Chapter 1, Page 1: How Europe treats teens and children compared to America.
I understand that child-rearing & education are highly nuanced topics & aren’t 1-1 comparable to citizen-government or employer-employee relations.
Anyways, Northern & Western Europe are less bad about infantilising teens, & treating children & teens like property, & running schools like prisons than America.
This is the close second thing I hate the most about my country's culture, & is somewhat of an extension of my hatred for my country's Puritan/Calvinist heritage, which expects the worst in people, not to mention the idea of Original Sin in Abrahamic religions.
When it comes to why teenagers (I refuse to use the word "adolescent") should be treated more like adults, I'll refer to the article The Myth of the Teen Brain by Doctor Robert Epstein.
However, the writing that I recommend the very most is Doctor Robert Epstein's Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence.
Other pages from Dr. Robert Epstein are:
Teen 2.0.com
Adolescence & Adultness - Dr. Robert Epstein.
Trashing Teens | Psychology Today
Other authors that I support are Suparna Choudhury, Dr. Adriana Galvan, John Bruer, Dan Romer, Valerie F. Reyna, and Theodore D. Satterthwaite. Joseph Bronski is also an honorable mention.
-
The Happiest Kids in the World: How Dutch Parents Help Their Kids (and Themselves) by Doing Less
-
"If the fires that burn inside youths are not intentionally and lovingly added to the hearth of community, they will burn down the structures of culture, just to feel the warmth." -Michael Meade.
(Image made with PictureQuotes.com and Michael Meade brings timeless tales to his hometown.)
People really need to take those words to heart.
More articles & a podcast:
Teenage Dystopia: The Cycle of Oppression and Resistance | The Daily Bell
Is Mass Schooling behind the Anxiety Epidemic among Teens? - Foundation for Economic Education
Public Education to Blame for the Crippling Anxiety Epidemic Among Teens | Think About Now
Teens Can Do More than We Think | Free Range Kids
Why Dutch teenagers are among the happiest in the world
Chris Romer's answer to What are some interesting facts about Switzerland
Nature & Nurture #79: Dr. Robert Epstein - The Case Against Adolescence
-
"EXCERPT: "These are the teens we have created: mindless consumers, dressed from head to toe in the garb prescribed by specialized divisions of the music and fashion industries, isolated from their heritages and their elders, producing nothing of value for their families or their society, obsessed with non-issues fed to them by waxen heroes. The young men next to me seemed content in their ignorance, but many of their peers want more, and they often don’t know how to express their legitimate needs and desires. Based on my interviews with teens, my experience as a father and teacher, research I’ve conducted and a wealth of data in several fields, I no longer have any doubt about what disenchanted American teens need, no matter how inappropriately they may sometimes choose to express what they want. They need to be reconnected with the adult world—the world they will inevitably join before that skateboard even reconnects with the ground." (from Chapter 13, "How Society Must Change")
"Teenagers already live in a dystopia. Their lives are controlled by the government and their parents. If legal adults were treated like American teenagers, that government would be considered one of the most oppressive on Earth.
The government requires 6-16-year-olds to attend a government institution that subjects them to unconstitutional searches. Here, in public schools, they must ask permission to use the bathroom, eat when they are told, and not speak unless called upon.
If you are under 18 you cannot work without government permission, and cannot even walk on public sidewalks at certain times of day, like during school hours or after a certain time of night.
And the age that you have all your rights keeps creeping up. 18 is a legal adult who still cannot buy or drink alcohol legally."
"Perhaps politicians have the best intentions, but their programs are coercive. For over a hundred years, the government has been stripping “children” of their rights, and artificially extending childhood.
And this is the cause of the tumultuous teens. Freedom makes people happy, and freedom fighters of any age will go to great lengths to resist oppression."
-
"Teenage Dystopia
Robert Epstein argues in his book Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence, that age has nothing to do with competency. Some people are capable of running their lives at 14, and some will never be responsible for themselves.
Through most of human history, young people were integrated into adult society early on, but beginning in the late 1800s, new laws and cultural practices began to isolate teens from adults, imposing on them an increasingly large set of restrictions, and artifically extending childhood well past puberty. New research suggests that teens today are subjected to more than ten times as many restrictions as are most adults, and adulthood is delayed until well into the twenties or thirties. It’s likely that the turmoil we see among teens is an unintended result of the artificial extension of childhood.
The increasing authoritarian view towards adolescents is a vicious cycle. The group is perceived as acting out, so restrictions increase. These restrictions in turn cause resistant behavior, which is met with even more draconian measures.
The suicide rate of teen girls is at an all-time high. For teenage boys, the high was in the early 90s but it is once again climbing. The teenage male suicide rate is almost three times as high as females.
