adults are always talking about how “kids will do anything to get out of school” and okay, first of all that’s not true, but I think we really need to ask why that idea holds so much sway.
children’s brains are hard-wired to take in new information and acquire new skills. consider, for a moment, just how thoroughly our society had to fuck up the concept of education for it to be a normal thing to assume kids are universally desperate to avoid learning.
couple things here:
multiple things can actually be bad at the same time
I’m 32
couple more things:
Little kids really aren’t equipped to work full time without damaging their physical, mental, and emotional development and health, and when you play the “but adults work all day!” card you sound like a nineteenth century textile baron.
Highschoolers can easily be “working” 40+ hours a week, between school, homework, and extracurriculars and/or part-time work, and still hear this smug “:/ wait til you get to the real world sweaty” rhetoric all the time.
The original claim here wasn’t even “school is too hard,” it was “school is failing to perform its most basic function,” which is different.
from an adult point of view:
- When my work day is done, it’s done. I don’t need to spend hours each night to study or do homework.
- I don’t have tests and exams.
- I MAKE MONEY.
Sometimes I’ll be at home and start freaking out that I haven’t done any homework yet before I realize “Wait I’m 30.”
Or I’ll be asleep dreaming that I’m at school but suddenly realize at the end of the semester that I’ve missed all my classes and don’t know what’s going on
School/homework has to be a stressful thing if it gives people anxiety and nightmares over a decade after graduation.
On a serious note: I agree with all of this.
On another note “you sound like a 19th century textile baron” is my new fave insult.
