, unregulated media, then society will quickly crumble.
There will be a small (very small) percentage of self-motivated and responsible adults, such as yourself, who will further their life through self-education. Most, however, are drones that require external structure and force to become semi-functional members of a community. Without controlling information input and physically limiting their scope of actions, the drones will be eating each other with a week of freedom. Slavery is a step-up for these drones compared with the kind of chaos they will inflict upon themselves and upon their community.
But that's a very top-heavy, centralized version of power you're calling for. Who gets to be the regulators? And how are they going to be able to avoid abusing their power when vested interests come offering money to promote an agenda? If there ever was a directive to limit access to information, I think the ones to do it would be the same ones who disseminate it today.
It sounds like you have a dark view of the majority of humanity. I suppose it's well-founded. In the past we had churches, town meetings, and extended families to help a community pull together. Without those, it's going to be hard to wrest back control of something as unwieldy as our education system.
In the mean time, at least it should be easier for those with the desire to opt-out and follow their own path.
Regional autonomy sharing delegated power with a distant central authority seems to be what you would consider to be ideal for a society. Indeed, such regional/local organization was effective cohesive social force, when access to information and degree of geographic mobility were limited. Consider the era in which you recall society being more cohesive. It was made possible by authoritarian FCC regulating social mores on 3-information dissemination media with individuals essentially remaining in the geographical area of their birth. Central authority, properly exercised, allowed for regional loyalty and civic responsibility in communities across the polity.
Men have always been ruled by other men throughout their brief blink of an existence on this planet. Hopefully, as information access improves and power dynamics shift towards the masses, men will be able to govern themselves to obviate the need for lords and masters. Yet, what has technical advancement wrought in modern Western civilization other than breeding of mentally feeble, emotionally unstable humanoids that demand ever-increasing entitlements, while refusing to use their fundamental God-given abilities? In Kierkegaard's time, the fools demanded freedom of speech without ever bothering to exercise their God-given freedom of thought. In this degenerate era of victimhood, the drones rattle their mental cages demanding freedom from failure, never exercising their freedom to succeed.
The only frame of reference any man can reasonably use to foresee the future is that of central authoritarian state apparatus as being a more viable than the decentralized future where these drones roam free, like the zombies from Walking Dead. It seems though, that even were these drones free, they would willingly place their necks on the collars of their new masters.
i think he's being sarcastic..and descriptive. He's not calling for it...he saying we've had it for years.
Hah! My wife always says I don't know how to take a joke!
My Experience was different. Ya I was “tough”and captain of the football and basketball team but I was friends with the biggest and toughest in the school so I never got messed with. Yet I didnt go around messing with others either.
The curriculum is junk, certain kids get away with bullying because they say it is their culture. Well guess what, we are in the USA what about our culture? What about the golden rule? Ever heard of that? Things are so backwards these days it makes me sick.
There were good jocks and bad jocks. And fortunately in my high school you could do art, drama, or music and actually be popular in your circle as well. All of which are being cut in the pursuit of "common core." Another coincidence with the rise of school shootings?
If schools don’t do common core then the state cuts their funding. What a load of crap!! Along with a bunch of other guidelines. They have the public(government) school by the ____!!
It's weird. Like our government decided it was finally time to catch up with the Asian countries that have started eating our lunch, economically. And then they adopted all the worst elements of their educational system: rote learning, repetition, crushing discipline. And at the same time they threw away the most common-sense methods of teaching those core skills.
The way they have these kids doin math is insane. I show my kids the right and easy way to do it and if their teacher marks it wrong I go and talk to them. Luckily the teachers at the school totally understand. We made sure during the parent teacher conference. We let them know where we stand and they were totally cool with it.
We have though about home school for a while but are hesitant to do so with possible backlash. Since our children started out in public school. Child neglect and all that other BS.
Yeah, it's not a risk to be taken lightly, unfortunately. On the one hand homeschooling is becoming more common. On the other, I hear more and more stories of people losing their kids to CPS because someone decided that homeschooling was a form of abuse or neglect. Best of luck with what you decide.
Damned if you do damned don’t. So sad that things have gone this direction.
I have been bullied and I have been the bully. Never got into major physical confrontations ...spitting though Jesus was spitting at each other trending in elementary. If you didn't learn how to formulate the nastiest luggey you were pretty much booger fodder. I hated school...both public and private.
Ugh. Gross.
I never got into the "It's cool to be gross" thing that kids (and especially boys) were meant to do. I always thought those Garbage Pail Kids cards were disgusting, not funny.
Being a prude probably worked to my disadvantage.
Sorry to hear school was tough for you as well.
Don't know about Public schools in foreign countries so cannot judge but in India public schools have become a business area were the school owners are not running a educational hub but running a business taking huge money from parents and in return nothing big is given and treated students as a victims and classroom a mere prison so banning them will be a justice to students
That sounds awful, and I'm sorry to hear it.
Are the "public" schools the ones that are government funded in India? I know the USA is backwards from most of the world in what we call our schools. Here, "public schools" are the government funded ones, and "private schools" have to be paid for by the parents. In England and much of Europe it's the other way around.
Either way it sounds like India's kids are getting a raw deal.