Why public schools resemble prisons:why children suffer
It became painfully obvious to me in my Junior year of high school, while on a school trip to a well known prison in the next state, that there was "Not" a whole lot of differences between the two institutions . My class had the honor of being one of the the first classes of high school students to be a part of the "Scared Straight "Program.
The program was designed to for inner city youth, as a way of deterring them for coming to such a place as prison. Coming from Brooklyn, this was a daunting task for the New York Board of Education. It was to my surprise that, the teachers were not surprised that the students, were not surprised at the state of operations inside of the prison.
All institutions must have uniformity and structure if they are going to have any level of successful operations. As we walked into the prison the first thing we heard was the familiar sound of a ringing bell. This bell was as an indication of what was to be the next event. We knew that we were a long way from home room, so this ring must be for the pupils in this particular institution. Maybe it was time for their lunch, or time for general assembly.
For the most part, we spent most of the day looking for people who we knew ,or heard was locked up there.We spent three hours of having inmates yelling in our faces, with all types of profanity and sexuality explicit threats about what they were going to do to some of my fellow male class mates, should they ever end up there. Most of their dissertation was about the routine of getting up every morning and going to the mess hall to eat, then going back to their specific holding places or job responsibilities until time for lunch. From there they would go to the yard until it was time to lock down again, which they stayed until it was time for dinner. It appeared to me that it was a routine for robots.Locked in a system that was designed for correction, but had metaphor into a modern day plantation, with a work force that no longer has master's name but a numeric identinfication as property of the state.
I don't think that the program have the success it desired. On the way back to Brooklyn all we did was talk about how we were already in prison, just without the bars. As far as we could see, School was a prerequisite or training ground for prison. The warden was the principle. And as fate would have it , one of the correctional officers in the prison, use to be a security guard at our school. But without question the teachers had the Correctional officer's roll in their job description. The sound of the "Bell" directing traffic was a sound that we were all use to and has been embedded in our DNA genetic coding from slavery, for both blacks and whites.
1840, when politicians from Massachusetts started lobbying for mandatory state-funded schooling. The efforts took hold extremely fast. In Massachusetts, the first bill requiring all children to attend elementary school in 1852 passed. New York followed with a similar bill in 1853. By 1918 every state in the Union had a law requiring that all children be required to attend school.
Over time our schools have become factories for manufacturing non-thinking, working class robots. That get up at 7 to be out of the house by 8 to be at work at 9 to finish at 5 to be home by 6 to eat by 8. At this point they are rewarded with 3 hours of prime time.Our schools are no longer institutes of higher learning, but a means to institute a organized systematic "Dumba-fication" of a future society. No longer can a student reach and dream the impossible dream, he or she is told to wake up and stop dreaming, get in line with every body else and stay IN -formation.
The child suffers because he or she no longer has freedom of thought. Thought is controlled by a curriculum that is founded in someone else's "HIS-STORY", and "MY-STORY" is a mystery because it is anti productive in the effort to create a workforce to keep the "Parasitic Elite" in control of the "Debits and Credits" The time has come where our inner city children no longer plan to go to collage, but they mentally prepared themselves to go to prison.
Since the days of deregulation and the privatization of the prison system, it would be ludicrous to think that those that control the debits and the credits in this country would not properly provide the inventory of prisoners for purpose of sustaining the necessary cash flow for the publicly traded prison institution.So when our children leave the home in the mornings on the way to the farm we call school, to herded like cattle, they are reared and lead to the slaughter houses we call prison.
Having already been trained in the system of shut up , think what I tell you to think and stay in-formation the school system is the foundational training grounds for those children that don't have within them to stand up and be recognized for their critical and independent thinking.