What a thing to say! I fully get what the OP is saying. The terrible terrible dread that wrapped itself around you as you contemplated having to go to that environment. The way that you could never fully enjoy Sunday because tomorrow was Monday. The cruel teachers. The mind-numbing boredom. The brutality of your peers. None of this has any place in childhood.
Apparently my kids go to a different type of school. They look forward to Mondays so that they can spend time passing notes and giggling (or whatever it is boys do) with their friends.
School killed my desire to read. My ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Wynn, was actually quite a good teacher, but somehow that class sucked the joy out of reading. Many years later, when I was in my early 30s, I re-read A Tale of Two Cities, and lo and behold, it didn’t suck.
Having attended both private (K-8) and public (9-12) schools, the former being extremely elitist and full of the children of celebrities etc., and the latter being underfunded, grimy and gritty, with drug and gang problems. Public school wasn’t fun by any means, but the private schooling definitely screwed me up more than the public. Public schools are by and large a microcosm of the society from which they’re derived, which is why they’re generally full of hostile dullards, run by dead-eyed bureaucrats, and permeated with desperate anomie. In any case, it’s better than working in a textile mill from age 8.
This is U.S. public school, right? Public schools in my area (my own high school included) put way too much emphasis on atheletics, often at the expense of academics. There was always money for the football field, or for a new gym floor, but when I graduated in 2000 there were still numerous 386 and older computers chugging away in the computer labs. In addition, I sat through many classes – especially math – where the teachers would cheerfully admit that they were presenting the material in such a way that would ensure the lowest-performing students would pass. There wasn’t much math taught past trig, and there were no advanced science courses.
So, I would like to propose that public schools (at least, those in rural North Carolina) have killed academics.
I think the problem here is not whether the school was public or private. I happened to go to public school. The problem is that they suck the life out of children by trying to educate them in a format that is not conducive to a child’s natural instincts. Kids LOVE to learn, they just don’t love to be forced to sit in an uncomfortable chair for hours on end.
But part of what they are being taught is how to function in every day life as an adult. For the vast majority of us getting up to be to work by 9 every day is an important skill to have. For the vast majority of us being able to follow instructions even if we don’t like them or agree with them (exceptions to be made for legal or moral issues) is important. Not all children will grow up to work in an office setting but most of them will not grow up to be circus performers either, so having basic day to day skills of following a schedule and doing work you don’t want to do is the most important thing you will learn in school. I haven’t used much in the way of algebra or my theater arts lessons but I damn sure get up for work every day.
I really don’t see how someone taught in a different environment couldn’t work at a desk. Expecting a 15 year old to sit at a desk for hours at a time isn’t unreasonable. Expecting an 8 year old to, is.