4 ms·
I grew up viewing school as prison. I was part of a program in elementary school which meant that I traveled to other schools regularly. My elementary and high
by peterlk 7y ago
I grew up viewing school as prison. I was part of a program in elementary school which meant that I traveled to other schools regularly. My elementary and high schools were quite nice, but my middle school and the schools that I traveled to were very prison-like. The windows are small, and covered in metal bars or thick metal meshing.
Using the bathroom required permission that was often denied. Peeing between classes often meant penalties for being tardy (in middle/high school where you had 5 minutes to get between classes which may be a 4 minute walk apart, and teachers always had that one last thing to say). My middle school banned shoelaces for a while because of gang violence. I had a Spanish teacher who regularly handed out negative grades on tests (your grade would have been better if you hadn't showed up and taken a 0 on the test). I had a different spanish teacher who took it upon herself to regularly humiliate students who were doing poorly and lecture us about how we could never expect to get anywhere in life.
It wasn't all bad. I had a fantastic chemistry teacher and a great physics teacher. But there was a lot of bad.
- maxxxxx 7y ago"The windows are small, and covered in metal bars or thick metal meshing." That's one thing I don't get in the US. The schools really look like prisons. Why not have windows and daylight?
- noodlesUK 7y agoI don’t know, but a lot of public sector buildings seem to be built in this way. Looming monolithic structures with little to no natural light, and grimy linoleum flooring. Visit your local city hall or similar. It’s weird because I’ve not experienced the same in the UK, where government buildings are usually (ignoring the beautiful historic ones) built more like any other modern office.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoMuch of the the US was built up in the 1960s. Architecture was brutal and hasn’t aged well.
- proee 7y agoMy high school was designed by an architectural firm that litterly designed prisons for the state.
- MiddleEndian 7y agoAs was mine.
- xiii1408 7y agoA neighboring school to my high school actually was a women's prison before it was repurposed as a high school. That said, the architecture was actually quite nice, with lots of natural light and open space.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoIt was the ubiquitous architectural style mid-century. Combined with crime wave that has long since crashed.
- butteroverflow 7y ago>The windows are small, and covered in metal bars or thick metal meshing Shouldn't that be banned by fire hazard regulations?