Education Thread: Why are the youth disrespectful?

[Rainbows and Rivers]

Wow, what school did you go to?

Because that's not how mine works at all.

[New England and The Maritimes]

As I said before, it's pretty obvious we just don't hit children enough. Attacking people teaches them important life lessons like "If someone does something you don't like, it is okay to hit them until they stop if you think you'll get away with it," or "Try not to get caught, otherwise you're just going to be hit."

[Risottia]

Since the other topic was locked, I wanted to make my own. The usual responses to why kids are disrespectful now adays are typically things like:

Family unit is breaking down, teachers cannot physically beat kids anymore, schools do not have enough authority over the children, parents are not strict enough with their children, kids are not medicated enough, there isn't enough religion in schools, there is no enforced dress codes in many schools, there isn't enough funding etc etc.

I think it's all bullshit. Kids are EXACTLY as their parents have taught them to be... or as they have failed to teach them anything at all. Nurture.

[The Black Forrest]

Are you saying that only parents can question parenting practices? Surely the people who are subjected to those same practices can question them as well. I would guess that ZR has many years of experience with parent/child relationships.

Saying I am not going to hit my kids is quite different then saying school is a prison which Irresponsible people toss their kids. He can't be taken seriously.

Again it's easy to judge parenting especially when you don't have the responsibility of one or more kids.

[ZombieRothbard]

Are you saying that only parents can question parenting practices? Surely the people who are subjected to those same practices can question them as well. I would guess that ZR has many years of experience with parent/child relationships.

Saying I am not going to hit my kids is quite different then saying school is a prison which Irresponsible people toss their kids. He can't be taken seriously.

Again it's easy to judge parenting especially when you don't have the responsibility of one or more kids.

Instead of saying that I am being sensationalist, why don't you demonstrate where I am wrong, like how school isn't a prison?

[Grainne Ni Malley]

Instead of saying that I am being sensationalist, why don't you demonstrate where I am wrong, like how school isn't a prison?

I'm going to put my own two cents in here.

1. A student may, and is actually expected to, leave and go home every day.
2. There are no bars on the doors. Maybe on the windows in really ghetto areas, but that is not commonplace.
3. Students are highly unlikely to get shot by an "official" for acting up.
4. It is safer to drop the soap in a school than in a prison.
5. Less tattoos overall.

[The Black Forrest]

Saying I am not going to hit my kids is quite different then saying school is a prison which Irresponsible people toss their kids. He can't be taken seriously.

Again it's easy to judge parenting especially when you don't have the responsibility of one or more kids.

Instead of saying that I am being sensationalist, why don't you demonstrate where I am wrong, like how school isn't a prison?

Isn't this like trying to convince the crazy homeless guy there aren't ninjas walking around?

Grainne has already answered why the prison comment is ludicrous.

[The Black Forrest]

Instead of saying that I am being sensationalist, why don't you demonstrate where I am wrong, like how school isn't a prison?

I'm going to put my own two cents in here.

1. A student may, and is actually expected to, leave and go home every day.
2. There are no bars on the doors. Maybe on the windows in really ghetto areas, but that is not commonplace.
3. Students are highly unlikely to get shot by an "official" for acting up.
4. It is safer to drop the soap in a school than in a prison.
5. Less tattoos overall.

[Rastynhaven]

I don't want to work part time and have my parents homeschool me! They barely speak English. School is fine just the way it is right now.

Edit: Okay, maybe our educational system isn't perfect, but no way I will learn anything if my parents homeschool me.

[ZombieRothbard]

This assumes that kids are somehow more disrespectful nowadays. This is a false premise. It's already been shown that such complaints about youth stretch back into ancient times. Reading reports about the rebellious youth of the '50s shows that the complaints are nothing new. Children push against the boundaries, that's because they are children. I see it in my 11-month-old just as well as I see it in my jr high students.

Disrespect or rebellion are largely subjective, however my OP gives my own subjective viewpoint. It is important to mention that whether or not children are more or less rebellious than they have been in the past, it doesn't detract from the content of my OP, which is an attempt to explain reasons WHY the youth are rebellious today.

And thus you've taken multiple ideas and painted them all with one broad brush and given them the same source regardless of what is actually thought by said groups and the reasons they subscribe to. This is such an arrogant statement that it defies belief.

Well I clearly am emotionally invested in this topic, considering the fact that I lost the majority of my life to public schooling. Personally, I believe the opportunity cost of my going to school was cultivating better work ethics and a better understanding of the social sciences.

