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School or Prison

schoolprison.com

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Re: School or Prison

#171

Post by paganel »

dash2 wrote: post #47
cyberbanjo wrote: post #4

Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? Michel Foucault

This is one of the most delightfully overblown quotes of all time. But Herbert Marcuse went one better: he compared amusement parks to concentration camps.

I still have actual regular nightmares from my school-years, even though I've just reached 40 years of age. They started when I was 20-something, and they will probably never go away. What is more interesting is that during my school years I never looked at school as an institution as being repressive or "prison-like", looks like my unconscious/subconscious/whatever there is there inside was very good at repressing that obvious fact.

Re: School or Prison

#172

Post by calibas »

paulpauper wrote: post #11
cyberbanjo wrote: post #4

Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? Michel Foucault

this is because tall, rectangular buildings maximize volume to surface area, whether a hospital school or prison. It is not a form of social control or domination. it is more efficient this way. A one-story hospital would be prohibitively expensive to build in an urban area, and it is not like healthcare is not already too expensive.

I've noticed authoritarians tend to care about maximizing volume to surface area over aesthetics, so I don't think those things are entirely unrelated.

Re: School or Prison

#174

Post by kipply »

ineedasername wrote: post #100

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

I did weekend classes in elementary school which were two hours, during which our teacher would not let us go to the bathroom. Parents eventually complained and so in exchange for being able to go pee, we were no longer permitted water during the two hours.

Re: School or Prison

#175

Post by skissane »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #150
TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might have been one of those. It took me years to fully internalize that university classes, despite superficial similarity, aren't run by high school rules.

In my experience it depended on the class. Business school classes were very much like high school, at least the ones I took (I was not a business major). Assigned seats, attendance taken, etc. Don't recall if bathroom trips needed permission as I always handled that before class started. Math and science classes were generally much more informal. Class met at a specified time and place, and nobody paid much attentio…

> Class met at a specified time and place, and nobody paid much attention to who was there or not

At my university, attendance at lectures and tutorials was optional and no attendance was taken (for most subjects). Most people went to the lectures but attendance at tutorials was much more mixed. I tended to skip tutorials a lot.

I remember one year I promised myself "This year I'm going to turn up to everything". So I went to the first tutorial for one of my CS subjects. The tutor asked us "Is there anything you didn't understand from the lecture?" We all said "No". He said, "Then why did you bother coming to the tutorial?"

Then he told us he was trying to teach himself quantum physics as an excuse to not work on his PhD thesis. He asked us if anyone knew quantum physics. One guy in the class was a physics major and offered to give the tutor a quantum physics lesson. The rest of us just left. And the tutor would have put that down on his timesheet and got paid for it.

I didn't bother going to any more tutorials for that subject.

In hindsight, maybe I should have complained, I probably could have got that tutor in a lot of trouble. But I didn't.

Re: School or Prison

#176

Post by pavel_lishin »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #162

In one of the largest high schools in Texas, we weren't allowed to leave campus, we couldn't even take our lunch out of the double doors and eat our sandwich outside. It's something I absolutely despise about our contemporary culture. I live in Latin America now and envy the kids for getting 45 minutes free at lunch time to hang out outside, socialize, buy from the street vendors that will gather at that time, maybe…

Our principal refused to let students leave campus, as a student had gotten in a car wreck over lunch and died at a previous school.

So, there's some logic there. They are nominally responsible for you during school hours.

Re: School or Prison

#178

Post by souplesse »

ineedasername wrote: post #100

A more meaningful comparison would be bathroom privileges. In prison you can pretty much poop or get a drink of water whenever you want. In school you need special permission, and hope the teacher wasn't in a bad mood or that 3 other kids hadn't needed to pee in the last half hour, meeting some mental quota the teacher has for the appropriate # of people that should have to use the toilet during a given period of tim…

Comments here suggest you're in the majority with your experience, though I wonder if there might be a little participation bias with regard to strong memories of such bad policies.

As a contrast, at my school the policy was far more reasonable: you still needed permission to leave, but if you didn't abuse the privilege—using it every day, or disappearing for half the lesson—the teacher wouldn't give you any grief.

Re: School or Prison

#179

Post by baud147258 »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #104
layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s unfair to compare CLASP [1] buildings with centuries old stone buildings... The CLASP system was a stopgap measure for cost-effectively building schools for the baby boomer generation given the economic constraints of post-WW2 Britain. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consortium_of_Local_Authorit...

It doesn't look bad because it's cheap, it looks bad because it's inhuman.

inhuman is a strong word just to talk about schools that were built on the cheap, especially schools that, at the time of constructions, were required because there wasn't enough schools building available.

Re: School or Prison

#180

Post by throwawaygh »

highmastdon wrote: post #160

Just the idea of a school is worse than a prison: - it’s mandatory - closed confinement - not allowed to do what you want in that closed area - you’re being told what to do for at least 8-14 years - you’re being told when to pee - during the years there is no choice in what you want to learn And at the end of your school/studies you’re asked to be creative and responsible

The following is specific to the USA:

1. School is not mandatory; education is mandatory. Ask any home schooler. A rare few private schools offer quite different experiences than the typical public school (e.g., the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools). This applies also to "closed confinement" and "control". Of course, opting out requires enlightened parenting and lots of resources.

2. You are constantly told what to do, but outside of some broad physical requirements there's really no forcing you to do what you're told. Choose some good coding/math/philosophy puzzles during the evening and work on them instead of paying attention in class. No one can control what you do in your head. You can similarly opt of almost all graded work; especially if you stick to AP courses then the grades you are assigned by the instructor you don't much matter anyways.

3. You are not given a choice in what your lectures cover, but you can choose what to learn and eschew any required "creativity"/"responsibility".

In other words, you can always choose not to play the game and still turn out just fine. Having a friend group that reinforces this option is helpful; I was part of one and today we're all very highly paid and well-educated professionals because -- not in spite of -- our complete disengagement from the high school game (including the academic component).

To any highschoolers reading this: if you find yourself intellectually dead and generally creeped out by high school culture, consider ignoring your coursework to study for a GED and then simply attending a nearby high school instead of college.

However, at least finish your freshman year somewhat engaged. Many aspects of American culture are easier to understand if you know how the vast majority of its citizens are socialized. E.g., many modern political rallies are intentionally choreographed to match the structure and emotional melody of a high school pep rally. Attending a few yourself as an open-minded and non-judgemental exercise in field anthropology will be helpful.

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