My
father and I were recently
hashing out the recent
epidemic of
high school kids who are apparently
losing their minds at school--that is,
cracking under the pressure and completely
snapping at school;
pumping teachers full of lead and whatnot. Now, we don't particularly
condone such behaviour, but both of us agree that
every single "solution" to this problem we've seen proposed has been
ass-backwards and designed, it seems, to do nothing but
exacerbate the problem.
Now, because my father is
among the smartest people on the planet and has been a
teacher--though in
college, not
high school--I thought I would
node his
theory--or one of them--here, for the
Everything public to peruse.
He claims, after
fifty years of existence, that
kids haven't really changed at all. Thirty-five years ago, when he was in high school, they still
hated it. The only real difference was this:
Back then, high school was
it. After you finished high school, you were done. You got out, you got a job, you got
married, you had kids. After high school, you quit school and began living. So the vast majority of
fed-up 16-year-olds just stuffed their rage in a back pocket for two years, because soon it would be over anyway.
Of course, that's not the case today. By the time we hit 16, we've already been in school for a good eleven or twelve years, and people are already hounding us about where we'll go to school NEXT. You're not even close to
done after high school; in fact, if you don't get at least another 4 years in, you're going to be
laughed at,
seriously limited for jobs and money, or both. So, in essence, we put our kids through at MINIMUM
20 straight years of school, and then get shocked when they crack around year 14 or so.
I don't know if this
theory poses a
solution at all. I do know that, in my family, we were
encouraged to take a year or two
off between high school and college; hell, my dad even encouraged me to
drop out of college after 2 years and
take another break. I mean, we do know that
high stress takes a
serious toll on people, probably children
more so. And perhaps we're
stressing education a little too much? It's
deadly important and all, but isn't having fun when you're a kid important too? Isn't taking a break and
doing something different once in a while rather
fundamental to growing up right? Maybe more
parents should take their children out of school for a year here and there, to
travel,
visit family, or just
hang around and do something ELSE for a while.
It's
just a thought.