I have a feeling that you have not studied just how criminals are actually treated.

Being held in a large building with staff working there who are tasked with keeping you inside meets my own personal definition of a prison. Now generally prisons hold criminals, except in the case of schools, where the prisoners have not committed any crime.

And yet another attempt to ignore the needs and drives of every single parent in the United States in order to make some asinine statement attempting to equate schools with prisons. It also ignores a number of issues including staggered school schedules meant to deal with limited busing facilities and multiple schools (Elementary schools traditionally starting slightly later in the day and going earlier as the school level rises and then reverses in the afternoon with the high schools letting out first), not to mention your point falls flat on its face. If this was really daycare, why the heck do they get out in the middle of the day? 3pm is not quitting time after all, not to mention that the school day tends to follow traditional patterns set long, long before it was the norm to have both parents working (And Dad was so not carpooling kids to school in the good 'ol days) so needing the kids to be in school before the work day starts is bullshit.

I personally don't care about the needs of the parents, the needs of the parents is the last thing on my mind. School shouldn't serve parents, school shouldn't be easy. Parents should have to go through a lot of trouble to educate their children, parents should have to actually be committed to their children's development and success. If the parents are wealthy enough, they should send their children to private schools where the staff have a profit motive to treat your children with the respect they deserve. If you don't have enough money, you should stay home with your child. If you don't have enough money to send them to a private school or stay home with them, then you cannot afford to have a child, and you should refrain from doing so. Public school (public daycare) incentives birthing children, because you don't have to watch them or take care of them during the day. If parents had to actually deal with children and not have children become a negative externality thrown on the taxpayers, then maybe there wouldn't be as many abandoned/inbred/unsuccessful children.

So... instead of teaching them from an early age when they absorb (but not process more), we need to wait for them to be more mature... what?

We should wait to school kids until they are physically capable of remaining seated at a desk.

John Gatto is a man who has an agenda and cherry picks his stories. He also writes very unbalanced and poorly sourced articles. But, what's REALLY funny is that you do not provide (Nor does he) any guarantee that homeschooling does anything different.

Did you read the 6 lesson schoolteacher? He doesn't source anything in it, and he merely provides homeschooling or community schooling as a solution, he doesn't necessarily claim it will be better.

At a young age? How young is a young age? My eldest will be four next Saturday, should I be sending him off to work? At what?

As for your other assertions, this assumes that parents have the time or ability to be able to teach (And sir, as a child of a single mother who worked full time to support her two children after the death of my father when I was 3, I find your assertion that because she was unable to stay at home with my sister and I and teach from her limited educational background she shouldn't have had us or was somehow unfit to be a mother incredibly insulting. If I WASN'T a Moderator I would be highly tempted to respond with some rather choice vocabulary). Most parents have neither needing to work full time to get the bills payed. Sadly, as someone probably having their college paid for, life doesn't exactly allow for all families to be able to let someone stay at home for child care, nor is everyone college educated and capable of teaching others. Nor can parents be expected to handle the educational challenges of special education children, some of which need some highly specialized equipment.

If you cannot afford to maintain a house, you don't buy one. If you cannot afford to maintain a car, you don't buy one. If you cannot afford to raise a child, you don't have one. The parents needs are the last thing that anybody should care about. It isn't a childs fault if a parent isn't capable of raising them, the fault shouldn't be put on the children. The burden of going to jail all day while mommy and daddy work isn't something that should be foisted upon a child simply because their parents did not have the foresight to plan how they were going to raise a child. In a case where a mother or father is abandoned, it is quite different. It is different though if the mother or father were a poor partner, which would be unfair to the children of the couple. I personally think full responsibility for the well being of the children should be placed on the parents.

That it ain't worth the electricity spent shoving it around the Interwebtubes. You proceeded from a false premise, invented strawmen to grandly dismiss without bothering to look at the merits of their arguments, and then proceeded to concoct a solution that does not address the real life issues faced by parents, nor does it serve to meet the needs of students, and totally ignores just about all that has been learned about education since the get-go.

Yours is a very poor proposal.

