WE PUT OUR KIDS IN SCHOOLS…

We put our kids in schools, but we don’t do it for them. We do it for ourselves.

We put our kids in schools because it allows us to put ourselves in jobs.

We put our kids in schools even though it’s impossible for a person to care for 25 as well as 5.

We put our kids in schools even though most schools are centers for regression in the Age of Information.

We put our kids in schools even though the teachers are mostly hacks who hate education and resent every effort to innovate their method.

We put our kids in schools to prepare them for the world, and yet in school they only learn to be obedient to disabling rules. “Put your cellphone away, sit down, shut up. I know that everything I’m going to tell you is more interestingly presented on the internet, but that would make me redundant. What do you mean that isn’t a good reason? Did I see your hand raised? Would you like a referral?”

We put our kids in schools because we can’t control them without substantial effort. We wouldn’t feel comfortable being home with them during the day, running them through an hourly schedule that prevents sustained thought, patrolling them with radios and a few guns, keeping them from doing normal things like talking, laughing, horse play, etc., for most of the time. This is why we pay others to do what is necessary for our interests.

We put our kids in schools because it’s easy, because we’re afraid of them, because the world is ours and we’re not ready to accommodate them quite yet. When they “become” adults, we have to deal with them as equals. We would like to delay that as long as possible.

We put our kids in schools because we know we’re zombies for the most part, and we want to protect them from the world and the alienation we feel. We project our failure on youth and reminisce on the naiveté of adolescence. We don’t trust that they will be more wise and noble than we are. We don’t trust them because, in truth, we don’t know them.

We put our kids in schools because somebody needs to tell them the bad news that life actually sucks, that its highest achievement is getting a job one doesn’t hate, that they are insignificant, unoriginal, and impotent to change the paradigm they were shat into. Somebody has to tell them, and we put our kids in schools because, by God, it isn’t going to be us.