Schools are open...

Schools are open again, and I feel bad for the kids.  As a boy, I used the books I was issued at school to teach myself. I found any interaction with the teachers, and being around the kids to be a massive detriment learning. Really it was a kind of psychological torture.

When the schools closed due to covid, I thought how lucky the children were. They could learn, and not suffer. But that is over now. Hell has reopened. 

Authority.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority." - John Dalberg-Acton

Never have I ever meet someone in a position of authority that was truly deserving of respect. It doesn't matter how small the power they have been given, the result is always the same. As a child, I saw this over and over, and at the time I didn't know why this was the case. As an adult I now know it is the weakness of the people that seek to have control.

It started with my father. He was a terrible man. He desired to control every action and thought of everyone around him. Self-centered, narcissistic, bullying, he has always been my example of what kind of man not to be. However, this was an early warning of what to expect of people that might hold authority over you, and sadly I have yet to be disappointed in this.

My second lesson in the nature of authority came from school. It was here I found that teacher are sad, bitter, self-hating people, that take every ounce of their misery out on the children in there care. I get that teaching is not the first choice for anyone, but there unfulfilled dreams aren't the fault of the children. It seems that at some point they start seeing hope and they feel they must crush it. As a child, I didn't know what I might do in the future, but I knew I couldn't become like these poor bastards.

Now as an adult you deal with less direct authority, but you still deal with it. The cop that got 34 "C-"s in high-school. The middle manager that knows he will never advance. The guy at the any government office. The moderator on any given internet forum.

Education.

While I was in a waiting room a child asked me what school was like. He was going into kindergarten, and wanted to know what to expect. I was first surprised that a child so young would approach me being large and bearded, but secondly rather at a loss for what to tell the child about k-12 public education. The boy's mother came up and got him before I could answer, she seemed worried, but the child was in no danger. Since then I have tried to think of a way to describe k-12 education, here are a few of my thoughts.

If I were to be bluntly honest, I would say school is 7 to 8 hours a day of psychological torture and emotional abuse. Most actual learning will be done alone on your time, and teacher will serve only to get in the way of the process. I guess the teachers are mostly acting as an obstacle so they feel like they earned their paycheck. This is clearly not something to tell a child, so perhaps speaking more symbolically would help.

School is basically a raping of the mind. Only when you don't enjoy being raped, you are told it is "for your own good", and that you will "look back on it fondly someday". Gang rape might be more accurate, do to the fact you will deal with many teachers over your time in school. Here again, I think this might be a bit much to tell a child. Maybe something the child could relate to would help.

Ever watch "Tom and Jerry"? Well in school you will be Jerry, and the teacher is Tom. Only Tom never gets any comeuppance. So... basically just "Tom and Jerry" if Tom won. This feels about right, but the child might think you were talking down to them.

School is like if you saw a vast forest, and in that forest was someone tryong to cut down the trees with a sledgehammer. And when told that a saw or axe would work better, that person treats you as if you have just spoken blasphemy. In this the students are the trees, and the teachers are holding the sledgehammers. This gets across the unpleasant nature of the experience, while also hinting at where the root of the problem lays.

A way to help teachers.

Before we get started on this subject I want to be clear on a few subjects. First, I was a good student school, and was near to the top of my class. Second, any academic success I ever had was in spite of the educators around me and never because of them in any measure. Thirdly, I realize their may infact exist educators that actually help students, never witnessed it myself, but I concede  the possibly. Forth, I am only speaking about K-12 education. Having said all of that...



Education in the USA has been poisoned. That poison is the teachers we hire to teach. They are not heroes. On average, they spend more time to spread the myth that they are heroes than actually teaching.  They have turned school days in to psychological endurance tests for children, where torture is sadly not too strong a word to describe the situation.

Teacher for the most part spend their time torturing children and lamenting the series of life choices that made them become teachers. The vast majority of them failed at whatever their ambition was, and our now stuck in a second choice they hate. They hate themselves for what they have become and take it out of the child, the poor children.

Now there is good news, most teachers spend a lot of time thinking about suicide. The problem is most of them are far too cowardly to go through with it. The answer is so simple, we just need to give them that extra push they need.

So to every teacher out there, do it, end it once and for all. There are many ways to do it, painless and painful, depending on your level of self hatred. The students will be better off, and so will virtually everyone that is in your life. As a bonus, you will never have to wake up earlier to see the children you so hate. Everybody wins.