(Stillness in the Storm Editor) There is a major debate at the moment about what to do with our children come this fall. Should we send them to school or keep the home?
As I am an advocate for education reform, knowing through detailed psychological and other research, how damaging the current educational system can be, it’s a hard question to answer.
On the one hand, most the modern-day school system is glorified indoctrination, where children are forced to sit still for hours, learn information that is taught in a way that doesn’t translate into real-world skills, along with children often being subjected to bullying or outright abuse from teachers themselves. Institutional schooling often kills a child’s curiosity, while depriving them of playtime that actually enhances intelligence. (That being said, I want to be sure to say there are a great many good teachers and positive outcomes that can come out of schools, so we can’t be black and white here.)
On the other hand, keeping children at home isn’t a perfect solution either. If you are fortunate enough to know how to do homeschooling and have the time and financial resources to make it happen, you’re probably thinking that the removal of children from schools has been a good thing. But it’s not so simple.
Book Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School
The issue is that if you don’t know how to do homeschooling, your child is probably not getting the best education and could be spending a lot of their time in front of TV or on the internet where they could be absorbing all sorts of less than savory things, to be it nicely.
I’ll be the first one to say that most of the educational institutions we have are woefully inadequate (despite the fact a fair portion of teachers are well-intentioned), and we should probably move to methods employed by Waldorf schools, for example.
But a child that stays home all day, barely attends the e-learning classes currently used, and is a tremendous burden on already stressed-out parents is likely not better off.
What’s more, parent-child resentment is a serious thing to consider, causing neglect, and can lead to verbal and even physical abuse.
Parents who are already over-stressed due to lack of a job, having to keep an eye on children they never anticipated having to do, and all with less financial resources due to an economic lockdown, are much more likely to develop emotional troubles that their immediate family has to contend with, like their children. Children, often silently, suffer during these kinds of situations.
If that wasn’t enough, 90% of sexual child abuse comes from someone the child knows personally, the overwhelming majority of cases are at the hands a family member. School teachers and staff are often the ones that recognize when children display behaviors that indicate they are being abused. Meaning, if children aren’t in school, and they don’t have an ideal home life, then keeping children out of schools for COVID-19 isn’t the best situation.
So what do we do?
Despite this stress-provoking situation, the good news is that all of this is helping to provide a climate wherein we can look at these issues with renewed focus. And perhaps, we can use this as an opportunity to have deeper discussions about what the best way to raise our children is, given a busy world where most parents both have to work to make ends meet.
Book The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards”
Case in point, the following article gives us more food for thought.
– Justin
Related The Real Reason Why a Harvard Professor Thinks Homeschooling Should Be Banned
by Vic Bishop, July 14th, 2020
The debate about opening schools in the fall is heating up, and sadly, it has already become a partisan issue. Liberals have taken the stance that it is not safe to re-open schools, while blasting conservatives who seem to really want schools to reopen.
Whatever side you’re on in this conversation, if schools do re-open, kids will be subjected to an insane regiment of new distancing and safety measures. In fact, it won’t look like school much at all, but more like a behavioral re-education camp.
Fullerton School District near Anaheim California recently produced a promotional video for parents, demonstrating what the ‘new normal’ will look like for school kids. And while this is, of course, just one school district, still images from the production offer a fair glimpse of what it would take to reopen schools during a pandemic.
The bus ride:
Not surprisingly, many parents are having a hard time with this, and comments to these images on FB give you a solid idea of how uncomfortable all of this makes many people.
[the_ad_group id=”3118″]
“This will take half of the school day.”
“Just rediculous. It will take hours to get to school.”
“No way!”
Some parents applaud the measures in the name of safety, but you can’t argue that measures like these will be insanely difficult to enforce while also completely removing the social aspect, the fun part, of school.
Entering school:
If you have children, you already know how difficult this year has been on them. They’ve been subjected to a form of solitary confinement, and sending them to a medically regimented school will only add to the trauma.
As writer Julian Rose notes:
“While the situation is slowly changing, the underlying psychology of ‘obedience to the rules’ is not.
This obedience has been taken to a new low as many schools and kindergartens have tried to apply the social distancing regulation to young school children. This has taken the form of chalking out two metre spaced apart circles or squares on the classroom and playground floor and ordering children to stay in them.
Young children have been told to sit or stand alone in what amount to individually tailored exclusion zones and psychological prisons. Children, medical advisers say, who are not even at any risk from what is called CV-19.” ~Julian Rose
Not sure what that imaging device is, but new rules and regulations will require frequent temperature checks, and continuous collection of data on each student.
Lunch and snack time:
Most people forget just how malleable human beings are. We’re really just moldable little automatons, and subjecting children to this type of rigorous behavior control and monitoring will have lasting effects on the psyche of a whole generation of kids. The worst part is that it conditions them to be obedient and uncritical. They are learning to follow patterns and signs and orders all day long.
[the_ad_group id=”3123″]
I gotta go to the bathroom:
Whatever your take on this situation, whether you believe the virus is dangerous enough to warrant this kind of behavioral management of the individual or not, demanding this level of obedience from children unnatural and psychologically dangerous.
What do you think about this? Share your comment in the comments section below.
About The Author
Vic Bishop is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com. He is an observer of people, animals, nature, and he loves to ponder the connection and relationship between them all. A believer in always striving to becoming self-sufficient and free from the matrix, please track him down on Facebook.
This article (‘Behavioral Re-Education Camps’ – Cali School District Produces Video of What a Return to School Will Look Like) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Vic Bishop and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio and internal links.
Stillness in the Storm Editor: Why did we post this?
The news is important to all people because it is where we come to know new things about the world, which leads to the development of more life goals that lead to life wisdom. The news also serves as a social connection tool, as we tend to relate to those who know about and believe the things we do. With the power of an open truth-seeking mind in hand, the individual can grow wise and the collective can prosper.
– Justin
Not sure how to make sense of this? Want to learn how to discern like a pro? Read this essential guide to discernment, analysis of claims, and understanding the truth in a world of deception: 4 Key Steps of Discernment – Advanced Truth-Seeking Tools.
Stillness in the Storm Editor’s note: Did you find a spelling error or grammatical mistake? Send an email to [email protected], with the error and suggested correction, along with the headline and url. Do you think this article needs an update? Or do you just have some feedback? Send us an email at [email protected]. Thank you for reading.
Source:
Thank you for this article. I am very concerned. As a school psychologist I do not know how this school year will affect the students, but I know that it will not be a positive outcome. I have witnessed a drastic increase in anxiety, depression, and other disorders in the last several years and this current situation is likely taking many, if not most students over the edge. We as humans are designed to be social and touch is a huge portion of of our socialization process. I do my best to avoid fear propaganda, yet this situation has me in a disempowered state. My heart breaks for what is to come.
Yes this is a big concern. And I’m glad someone who sees children regularly and is trained in psychology is seeing these things too. It’s far to easy to reduce this highly complicated issue to a binary. I would say the silver lining is that at least this situation can help force us as a people to discuss the long standing issues within our educational institutions and schools. Thanks for your service as a teacher!