Even if you disagree with the premise, it doesn't change the relevancy of the content that followed. I do not formulate a solution about the issues faced by parents, because I don't care about parents. I personally know MANY students who were bullied, harassed, emotionally abused and singled out by staff and fellow students in the public education system. Everybodies experiences in such a hell will be different, some people thrive in that kind of environment, others don't. The aggressive children tend to be the most successful, while the more peaceful or pacifistic children tend to be taken advantage of by their peers, and humiliated by staff. The children with learning disabilities are made fun of, the children who are bad at sports are made fun of, intelligence is considered a weakness by fellow students, dissent is often times squashed in the classroom. You cannot even deny that cliques and social castes form within the school system, everybody can rattle off the different types of cliques that are stereotypically found in public schools. This is also a time when young psychopaths and mentally disabled children haven't been weeded out of society yet, so many of the classes are filled with mentally unstable rabble who haven't committed their first theft yet and are still in "general population" as I like to call it with the other inmates.

I remember junior year in high school, when I still wanted to be a high school history teacher. I had no faith in the school system even then, before I was a strong libertarian. I told myself I would infiltrate the education system and change it from the inside, working my way up from administrator and eventually speaking in front of Congress. I would liberate those kids from that hell from the inside, or at least make everyone aware of what some people face in that place. As time went on, I decided against becoming a teacher, because I figured it was just a prison guard job, and it would be immoral to be a part of it. I also began to discover propaganda in the history curriculum in particular. When I left that school though, I promised that I wouldn't leave those kids behind. Those kids don't have a voice, they have no power because they aren't adults, they have no rights and they aren't articulate enough to lobby for the respect they deserve. This is why the kindergarten children drink milk out of plastic sacks, and high school children drink milk out of cartons, because the kids in kindergarten and those lower grades have no voice in the political system. I swore that I would at least raise a fuss about it someday to anybody who would listen, and give those kids a voice, so thats what I plan on doing.

[NERVUN]

Of course schooling is compulsory, it has to be. If it wasn't then honestly who would be schooled? Where would we be as a society if a significant minority, or even a majority, had no education at all (Hint: Think Oliver). Can I agree that the system is flawed? Absolutely! Can I agree that lots of shit needs changed? Sure! But can I agree that compulsory education or even public education is bad... fuck no.

Compulsory schooling is bad because force is inherently bad.

I also couldn't disagree more with your assertion that most people would have no education at all if schooling were not compulsory. Human beings are naturally curious about the world around them. Babies and toddlers learn a lot; they're real self-educators. People would continue to learn throughout childhood if they were given a genuine choice.

Given the increase of literacy rates from the 1800's to today, that's hard to state. Also, it should be noted that all developed countries have compulsory education, though the levels of where that ends shifts depending on the nation.

Finally, I think you don't fully understand the ability of small children and babies to learn. They absorb an incredible amount (Watching my sons grow has been a remarkable experience, especially my eldest in terms of language development), but their ability to use it is limited. Think a computer with a slow processor, but a large hard drive.

This slowly changes as they grow older, absorption doesn't come as easily, but processing becomes more and more complex. That's why you'll find that secondary ed is more concerned, generally, with production instead of just memorization instead of elementary ed for example.

[ZombieRothbard]

Instead of saying that I am being sensationalist, why don't you demonstrate where I am wrong, like how school isn't a prison?

I'm going to put my own two cents in here.

1. A student may, and is actually expected to, leave and go home every day.
2. There are no bars on the doors. Maybe on the windows in really ghetto areas, but that is not commonplace.
3. Students are highly unlikely to get shot by an "official" for acting up.
4. It is safer to drop the soap in a school than in a prison.
5. Less tattoos overall.

A prison (from Old French prisoun)[1] is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms

None of those 5 things has anything to do with what constitutes a prison.

[The Black Forrest]

I don't want to work part time and have my parents homeschool me! They barely speak English. School is fine just the way it is right now.

Edit: Okay, maybe our educational system isn't perfect, but no way I will learn anything if my parents homeschool me.

Now now don't bring facts into fanciful talk.

Some people can homeschool children just fine.

Others? Not so good for various reasons......

[Germanic Templars]

1. Children are treated like criminals, and they will in turn act like criminals. There is nothing that says "you are a criminal" more than locking a child up for the better half of the day. Once in school, kids form their own cliques (equivalent to prison gangs) and segregate themselves based on class, race etc.

2. Parents don't give a shit about their kids, mainly because there is a free daycare available. This free daycare is the public education system, which provides an opportunity to dump your kids off in jail all day, and incentivizes it. Have you ever wondered why the school day often starts at 7 in the morning, when studies show that children learn better when they actually get sleep? The reason why is because the parents need to be off to work by that time, so they need to be able to throw their kids in the daycare early in the morning. Nothing says "I don't give a shit about you" more than abandoning your child in a prison for the day.

