4 ms·

I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at least in the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like, structurally, that's just what they are, almost unavoidabl

I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at least in the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like, structurally, that's just what they are, almost unavoidably without totally changing how they work. Even decent school experiences are, by the standards of the adult world, crazy-bad. How many people have anxiety-nightmares for a decade or more after graduating high school? How many unavoidable experiences in life so consistently generate that kind of thing? How many develop sleep disorders in school, that follow them for life? Depression? They're really, really bad. I had a quite good school experience and that ~6-year span is still, as I approach 40, far and away the worst part of my life. It's not even close. Nothing else half that bad has lasted even one year, let alone six.

jjav 4y ago
> I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at least in the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like, structurally, that's just what they are, almost unavoidably without totally changing how they work. > Even decent school experiences are, by the standards of the adult world, crazy-bad. Why is that? What is different about US schools? I (nor my spouse) have any experience with US mid & high school but I hear things like this so I worry, having a young child now in the US, still many years away from high school. In contrast, I can't think of anything bad about my (non-US) high school days. As a math geek I certainly wasn't in any hip group, but everyone was nice and it was a good experience. Now 30+ years later we're all still in touch and have reunions and meet whenever paths cross and remember those days fondly.
- jdlshore 4y ago
  It's not just US schools. I have a distant relation in Norway who suffers severe bullying in her school. In contrast to the Portland schools my kids go to, teachers take a hands-off approach to bullying, believing that it's the kids' responsibility to resolve it themselves.
  - akulbe 4y ago
    Portland schools suck. The elementary school down the road from us was doing some crazy s*t a few years ago, bunch of neighbors pulled their kids out.
- corrral 4y ago
  - ~8 hours in school per day, often in buildings with minimal natural lighting. During the Winter, this may mean almost no sunlight all day (no recess, like in elementary school). Wanna make people depressed and give them SAD that'll stick with them long after they're adults? Just do this to them for a few years. - Intense workload. We consider it bad when a job takes more than 8 hours a day from you. Schools routinely take 10 or more (math classes were the main culprit, at least in my case). Hope you don't have any other plans... oh look, many kids do, so now they're in actual hell. - To add to the above: super-strict and rapid turnaround expectations on work. You cannot put something off until tomorrow because you're feeling really bad today—it was only assigned today, sure, but it's due tomorrow. Some stuff had longer timelines, but many things were the due-within-24-hours sort (again, largely math's fault, at least in my case) - Bizarre mind games where people tell you insane stuff like "enjoy this, these are the best years of your life" and "you think this is bad, just wait until you're in the real world! This is just trying to get you ready for the expectations of adult life!" Like, I've not only worked cushy high-paid white-collar jobs, and I've never worked in an environment remotely as bad as school grades 7-12, nor with those kinds of strict expectations, nor with such inhumane treatment. When a workplace is consistently close to as bad as school, it's news (Amazon warehouses). - Jail-like conditions. Need to stretch? Need a quick stroll for your legs? Need to take a piss? Beg the boss and hope they're in a good mood. Granted, some workplaces