School Shouldn’t Be Like a Factory

School Shouldn’t Be Like a Factory

We got the children out of the factories and put them in... factories? Or worse?

I hear stories about the volume of work given children: the long hours, the level of stress and anxiety, the lack of sleep, the impacted schedules, the skyrocketing expectations, the unrelenting requirements to be fulfilled, the immense pressure to "perform" in various ways, to get "accepted" into this or that program or institution...

Here's a tiny sampling of the kind of thing you can read every day all day all over the country.

"She’d committed to participating in the competition in January, and we’d prepared as well as we could, as she had 5 AP tests the week before last, and the 6th test, last Friday. I knew that she’s been getting very little sleep for months, and have expressed concern for her physical and mental health. Naturally, she was stressed coming into the competition..."

This was an un-extraordinary post presented in a context of normal and was about whether the student deserved a do-over at the competition, not really anything about whether there was a problem with the whole situation - having "concern" for physical and mental health but pushing on nevertheless.

Some comments did mention how students are "throwing away opportunities" at college and careers ("quitting") because they're so exhausted and overworked and burned out by the end of high school, with some going through detox and rehab trying to recoup and heal. But it all seems to be accepted as mostly normal.

But at least the children are not in factories?...

Exposing the cruelties of child labor, Caroline Sheridan Norton's famous 1836 poem, A Voice from the Factories, featured a range of children’s occupations, such as factory slaves, which included "the performer."

"Children labor all day long for others’ gain."