3. Some kids aren't meant to be in school. Children are energetic, and they don't always sit in a desk for hours and hours when you want them to. Kids learn better at early ages, so you need to make sure you can mould their minds into the husks you want them to be early on, so instead of waiting for them to be mentally and emotionally mature enough for schooling, you chemically lobotomize them so they will comply with your demands easier.

So what do you think of my reasons for the disrespectful youth, and my solutions I intermittently offered throughout? There are more, these are just the first five things I thought to write down.

1) Not always true, plus if you treat some of them good, they may take it as them being able to do whatever they want. So its a mix. to do both.

2) show me proof on that cause I doubt parents throw them in for the fun of it. They have to do things like work to provide money and food for the family, and because they can't watch them while they are at work, they have daycare to take care of them.

3)We could teach them like on how the Romans taught their youth, take them outside and explore a bit.

[The USOT]

1. Children are treated like criminals, and they will in turn act like criminals. There is nothing that says "you are a criminal" more than locking a child up for the better half of the day. Once in school, kids form their own cliques (equivalent to prison gangs) and segregate themselves based on class, race etc.

You are seriously complaining about detention? As someone who was studious back at highschool and then college, I think to remove detention is a terrible idea. I came to education to learn, and I take that right very seriously. If I am paying money towards my education (ala now) and someone else is stealing the educators time which could be spent on teaching me, then there is no reason why the disturbance should be removed from the class room and or punished for wasting our money.
Were you to pay for a music show and someone was to steal the instruments of the band forcing the show to cancel after you have already payed, presuming you could not get a refund I imagine you would be sorely pissed off.

2. Parents don't give a shit about their kids, mainly because there is a free daycare available. This free daycare is the public education system, which provides an opportunity to dump your kids off in jail all day, and incentivizes it. Have you ever wondered why the school day often starts at 7 in the morning, when studies show that children learn better when they actually get sleep? The reason why is because the parents need to be off to work by that time, so they need to be able to throw their kids in the daycare early in the morning. Nothing says "I don't give a shit about you" more than abandoning your child in a prison for the day.

As opposed to leaving children in the house due to school not starting? In the real world, often people cannot afford to survive without getting two jobs, leaving nobody to look after the kids early in the morning. Its not bad parenting, but parents doing the best they can so that their children can survive, that being veyr good parenting...
Thats like saying a tribal doesnt care about his tribe because he comes back from an unfruitful hunt bringing back merely a gecko.

3. Some kids aren't meant to be in school. Children are energetic, and they don't always sit in a desk for hours and hours when you want them to. Kids learn better at early ages, so you need to make sure you can mould their minds into the husks you want them to be early on, so instead of waiting for them to be mentally and emotionally mature enough for schooling, you chemically lobotomize them so they will comply with your demands easier.

Is your problem the fact that children are "indoctrinated" or that you beleive kids with ADHD and other such illnesses do not belong in school?
Whilst the 2nd is a more interesting debate, by that logic any television advert or television show that a child watches is evil because it is likely to influence him (e.g. in my day pokemon was cool, and anyone who didnt watch pokemon was inferior).

4. School offers an opportunity to teach kids that nothing can ever be accomplished, and that life is a waste of time. Before anything of substance can be completed in the classroom, the bell rings and you are off to your next menial task. Basically, this is how the system turns kids into procrastinators. John Gatto, a former teacher of the year writes about the REAL lessons kids learn in the classroom. Instead of listing them all here, I will just direct you to this link.

1) Is a byproduct of parents caring and wanting to make sure their kids get educated so they get the best chance in life. Ergo if the child they are likely paying for to be educated goes missing, they are both aware of this and can better protect their child as well as get more accurate reviews on their childrens performance to better help them in life.

2) As much as I would have loved to have kept learning on and on and on about the Soviet Union back at high school, I had other things to learn. My sole purpose of being there was not the Soviet Union but a variety of different subjects. The bell therefore allows for a more organised school (What would you prefer? A school where the kids learn for 4 hours about english but then 3 minutes about maths because of a talkative english teacher leaving them unqualified?)

5. Instead of gaining working experience and bonding time with their parents, children are forced to go to compulsory prison. At a young age, children should be working part time and learning important habits like the value of hard work and the value of money. After work, children should come home to a loving parent who homeschools them one on one and teaches them all the necessary fields of study. Instead of relegating the parenting of your child to a bunch of bureaucrats, a parent should stay home and affectionately guide their children, cultivating their interests and stirring their imaginations.

