High Stakes Testing. Teaching to the test. Forcing children to sit there while you are teaching to the test because some idiot politician makes you teach to the test. Playdates. Your whole day totally regimented, Don't go outside because there is a child molester on every corner! Tons of homework. Soccer practice. Band practice. Karate. Ballet. Activity, Activity. Activity. You need this activity to put on your application to Harvard or Duke or Stanford, because if you don't get into an elite school your life is over. Its a tough world out there and we are just trying to protect you, sweetie. Its all for your own good! Thirteen year old Emily is cracking under the pressure? Give her a freaking Xanax because she needs to go to her SAT prep class! Can't slow down now! This is your future at stake!
Oh, did you hear about Josh down the street? Why would he kill himself? He was only fifteen years old. Guess he couldn't take it. Probably would have been a loser anyway.
It is amazing to me how well meaning parents have become monsters to their own children because of their own creeping terror. We live in a winner take all society, and baby, these adults know it. They know what happens when you lose. So they push their kids to the limit to make sure their kids stay above the ever more demanding machine. But by doing so, they perpetrate the machine's malevolent force. It is a shame that these parents are so bullshit with fear. If they could slow down and think through the fear, just maybe they would teach their children that they could change the system that is making everybody so miserable.
I grew up in the Seventies. There was a lot of things that were crazy about the Seventies. But dammit, we had fun! We would get on our bikes, not put on our helmets, and zip up and down the streets of Norridge and Harwood Heights, Illinois. (two little suburbs pressed between Chicago and O'Hare Airport). We would actually play with our friends. Unsupervised! Unstructured! Heck , if we tried to stay indoors, our patents would kick us out! Go outside! Stop being lazy. Don't get me wrong. I did not grow up in some "Leave it to Beaver existence". If you wanted drugs in Norridge you could find them. Easily. If you wanted to join a gang, you could do so. This was the Seventies, after all. The suburb I live in Florida now is a lot safer than Norridge was in the Seventies. But you know what the big difference is? My parents were a LOT less fearful than people are now. You knew your neighbors. There were 14 houses on the side of my block and I knew the names of all the families. I could write them all down now if you wanted me to. Not so now. I know very few of my neighbors. Some are so paranoid you wouldn't want to know them! I'm sure its the same for almost all who are reading this.
My high school, Ridgewood High, was founded in 1961, the year I was born. RHS (home of the Rebels!) was born in a burst of idealism and creativity. It was even listed as one of the top ten schools in the country by a news magazine in the early 60's. It was proud of following its own unique curriculum, the Trump plan.(no not that Trump!) RHS was born in an era when even working class suburbs could be proud of their public schools.
By the time I got there in 1976, a lot of the bloom was off the rose. Drugs had taken their toll. But the biggest disease rotting good ol' RHS was cynicism. We were the tail end of the baby boom, mostly the youngest kids in our families, more Gen X in attitude than Boomer. Many teachers didn't like the "I don't give a shit" attitude that prevailed among us, so many of them gave up on us. One teacher even sneered at us in a lecture hall "You all are as interesting as bat shit!" It wasn't really anyone's fault. Ridgewood was a part of America and America was just beginning its fall into the Reagan-induced miasma of self centeredness.
BUT.....I got some real benefits too. One of the features of the Trump Plan was a modular schedule. Our schedule was a 6 day recurring cycle, Day 1 through Day 6. Each day was divided up into 20 twenty minute "mods". Every day was different. Courses were divided up in "Large Groups" (lectures), "Small Groups" (seminars where you were seated around a round table) and "labs". Best of all, some mods were reserved for "independent study time" where you could go where you wanted and study. Now like all schools, the quality of instruction varied greatly. RHS had great teachers, lousy teachers and teachers in between. But what really saved school for me was the IS time. I was an obsessive reader and during this time I learned to teach myself. Sometimes I was so into teaching myself that my grades suffered. But in the long run that didn't matter. I wasn't going to Harvard anyway. I had the time to read and explore my love of learning. ( I also did my share of goofing off. Hey, we were kids! Something that is forgotten in 2015) This, not the instruction, was the great gift Ridgewood gave me. The gift of loving learning for learning's sake.
This is another of the reasons I'm glad I'm not a kid today. For the very simple reason that if I attended the typical high school of 2015 I would have gone crazy. Died of boredom. Would have seen right through the cynical lunacy of high stakes testing, like I am sure kids do today. The same thing every day. Teachers terrified to try anything new. Endless drilling in math and science to the exclusion of my favorite subjects. No time for frivolous independent study! OMG we are falling behind FINLAND!! Eeeeeeeeeee! Breaking our kids on the cross of our fears. Thank God I'm not a kid today!
Author William Deresiewicz, in his book Excellent Sheep describes hard working elite educated kids as...excellent sheep. Great at pleasing their elders and getting good grades. Working themselves to death. Stressed out to the max. But not so good at thinking for themselves. Totally unable to apply critical thinking skills to the wreckage of their own lives; to the dark tunnels that society has mapped out for them. There is no room for concepts that don't make money. Love for learning for learning's sake? Finding your own passion? Finding Jesus Christ?? Get real. Get with the program. Its just the way the world works. Could it be that the reason that so called "leaders'" beat critical thinking skills out of their kids is that the brutal winner-take-all society they pimp for cannot stand up to critical thinking? Wonderful country America has become. The 99% is brutally squeezed so the elite one percent can be........miserable. Folks, if this absurdity is going to change, it is going to have to be our kids who will change it. It might be a good idea to stop scaring the shit out of them.
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