[labster]

I was a graduate student teacher too. The biggest difference to me about teaching in university is that everyone in the classroom wants to be there — or at least cares enough about their parents to fake it. How could they not? It costs thousands.

Secondary schools, however, are prisons for our youth, so that their parents can go to work. Something like half of the people don't want to be there on any one day. So how are we supposed to keep children forcibly confined without cop shit? This is all well and good if education is the goal of school, but people who don't want to learn do a really good job of not learning. We confine them anyway. We pass laws requiring them to be there. We make our children get written permission from their wardens to go to the toilet, but at least they get an hour out in the yard^W quad, right?

I think that all of this institutional dehumanization is harmful, like the author does. But I think that unless you let people leave, particularly the disruptive students, you can't run a school this way.

Of course, if we don't dehumanize our kids in school, we run the risk that they won't work for dehumanizing employers in the future either. When you reach university, no one makes you beg to use the toilet, no one cares if you miss a class. You're in the elite now. But for the rest of the workforce, well, you had better have an good written excuse for being sick.