Parents are not always able to stay home and look after the children through the day. We do not live in a utopia, but a world where some are unfortunately not as economically blessed as others (as adressed earlier). Quite frankly many families I know wouldnt remotely have had time to teach someone at home, nevermind the cost of added resources it takes to properly educate someone.

[Grainne Ni Malley]

I'm going to put my own two cents in here.

1. A student may, and is actually expected to, leave and go home every day.
2. There are no bars on the doors. Maybe on the windows in really ghetto areas, but that is not commonplace.
3. Students are highly unlikely to get shot by an "official" for acting up.
4. It is safer to drop the soap in a school than in a prison.
5. Less tattoos overall.

A prison (from Old French prisoun)[1] is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms

None of those 5 things has anything to do with what constitutes a prison.

Definitions are great for summing up words, but not addressing the finer details. To surmise what constitutes as a prison from a definition alone is sadly denying yourself the mental capacity with which I am certain you are equipped.

Prison is designed for criminal offenders. School is not. The reality is that prisons are a far harsher environment on a daily basis than any school could ever possibly be. If only for the simple fact that, in a prison, you are surrounded by criminals who tend to act accordingly and heavily armed people prepared to deal with the inmates as such.

It should also be understood that people sent to prison are expected to serve sentences of confinement for far longer than six to eight hours a day. They do not get to go home and play video games, or eat their mommy's cooking every day. They do not get to have many personal freedoms which I am sure you do have and seemingly take for granted. You might have a better chance of comparing schools to community service, but even that is a stretch.

To compare school to prison is, IMO, naive and melodramatic. I will not suggest that you commit a crime to find out for yourself the difference in reality. I will, however, suggest you visit an actual prison and come back with a hopefully more enlightened opinion about the difference in nature of such things as schools and prisons.

[Paragade]

I believe there is still hope for public education. There needs to be major changes such as not relying on standardized testing and not lowering student standards and increasing funding so we can have smaller class sizes. Schools need better resources also and they shouldn't be forced to use textbooks from the 90s.

Can any parent teach? Maybe, should they? Probably not.

[Trotskylvania]

5. Less tattoos overall.

And that is a damn shame, too.

Anyway, glibness aside, there are serious problems with the way education is practiced today, but that doesn't diminish the usefulness of universal public education. Which is why I am a fan of Deweyite style progressive education, which helped produce such greats as Noam Chomsky and George Carlin

[Grainne Ni Malley]

Can any parent teach? Maybe, should they? Probably not.

I am sorry to have to vehemently insist that there are a lot of parents who cannot teach, and in fact probably should not have had kids, but did anyway. While there are qualified educators out there trying their best, at least some kids stand a better chance than they ever would at home.

[The Black Forrest]

I'm going to put my own two cents in here.

1. A student may, and is actually expected to, leave and go home every day.
2. There are no bars on the doors. Maybe on the windows in really ghetto areas, but that is not commonplace.
3. Students are highly unlikely to get shot by an "official" for acting up.
4. It is safer to drop the soap in a school than in a prison.
5. Less tattoos overall.

A prison (from Old French prisoun)[1] is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms

None of those 5 things has anything to do with what constitutes a prison.

Trying to move the goal posts?

She is spot on.

[ZombieRothbard]

None of those 5 things has anything to do with what constitutes a prison.

Trying to move the goal posts?

She is spot on.

Where were the goalposts before?

[Slaytesics]

Pretty much. S/he was probably just released from 'prison' this summer.

I have been in college for 3 years now. Believe it or not, there are people in their 40s and older who advocate homeschooling as well. In fact, John Gatto whose article I linked in the OP advocates for a revamping of the education system, and he is an older gentlemen who was teacher of the year in NYS 1991. So your attack on my age as being somehow relevant is erroneous at best.

Where the hell does homeschooling get you, I hear they advocate "real-life learning" and "choosing the topics" i have a friend who didn't know basic arithmetic until 8 grade because she was homeschooled. "real-life learning" get's you no where, it doesn't teach you respect, and it delays you on skills for college (I have had homeschooled friends be held back two years in a row because they lacked skills to go to college). I would much rather have a smaller-class sized education system. But people can stop being idiots about vaccinations and what is "truly important" (ie. "real-life learning"). Also, starting school later is a great idea, I wish it was possible.

