The other day I wrote a piece for the Federalist in which I explore the ways mass public schooling actually cultivates mental instability in children. You can read it here: “13 Ways Public Schools Incubate Mental Instability in Kids.”
In the wake of another school shooting – and now the ways children are being used to serve as mouthpieces for PC agendas, including (but not limited to) gun control — I think it’s high time we take a good hard look at the institutions that are shaping them for most of their waking hours. The schools teach abject conformity in so many ways, that I believe they are literally making kids ill. In my piece I list 13 ways this happens in today’s government mega-schools. They include the hierarchy of cliques, status anxiety, relational aggression, hostility towards family and faith, politicization, and enforced conformity.
I’m sure you can add many more ways today’s schools feel oppressive, and even prison-like. And yet there are now places called “school refusal clinics” for children to be psychologically “treated” if school becomes so alienating and lonely for children that it literally makes them sick.
Below is an excerpt on just one of those 13 points. In it, I reflect on how the sheer size of today’s schools have grown exponentially. I think this in itself promotes an alienating environment that’s not conducive to mental health.
Back in 1929-30, there were about 248,000 public schools in the United States, according to the National Center for Education Statistics . How many today? Far less than half that. By 2013-14, the number had shrunk to 98,000. When you consider that the U.S. population nearly tripled in that timeframe, there’s no question this factory model of schooling has grown exponentially. The numbers speak to the intense bureaucratization of a public school system that is becoming more centralized with less local control, packing ever-larger numbers of students in one place. The natural effect for a young human being is an emotional malaise that fuels a sense of confusion and detachment. I believe the sociologist Emile Durkheim coined the term “anomie” to describe this state of isolation. Even the physical architecture of public schools is getting more estranging. They tend to be larger and more looming , almost blade-runner-like in their effect of shrinking and sequestering individuals to irrelevance.
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