are like this too (again: Amazon warehouses), but most of those at least give you a couple 15-minute breaks in addition to your lunch (passing periods don't count, they're typically only 5 minutes and you'll spend most of that grabbing your stuff and getting from A to B) - Sitting in classes all day is about as bad and mentally/physically exhausting as sitting in meetings all day, for similar reasons. Ask most people how they feel after a full day of meetings. Expand that to a whole week. Expand that whole week to 6 damn years. Yikes. All of that is purely about the schools themselves, setting aside their strong tendency to foster awful, abusive, bullying dynamics that students cannot escape, both among students and staff. Or problems with school start times and teen sleep patterns (shit, as an adult I've rarely needed to wake up at 6:50 for anything, and if I did and I hated it I'd at least have some realistic hope of finding a way to change that pretty quickly) I think all that makes it survivable (and I mean that literally) are the Summers and multiple long holiday breaks. When school's in session, it is brutal like few other involuntary (or de facto involuntary) activities are. [EDIT] OH! And crazy-high expectations of self-organization and perfectionism. Here in the "real world", honest mistakes are taken in stride and my schedule and work-tracking are much simpler, plus I have a ton of support on those things. Even college tends to be far more lenient on those things than high school. Again, I had a pretty damn good school experience, as those go, and my school wasn't one of those high-pressure ones you hear about in SV or wherever, and it was still terrible in these ways.
- 0x20cowboy 4y ago
  Gangs and guns. I was beat to the ground several times a month all of high school - often by 3 or 4 people. I took care of my friend after having been stabbed at a party. 2 of my friends were killed before I graduated. I’ve been shot at and had guns pulled on me “for fun”. The education was terrible as well, but I don’t blame the teachers or staff. They were doing the best they could.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Outright bad schools in the US are incredibly bad. I had no idea how bad until my spouse substitute-taught at a couple of them, a few years back. Like, fear-for-your-life-every-day bad. Like, there's a 100% chance that at least one kid you're in class with will be in prison for killing a classmate before you graduate. That kind of bad. That's a whole other matter from completely ordinary US schools being a very bad experience, and far more grave. Those places are straight-up misery machines. Shameful monuments to our moral inadequacy. I think the difference as far as how the problems might be addressed, is that ordinary schools are bad in ways that are basically on purpose, while the worst US schools are bad largely due to catastrophic society-wide failures that aren't really the school's fault, and hardly within their ability to even begin to fix.
- nineteen999 4y ago
  > Why is that? What is different about US schools? Might be tangential to your point and that of the parent poster, but the threat of gun violence in US schools for a start.
zaphar 4y ago
I can't comment on what public school is like from the inside since I was lucky and my parents homeschooled me. But from the outside when talking to my friends it did indeed look like a form of child abuse. It's sad because, while you can opt out in theory the way my parents did, it requires a lot of sacrifice on the part of the parent. Either you spend money on private schools if you can find one without the same pathologies as the public school or you have to give up one income in the family. Not everyone can afford to do that although it's easier than some people think. Public school is mostly subsidized child care for many so it's not easily changed and getting enough public funds to employ enough qualified people to reduce the worst pathologies to a manageable level is pretty expensive.

