Are Our Schools Nothing More Than Prisons?

by Mustang

When was the last time you drove past a public school building?  Tell me, what did you see?  Here’s what I see: large brick buildings sitting behind an extensive fencing system, part hurricane, part wrought iron; some of them have concertina wire strung along the top.  Sophisticated gates admit or discharge vehicles and pedestrians.  We pay uniformed men to note these comings and goings.  The young guards often play with the female students on high school campuses — because they can. 

Let us now think about what is happening inside these structures.  Whatever it is, it isn’t about learning or mastery of lessons.  That hasn’t been true in this country for more than sixty years.  Currently, American schools lag behind those in most other countries.  Do we ever wonder why?  More particularly, do we ever wonder why given the insane amount of money we spend on education each year?

Here is what else that’s true: the teachers in these schools are incompetent and ideologically driven.  Their primary goal is to produce a certain kind of citizen: one who thinks the way the adults around him most desire.  The students/inmates hate these schools with great intensity.  Were it not for the law, which forces attendance, only the teachers would be in school.  The students see the schools as prisons — precisely what they are.  They look like it, smell it, and the people inside act like it.

It is not missing on these students — or, if one prefers — inmates, that we keep them inside these structures against their will, much like we keep prisoners inside against theirs.  And we seriously wonder why there is no learning — and indeed no mastery of lessons inside our schools.  We may also wonder why so many of our children are psychotic, confused, hopeless, and suicidal.

Bunk includes this clip to add to the conversation with Mustang’s thoughtful post:

The greatest danger to America’s children is not whether some people may rush inside those “prisons” with firearms and shoot them; it is that their adults institutionalize them at all and rob them of their sense of wonder.     

Mustang also has blogs called  Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar