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In a final display of disrespect, I and others in the school system trade in lies nearly every day. We lie because, ultimately, our interest is in following orders, keeping our jobs, and preserving the system. Take standardized testing as an example. Although many of my colleagues and I saw little value in the tests or the massive bureaucracy around them, we dutifully completed test-preparation exercises with our students and lied to them about the importance of the tests for them and “their” school system.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/public-schools-have-no-respect-students-or-their-parents

Mises Wire • Karl Streitel

Some of us may remember the Helen Lovejoy character in The Simpsons, who would appear any time some catastrophe befell the town and plaintively wail, “Won’t someone please think of the children?!” The joke here, of course, is that as long as you do something in the name of helping children, it must be right, and you must be virtuous.

Such sentiments are easily ridiculed in cartoons, but unfortunately, they take root in reality like Russian knapweed despite copious evidence undermining their veracity. Consider your own government-school experiences, whether as a student, parent, or interested observer:

• How often did you or your children feel that school was something being done for you and not to you?
• How often did you or your children, especially in middle and high school, leave excited for school in the morning? (If you think that question is unfair, consider what that says about the traditional school system.)
• How often did you or your children feel respected by the school system and those who ran it?

It is that latter question I want to address herein because the concept of respect is one that I have violated time and again during my work as a teacher, and it is one that is foundational to what is rotten in the government school system.

We’ll Control Your Time

Perhaps the most obvious yet overlooked way I and others in the school system disrespected students was by controlling their time. The bell system, a relic of concern over the efficient use of buildings and punctuality, ensures that students know when it is time to learn a subject and when it is time to stop learning a subject, thus guaranteeing that learning becomes relegated to specific time frames determined by others.

Working on your math homework in social studies class? Why, that is forbidden and worthy of punishment. That time is for social studies only. Please wait for the dulcet tone of the bell to signal to you when you are permitted to learn something else. Of course, if you do want to continue learning said subject, that is also not permitted because the bell has told you that it is time to move on to a new subject.

Imagine if anything outside of school worked in the same manner: Cutting your grass? You have forty-five minutes. When you hear the bell, stop and then begin vacuuming your living room. Coding a new piece of software? You have forty-five minutes. When you hear the bell, stop and then return to your assigned small group from the day before to continue working on a marketing campaign for a completely different product.

Is it likely that such processes would yield anything but fragmentation, frustration, and subsistence-level productivity? However, those outcomes are exactly what government schools produce time and again.

This control of time also lends itself naturally to the gradual destruction of students’ innate love of learning. We need look no further than young children to see this inborn quality, but over time, the traditional school system erodes this natural love through control. This erosion is evident each day in the desultory walks of middle school and high school students to their bus stops and through their days at public schools.

We’ll Aggress against You

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