jjav 4y ago

> I'm convinced that junior high and high school, at least in the US, amount to mass child abuse. Like, structurally, that's just what they are, almost unavoidably without totally changing how they work. > Even decent school experiences are, by the standards of the adult world, crazy-bad. Why is that? What is different about US schools? I (nor my spouse) have any experience with US mid & high school but I hear things like this so I worry, having a young child now in the US, still many years away from high school. In contrast, I can't think of anything bad about my (non-US) high school days. As a math geek I certainly wasn't in any hip group, but everyone was nice and it was a good experience. Now 30+ years later we're all still in touch and have reunions and meet whenever paths cross and remember those days fondly.

jdlshore 4y ago
It's not just US schools. I have a distant relation in Norway who suffers severe bullying in her school. In contrast to the Portland schools my kids go to, teachers take a hands-off approach to bullying, believing that it's the kids' responsibility to resolve it themselves.
- akulbe 4y ago
  Portland schools suck. The elementary school down the road from us was doing some crazy s*t a few years ago, bunch of neighbors pulled their kids out.
corrral 4y ago
- ~8 hours in school per day, often in buildings with minimal natural lighting. During the Winter, this may mean almost no sunlight all day (no recess, like in elementary school). Wanna make people depressed and give them SAD that'll stick with them long after they're adults? Just do this to them for a few years. - Intense workload. We consider it bad when a job takes more than 8 hours a day from you. Schools routinely take 10 or more (math classes were the main culprit, at least in my case). Hope you don't have any other plans... oh look, many kids do, so now they're in actual hell. - To add to the above: super-strict and rapid turnaround expectations on work. You cannot put something off until tomorrow because you're feeling really bad today—it was only assigned today, sure, but it's due tomorrow. Some stuff had longer timelines, but many things were the due-within-24-hours sort (again, largely math's fault, at least in my case) - Bizarre mind games where people tell you insane stuff like "enjoy this, these are the best years of your life" and "you think this is bad, just wait until you're in the real world! This is just trying to get you ready for the expectations of adult life!" Like, I've not only worked cushy high-paid white-collar jobs, and I've never worked in an environment remotely as bad as school grades 7-12, nor with those kinds of strict expectations, nor with such inhumane treatment. When a workplace is consistently close to as bad as school, it's news (Amazon warehouses). - Jail-like conditions. Need to stretch? Need a quick stroll for your legs? Need to take a piss? Beg the boss and hope they're in a good mood. Granted, some workplaces are like this too (again: Amazon warehouses), but most of those at least give you a couple 15-minute breaks in addition to your lunch (passing periods don't count, they're typically only 5 minutes and you'll spend most of that grabbing your stuff and getting from A to B) - Sitting in classes all day is about as bad and mentally/physically exhausting as sitting in meetings all day, for similar reasons. Ask most people how they feel after a full day of meetings. Expand that to a whole week. Expand that whole week to 6 damn years. Yikes. All of that is purely about the schools themselves, setting aside their strong tendency to foster awful, abusive, bullying dynamics that students cannot escape, both among students and staff. Or problems with school start times and teen sleep patterns (shit, as an adult I've rarely needed to wake up at 6:50 for anything, and if I did and I hated it I'd at least have some realistic hope of finding a way to change that pretty quickly) I think all that makes it survivable (and I mean that literally) are the Summers and multiple long holiday breaks. When school's in session, it is brutal like few other involuntary (or de facto involuntary) activities are. [EDIT] OH! And crazy-high expectations of self-organization and perfectionism. Here in the "real world", honest mistakes are taken in stride and my schedule and work-tracking are much simpler, plus I have a ton of support on those things. Even college tends to be far more lenient on those things than high school. Again, I had a pretty damn good school experience, as those go, and my school wasn't one of those high-pressure ones you hear about in SV or wherever, and it was still terrible in these ways.
0x20cowboy 4y ago
Gangs and guns. I was beat to the ground several times a month all of high school - often by 3 or 4 people. I took care of my friend after having been stabbed at a party. 2 of my friends were killed before I graduated. I’ve been shot at and had guns pulled on me “for fun”. The education was terrible as well, but I don’t blame the teachers or staff. They were doing the best they could.
- corrral 4y ago
  Outright bad schools in the US are incredibly bad. I had no idea how bad until my spouse substitute-taught at a couple of them, a few years back. Like, fear-for-your-life-every-day bad. Like, there's a 100% chance that at least one kid you're in class with will be in prison for killing a classmate before you graduate. That kind of bad. That's a whole other matter from completely ordinary US schools being a very bad experience, and far more grave. Those places are straight-up misery machines. Shameful monuments to our moral inadequacy. I think the difference as far as how the problems might be addressed, is that ordinary schools are bad in ways that are basically on purpose, while the worst US schools are bad largely due to catastrophic society-wide failures that aren't really the school's fault, and hardly within their ability to even begin to fix.
nineteen999 4y ago
> Why is that? What is different about US schools? Might be tangential to your point and that of the parent poster, but the threat of gun violence in US schools for a start.

zaphar 4y ago

I can't comment on what public school is like from the inside since I was lucky and my parents homeschooled me. But from the outside when talking to my friends it did indeed look like a form of child abuse. It's sad because, while you can opt out in theory the way my parents did, it requires a lot of sacrifice on the part of the parent. Either you spend money on private schools if you can find one without the same pathologies as the public school or you have to give up one income in the family. Not everyone can afford to do that although it's easier than some people think. Public school is mostly subsidized child care for many so it's not easily changed and getting enough public funds to employ enough qualified people to reduce the worst pathologies to a manageable level is pretty expensive.