[dguaraglia]

That's not the 'why' though. Plenty of people across the world grow up in similar situations as kids in the Midwest and they don't go around destroying other people's property.

I honestly think there's something really messed up about American culture. I believe you can draw a direct correlation between what I think it is - people being indoctrinated into selfishness from an early age - and behavior like that.

For context, my wife grew up in a small town in the Midwest. She used to tell me horror stories about high school and I used to dismiss them as maybe be it just being her experience and nobody else's. I changed my mind when one day we went to the wedding of a high school friend and we were sat on the same table with some people who were 'popular' in high school. Their recollection of those years were as bad as my wife's. One woman, when asked about her experience literally told me 'honestly, I try not to think about that time'.

These people grew up in a location that was by far better than my own upbringing in every possible metric: affluent town, very low crime, infinite resources when compared with my developing country schools, access to studying abroad, etc... And they fucking hated high school. That blew my mind.

[lopmotr]

But did their parents consistently love them and have a stable relationship with each other? It's well known that lack of those factors causes lifelong psychological problems in children which manifests as criminal behavior, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and suicide, as well as perpetuating the problem to the next generation.

[dguaraglia]

Actually, that's my point!

As you can imagine, my wife and me have had several conversations about how different our experiences going through school were. I've spotted a couple of things in particular that couldn't be more different:

1) Kids in the US tend to move around a lot 2) Schools classes are designed so that kids are with different groups every year/subject 3) Kids who want to go to college are under a lot of pressure from age 14 or so to perform flawlessly or risk their whole live plans being derailed 4) The obsession with popularity ('Prom King/Queen', etc.)

I think all of those lead to very poor bonding between kids. Sure, here and there you'll have kids that'll become life-long friends, but the vast majority of Americans I've met barely talk to high-school friends (they tend to form long-term bonds in college).

I have a theory that's one of the reasons school bullying is so prevalent in the US. Don't get me wrong, there were bullies in my school in South America too, but they were few and far apart and they usually grew out of it by 6th grade. It's easy for a bully to pick individual victims out of a school full of individuals... it's not the same when the kid they try to pick on has been friends for years with the same 10 to 15 people.

In any case, the conclusion we've come to is we don't want our kids to go through the American school system.

[_y5hn]

A better question: Where are American kids not being repressed?