Comment by bill_joy_fanboy
4 days ago
> forced internment for children
Where I live (U.S.), new schools are literally built like prisons... each wing is laid out from a central "observation area" for the administrators. It's just a panopticon design modeled after penitentiaries.
I was with my family in our new local high school. My dad and I were the only two who noticed the layout.
The panopticon design was originally intended for schools too, as well as other institutions:
> Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums. He devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison, so the term now usually refers to that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Whether it’s friendly and encourages healthy development is another question.
The criticism section of the Wikipedia article focuses on political aspects, but to me, the very idea of keeping someone feeling like they're always watched sounds like psychological torture.
In fairness if you’ve ever been bullied and corned out of view of the teachers, having someone seeing you may feel like a relief.
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And yet, I bet when you make a trade on craigslist (showing my age :), you meet in a public place where people can see you. Why?
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In Missouri, high-school buildings use the same blueprints as state prisons. Why bother designing something custom? They serve the same purpose. They literally are prisons.
If a teenager fails to show up for school, a police officer will eventually show up to arrest their parents and place the teenager in the custody of a "foster family." Now both parent and teenager are imprisoned. And we are told this is freedom.
To make matters much much worse, children in state custody with the foster system are routinely exposed to all kinds of abuse. Many foster families operate like a profitable business where costs are minimized and care is entirely absent.
I feel I must point out that education buildings in Missouri do not share designs with prisons as a norm. Maybe this is true somewhere in the state but not here.
Yeah I didn't mean all of them. A couple of examples that I am aware of are Ozark High School and Waynesville High School.
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> And we are told this is freedom.
I think we pretty much universally agree that mandatory schooling is preferable to the alternative, do you really think an illiterate populous is preferable? So yes actually that is freedom. Society guarantees that you will not be illiterate just because your parents were crack addicts, I think that's a good thing.
I don't think an illiterate populous is the alternative unless you think most people lack intrinsic motivation and also have families that don't value education. Seems extremely unlikely. Maybe you wouldn't have gone to school if you had a choice but most people would, if nothing else for free childcare.
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There's security checkpoints and police officers in bulletproof vests and carrying guns as well in some cases, because what if a school shooter shows up? Of course, when one does show up a hundred militarized police will show up and... do nothing, because what will the union do if one gets shot?
My favorite was the lady cop in Texas who said she would only "go in" if her kid was in there. Your kids? ... Not her problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--rt8aVV2zk