Showing our love for children by giving them gifts is a special part of the winter holiday season within families of various traditions. But gifts seem meager compensation for the misery that many children must daily experience. I am not writing of the misery caused by the obvious horrors of violence, poverty and disease. Instead, this is a misery that is accepted and condoned by a society gone mad.
It's the Christmas season, but with many children unable to play throughout the year because of homework, it strikingly reminds me of the children in the television special "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" where Kriss Kringle is imprisoned by the Burgermeister, who forbids the children to play or own toys. Toys and play are not forbidden here, but no such laws are needed to create the Burgermeister's society: Educational requirements achieve the same result, for children have little time for anything but schoolwork.
Learning can be wonderful, stimulating, and practical; some teachers are inspiring individuals who radiate intelligence and kindness; some children buoyantly thrive in school; some adults hold fond memories of school. Yet, these encouraging truths are not the full picture of an educational system that can trap and dispirit teachers and students alike.
When I was a child, I thought that we children ought to be paid for all the schoolwork we did. Oddly enough, child labor and education laws have contrived a system in which children no longer receive pay but are nonetheless required to labor endlessly (supposedly for our benefit). I was primarily producing rather than learning — essay after essay, test after test, one grueling day after another, weekdays, weekends, and vacations. The assignments were relentless and my mood was one of enraged powerlessness.
How many can relate? My experience is just one facet of the truth that conveys this message: There is something very cruel and demeaning about treating the child's brain like an inanimate machine that must ingest what it's given and spit out what it's told. The brain has been colonized; it's become property of the school, of the state.
It is horrible for many to wake up exhausted, leave bed, home, pets, and hobbies, travel on an unfriendly bus, and proceed to sit for six hours in an overheated, stuffy building within a cold, confusing, and crowded culture where you have to think certain thoughts at certain times, speak when told to, and remain quiet otherwise. On top of that, when you get home, it's hours of homework broken only by dinnertime until late at night. When you finally crawl into bed, all you have to look forward to is another numbing day. My parents did not push this behavior; it was simple obedience to school instructions.
It's also what you're no longer able to do that is so depressing. For some, it is balance in life itself that is desecrated and destroyed when high levels of homework are given, formerly in fifth grade, but nowadays earlier. My sister used to play the role of teacher, Miss Mouse, and she'd stand at a chalkboard in the basement and teach me — even give me little homework sheets if I asked. I would love it. The things we could do on our own. But no more time for that come fifth grade. Eager days of playing at liberty outside, climbing trees, constructing snow tunnels, lingering with cheerful breezes, sunshine, and beckoning paths in the woods are over. Zestful days of happily reading books of one's own choosing, energetically drawing, writing animal reports, identifying rocks and feathers, pursuing the passion of learning on one's own, and concocting spooky skits in the basement are over.
How could anyone consider such a life for children, a life without freedom and passion, to be an indicator of a society that is highly developed and free?
Whatever positive benefits may derive from school must not be pursued in a manner that imposes such a high cost upon so many children: Depression, rage, tension, fear, restlessness, sedentary lifestyles, sleep deprivation, separation from nature and loved ones, and lack of time for all other life.
If schools and governments do not voluntarily rein in the frenzied, fashionable and competitive velocity of forced learning and standards, then child labor, educational and health laws must protect children from these burdens from an educational system gone awry.