Also, you argue in the OP that teachers should be able to hit kids, did you know that in hypno-therapy/hypnosis you can touch someone to create an anchor that has a specific feeling attached? So whenever a child is touched where the teacher hits them, you are just enforcing an anchor of pain and misery that can cause depression. The child also becomes less-outgoing, and conforms to society's rules too early. Let the kids be told by their parents, as parents should know their children better than teachers do.

pardon the run-on sentences, I don't care about grammatical stuff at this time.

[ZombieRothbard]

None of those 5 things has anything to do with what constitutes a prison.

Definitions are great for summing up words, but not addressing the finer details. To surmise what constitutes as a prison from a definition alone is sadly denying yourself the mental capacity with which I am certain you are equipped.

Prison is designed for criminal offenders. School is not. The reality is that prisons are a far harsher environment on a daily basis than any school could ever possibly be. If only for the simple fact that, in a prison, you are surrounded by criminals who tend to act accordingly and heavily armed people prepared to deal with the inmates as such.

It should also be understood that people sent to prison are expected to serve sentences of confinement for far longer than six to eight hours a day. They do not get to go home and play video games, or eat their mommy's cooking every day. They do not get to have many personal freedoms which I am sure you do have and seemingly take for granted. You might have a better chance of comparing schools to community service, but even that is a stretch.

To compare school to prison is, IMO, naive and melodramatic. I will not suggest that you commit a crime to find out for yourself the difference in reality. I will, however, suggest you visit an actual prison and come back with a hopefully more enlightened opinion about the difference in nature of such things as schools and prisons.

Whether you like it or not, school matches the definition of prison. You can say that, in your view, school is a good prison. You might believe that school is even a necessary prison, but you cannot deny that school is, in fact, a prison. No where on this topic have I comparedschool to a prison. School IS a prison, there is no comparison to be made, it IS a prison. You can point out all sorts of differences between the justice system in America with the public schools, it doesn't matter, it doesn't change the fact that school IS a prison. There are nations in the world with relatively easy living in prisons, even here in the U.S. Bernie Madoff lives in a prison complete with a pool table and a garden. Is this not a prison? Of course it is, just like how school IS a prison. As to the time spent in prison of 6-8 hours? So what? There are people who drive to prison on the weekends in the U.S. if I recall correctly, people are placed under house arrest all the time. The duration spent imprisoned does not change the fact that they were IMPRISONED.

If you think it is melodramatic, then may I inquire WHY you believe imprisoning children is correct, and I am somehow way off base in believing it to be harmful, detestable, disgusting etc.

[ZombieRothbard]

I have been in college for 3 years now. Believe it or not, there are people in their 40s and older who advocate homeschooling as well. In fact, John Gatto whose article I linked in the OP advocates for a revamping of the education system, and he is an older gentlemen who was teacher of the year in NYS 1991. So your attack on my age as being somehow relevant is erroneous at best.

Where the hell does homeschooling get you, I hear they advocate "real-life learning" and "choosing the topics" i have a friend who didn't know basic arithmetic until 8 grade because she was homeschooled. "real-life learning" get's you no where, it doesn't teach you respect, and it delays you on skills for college (I have had homeschooled friends be held back two years in a row because they lacked skills to go to college). I would much rather have a smaller-class sized education system. But people can stop being idiots about vaccinations and what is "truly important" (ie. "real-life learning"). Also, starting school later is a great idea, I wish it was possible.

Also, you argue in the OP that teachers should be able to hit kids, did you know that in hypno-therapy/hypnosis you can touch someone to create an anchor that has a specific feeling attached? So whenever a child is touched where the teacher hits them, you are just enforcing an anchor of pain and misery that can cause depression. The child also becomes less-outgoing, and conforms to society's rules too early. Let the kids be told by their parents, as parents should know their children better than teachers do.

pardon the run-on sentences, I don't care about grammatical stuff at this time.

You need to reread the OP.

[NERVUN]

This assumes that kids are somehow more disrespectful nowadays. This is a false premise. It's already been shown that such complaints about youth stretch back into ancient times. Reading reports about the rebellious youth of the '50s shows that the complaints are nothing new. Children push against the boundaries, that's because they are children. I see it in my 11-month-old just as well as I see it in my jr high students.

Disrespect or rebellion are largely subjective, however my OP gives my own subjective viewpoint. It is important to mention that whether or not children are more or less rebellious than they have been in the past, it doesn't detract from the content of my OP, which is an attempt to explain reasons WHY the youth are rebellious today.

