Why Giant High Schools Just Can’t Help Messed-Up Kids by Auguste Meyrat

Why Giant High Schools Just Can’t Help Messed-Up Kids by Auguste Meyrat

Contrary to popular belief, large schools actually discourage cliques and hierarchies. To maintain stability and order, administrators and teachers leave less and less freedom to students: passing periods and lunch periods are shortened, talking discouraged, and associations supervised through larger, more time-consuming extracurricular programs. Life for students is highly regimented.

 Indeed, some liken this to prison. Someone watches them not just during school hours, but after and before the school day as well. Does this mean critics are right to point out that school officials hope to marginalize parents’ influence and home life? Not deliberately. They simply want minimize variables that might upset the machine. To be fair, parents demand a secure, orderly environment—and, oppressive as it seems, this is what it looks like.

Brilliant must-read article on what our public schools are doing to our children.