The Kids Are Not All Right?

Because I have a strong animus against gubmint schools -- for many years I have called them "government child-custodial facilities" -- I am rather taken aback by the current conventional wisdom that kids are depressed and suicidal because they can't go to school.

Wat?

But here is Salena Zito writing about the travails of the daughter of a "hospitalist," Dr. Paul Carson, of Pittsburgh, who has gone from an A student to a D student, because "I have nothing to look forward to."

Wat?

So, Doctor Paul, whatabout a spot of homeschooling? Whatabout a micro-school with your Doctoral pals? Whatabout a "learning pod," whatever that is? A month or two ago, on my regular evening walk, I came upon a couple of families -- with kids roaring around before my eyes completely out of control: yay! -- who were sending their kids to a "micro school." And these were doubtless completely conventional gentry liberals of North Seattle.

Here's the problem for me. In my reading about homeschooling, I get the impression that kids that are homeschooled are streets ahead of gubmint-schooled kids when it comes to social skills and learning skills. They are self-motivated. Because, I assume, they have not been kept in gubmint child-custodial barracks during their impressionable youth where all they had to do was follow orders.

But if kids that normally go to gubmint schools go all to pieces if they can't go to their gubmint schools... Well to me it says that the problem is bigger than I thought. I mean: to me, schools with their ranks of desks and their teachers up front and their tests and their grades -- well, in my dotage, where I am always trying to think Bad Thoughts, I am coming to think that schools are military basic training for... For what? Life as a cubicle worker?

As a kid born to Brits in India, I am sensitive to what generally used to happen to Brit kids in India. They were sent home to Britland, maybe to board with a relative, and sent to boarding school.

Then there is the case of Rudyard Kipling and his sister that were sent home from India and spent years boarding at the "house of desolation." Boy, can you spell child neglect?

On the other hand, my mother, born and raised in Japan, always regretted that her parents did not send her back to Britland to go to boarding school.

Now, my parents moved from India back to Britland when I was two, and I went to private schools, going to boarding school from the age of 10, I think. It all seemed perfectly natural to me.

My only regret in my youth was that I feel that I would have preferred to be around adults more instead of around kids my own age. When you go to boarding school you are around kids your own age 24-7. See, I tended to think that kids my own age were idiots, and I might have learned a lot from being around older people. By the way, there was almost no bullying, as I would understand it.

See, I tend to think that, given how we treat kids -- following the latest religious or political fad -- it's a bloody miracle that kids grow up to have a decent adult life at all.

And then there is the curious phenomenon that IQs in the western world are going down. Whereas, earlier in the 20th century, according to the Flynn effect, IQs were going up. Until they started down.

You think that there is a problem? If so, I wonder what it is.