Let's work through the logic. Youth have been rebelious since the dawn of humanity. We know this from numorus complaints on the subject by their elders. The public education system in the US has been around for, oh (Depending on how you define it) 150 years, give or take. So it makes are more logical sense to assume that youth today are disrespectful and rebelious (Which, as you noted, is a subective term and therefore rather hard to actually take seriously as a problem) due to whatever reasons were good back in ancient Greece rather than blaiming something that hasn't been around all that long. Thus you proceed from a false premse.

And thus you've taken multiple ideas and painted them all with one broad brush and given them the same source regardless of what is actually thought by said groups and the reasons they subscribe to. This is such an arrogant statement that it defies belief.

Well I clearly am emotionally invested in this topic, considering the fact that I lost the majority of my life to public schooling. Personally, I believe the opportunity cost of my going to school was cultivating better work ethics and a better understanding of the social sciences.

You're how old now? Dude, I have been out of public school (As a student) for 14 years, 1 year longer than I was in public school. I'm 32 and I have (baring acidents) at least 30 years ahead of me working AND quite possibly 20 or more years after THAT for living. You'd be hard pressed to say that public school takes up a quarter of a lifetime (In fact, when you look at school hours and that in the US the school year is just 180 days long, it doesn't add up to all that much). So please don't try to complain about how you wasted half of your life in schooling, you ain't lived it yet.

I have a feeling that you have not studied just how criminals are actually treated.

Being held in a large building with staff working there who are tasked with keeping you inside meets my own personal definition of a prison. Now generally prisons hold criminals, except in the case of schools, where the prisoners have not committed any crime.

Well, at least you're acknowledging that this is based on your own take of it. Now the rest of the world disagrees with you.

And yet another attempt to ignore the needs and drives of every single parent in the United States in order to make some asinine statement attempting to equate schools with prisons. It also ignores a number of issues including staggered school schedules meant to deal with limited busing facilities and multiple schools (Elementary schools traditionally starting slightly later in the day and going earlier as the school level rises and then reverses in the afternoon with the high schools letting out first), not to mention your point falls flat on its face. If this was really daycare, why the heck do they get out in the middle of the day? 3pm is not quitting time after all, not to mention that the school day tends to follow traditional patterns set long, long before it was the norm to have both parents working (And Dad was so not carpooling kids to school in the good 'ol days) so needing the kids to be in school before the work day starts is bullshit.

I personally don't care about the needs of the parents, the needs of the parents is the last thing on my mind. School shouldn't serve parents, school shouldn't be easy. Parents should have to go through a lot of trouble to educate their children, parents should have to actually be committed to their children's development and success. If the parents are wealthy enough, they should send their children to private schools where the staff have a profit motive to treat your children with the respect they deserve. If you don't have enough money, you should stay home with your child. If you don't have enough money to send them to a private school or stay home with them, then you cannot afford to have a child, and you should refrain from doing so. Public school (public daycare) incentives birthing children, because you don't have to watch them or take care of them during the day. If parents had to actually deal with children and not have children become a negative externality thrown on the taxpayers, then maybe there wouldn't be as many abandoned/inbred/unsuccessful children.

Ladies and Gentlemen of NSG, I give you this wonderful quote to show just where the philosphy of this man is headed. You cannot breed if you are not rich.

And this is, of course, from the man who claims to be concerned with the rights and freedoms of all.

How little you understand human nature and how little you have an understanding of history if you really think that free daycare has caused people to breed. How little you understand of the troubles parents go through to raise their children, even with schooling. My only, and I truly mean this, wish for you is that, goven your stated studies and how low of a salary they actually command, any future SO you may have will be very understanding.

So... instead of teaching them from an early age when they absorb (but not process more), we need to wait for them to be more mature... what?

We should wait to school kids until they are physically capable of remaining seated at a desk.

Pretty sure first graders have mastered that skill. They cannot consentrate the way older children can, but that is why subjects change quickly and there is recess. Even adults cannot give full concentration for more than 2 hrs or so before needing a break.

John Gatto is a man who has an agenda and cherry picks his stories. He also writes very unbalanced and poorly sourced articles. But, what's REALLY funny is that you do not provide (Nor does he) any guarantee that homeschooling does anything different.

Did you read the 6 lesson schoolteacher? He doesn't source anything in it, and he merely provides homeschooling or community schooling as a solution, he doesn't necessarily claim it will be better.

I have read it, and you avoided the point. If it ain't better or fix the problems, why bother with it? Also, yes, he doesn't source his arguments, which means you cannot check them and thus one must wonder... well, should be be trusted? In his world, everyone who drops out of school becomes sucessful and wonderful. In the real world, MOST who drop out of school fail to.

At a young age? How young is a young age? My eldest will be four next Saturday, should I be sending him off to work? At what?

As for your other assertions, this assumes that parents have the time or ability to be able to teach (And sir, as a child of a single mother who worked full time to support her two children after the death of my father when I was 3, I find your assertion that because she was unable to stay at home with my sister and I and teach from her limited educational background she shouldn't have had us or was somehow unfit to be a mother incredibly insulting. If I WASN'T a Moderator I would be highly tempted to respond with some rather choice vocabulary). Most parents have neither needing to work full time to get the bills payed. Sadly, as someone probably having their college paid for, life doesn't exactly allow for all families to be able to let someone stay at home for child care, nor is everyone college educated and capable of teaching others. Nor can parents be expected to handle the educational challenges of special education children, some of which need some highly specialized equipment.

If you cannot afford to maintain a house, you don't buy one. If you cannot afford to maintain a car, you don't buy one. If you cannot afford to raise a child, you don't have one. The parents needs are the last thing that anybody should care about. It isn't a childs fault if a parent isn't capable of raising them, the fault shouldn't be put on the children. The burden of going to jail all day while mommy and daddy work isn't something that should be foisted upon a child simply because their parents did not have the foresight to plan how they were going to raise a child. In a case where a mother or father is abandoned, it is quite different. It is different though if the mother or father were a poor partner, which would be unfair to the children of the couple. I personally think full responsibility for the well being of the children should be placed on the parents.

And again, you avoid the question(s). At what age should a child start working, and doing what?

And because it is 'different' just what should my mother have done?

That it ain't worth the electricity spent shoving it around the Interwebtubes. You proceeded from a false premise, invented strawmen to grandly dismiss without bothering to look at the merits of their arguments, and then proceeded to concoct a solution that does not address the real life issues faced by parents, nor does it serve to meet the needs of students, and totally ignores just about all that has been learned about education since the get-go.

Yours is a very poor proposal.

Even if you disagree with the premise, it doesn't change the relevancy of the content that followed. I do not formulate a solution about the issues faced by parents, because I don't care about parents. I personally know MANY students who were bullied, harassed, emotionally abused and singled out by staff and fellow students in the public education system. Everybodies experiences in such a hell will be different, some people thrive in that kind of environment, others don't. The aggressive children tend to be the most successful, while the more peaceful or pacifistic children tend to be taken advantage of by their peers, and humiliated by staff. The children with learning disabilities are made fun of, the children who are bad at sports are made fun of, intelligence is considered a weakness by fellow students, dissent is often times squashed in the classroom. You cannot even deny that cliques and social castes form within the school system, everybody can rattle off the different types of cliques that are stereotypically found in public schools. This is also a time when young psychopaths and mentally disabled children haven't been weeded out of society yet, so many of the classes are filled with mentally unstable rabble who haven't committed their first theft yet and are still in "general population" as I like to call it with the other inmates.

Actually I DO disagree with it and I explained why. So you had a bad time at school, so do others, other have a great time. Guess what, that's life. There will always be times when you aren't enjoying yourself, you will have people you disagree with at work, you will find that in the general population there are those who will proceed to throw their weight around. Your notion that somehow there is a shining real world that is full of love, light, rainbows, and puppies where everyone treats you nicely due to market forces is inane.

I remember junior year in high school, when I still wanted to be a high school history teacher. I had no faith in the school system even then, before I was a strong libertarian. I told myself I would infiltrate the education system and change it from the inside, working my way up from administrator and eventually speaking in front of Congress. I would liberate those kids from that hell from the inside, or at least make everyone aware of what some people face in that place. As time went on, I decided against becoming a teacher, because I figured it was just a prison guard job, and it would be immoral to be a part of it. I also began to discover propaganda in the history curriculum in particular. When I left that school though, I promised that I wouldn't leave those kids behind. Those kids don't have a voice, they have no power because they aren't adults, they have no rights and they aren't articulate enough to lobby for the respect they deserve. This is why the kindergarten children drink milk out of plastic sacks, and high school children drink milk out of cartons, because the kids in kindergarten and those lower grades have no voice in the political system. I swore that I would at least raise a fuss about it someday to anybody who would listen, and give those kids a voice, so thats what I plan on doing.

Thankfully it would seem your ranting will be confined to this forum, considering your program seems to be that only the rich should breed or women be given the choice between earning money and putting value on their education or childcare.