And kids are increasingly diagnosed with ADHD and fed drugs to make them more compliant with authority. Again, this happens while they are captive in schools which they are required to attend. Coercion which leads to mental illness.
Efforts to guide teens into work or higher education are always sold with the best intentions. Authorities want to make sure that teens have the education that allows them to seize opportunities. Ironically, before mandatory public schooling, teens had no trouble finding work. Many started apprenticeships at young ages and learned their future trade while earning a wage.
And a quick look through history will reveal that the child labor laws were not always “for the children.”
The 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act made 16 the minimum age to work. This was during the Great Depression. The law was meant to remove competitors from the worker pool. Same goes for the reforms championed by labor unions during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
In 1905, about 40% of 16-year-olds were in school, and 40% were working. Now about 90% are in school.
Most states require public schooling to age 16, but fourteen states have compulsory education until 18. What this does is separate teens from an actual working environment where they would be exposed to people with the skills they want to learn.
State restrictions originally destroyed the opportunities teens had to learn valuable skills and join the labor force. Now they think they can reverse this trend with more legal requirements for higher education.
The choice and responsibility are taken from the teens. Instead of learning how to shape their own lives, they learn to follow the orders. This lesson is taken with them throughout life, giving the government more and more power over society as each generation gets more restrictive.
Legislation like that in New Mexico to force high schoolers to apply to college does not solve any issues. It only feeds into the increasing restrictions that have led to severe problems among teens and young adults.
The solution is for the government to lay off, and ease restrictions. Parents can immediately help by supporting their teens in any efforts to separate themselves from traditional schooling. If you think your young adult is self-directed enough, you could officially homeschool them, while allowing them to pursue their own education, or even find an internship or apprenticeship.
But public high school, and increasingly college, does not set people up for the modern economy. The system is outdated, and even when it “works” it trains people to be obedient mid-level office workers, not free thinking independent value creators."
- Teenage Dystopia: The Cycle of Oppression and Resistance
-
For more resources, see Teen/Youth Rights resource list: Teen advocates that you should know.
I think the reasons for this are partially the pharmaceutical industry that profits off of drugging children & teens, teachers & other people who have cushy white-collared, unionized, & usually government careers in schooling, the Christian doctrine of original sin, & especially the Calvinist/Puritan attitude of expecting the worst out of people AND Black And White Thinking which does not allow for nuance, & in the case of paddling, America being extremely rural country, & rural people tend to have the flaws of being ignorant about the way other cultures do things & tend to not like change. There’s also studies that show correlations between societies experiencing disease & supporting authoritarianism, which was touched on after 12:48 in How Disgust Drives Society, History and the Right.
I feel that conservatives are more likely to be ageist than leftists because the average age of conservatives is higher than leftists (when generation gaps started to happen after the two industrial revolutions), & maybe the guilt of Boomers who rebelled against their elders.
The articles Christian Abuse of Children and Children as Chattel–The Common Root of Religious Child Abuse and the Pro-Life Movement is one of the few articles that I know that talk about the religious origins of child abuse.
I'm willing to mention the article Texas GOP: Children are property, not people / The Texas GOP Platform’s Horror Show for children. While it comes across as partisan & a little hyperbolic to me, it does have a few good points nonetheless.
When it comes to addressing the issue of circumcision, Eric Clopper's presentation video Sex & Circumcision: An American Love Story by Eric Clopper is almost good enough.
The dude is almost to circumcision as John Taylor Gatto is to the history of schooling, or Ryan Dawson is to geopolitics & government corruption in the United States of America and, to a large degree, the world.
I say "almost" because he doesn't go into the psychological effects of circumcision with the presentation. So I'll link to a bunch of articles that go into the psychological & social effects of circumcision, mostly from Circumcision Resource Center:
Psychological Impact of Circumcision on Men
Circumcision Permanently Alters the Brain
Infant Responses to Circumcision
How Male Circumcision Harms Wome
Neonate & Child Circumcision
Circumcision’s Psychological Damage
Circumcision, Serial Killing, Criminal Behavior and American Medical Violence
What are the longterm effects of circumcision?
Is Male Circumcision A Violation Of Human Rights
Don't Mutilate Your Baby Boy
Don't Touch My So
The Rape of Innocence: female genital mutilation and circumcision in the US
-
How circumcision increases sexual infidelity:
Circumcised Penis Effect On Sex and Love Making/Circumcised Sex Lessens Feelings of Love for One's Partner
Marriage and Divorce Affected by Penis Circumcision/Circumcised Sex Can Deteriorate the Relationship
Now let's see a map showing circumcision prevalence by country, & another map showing countries that are at war:
File:Global Map of Male Circumcision Prevalence by Country.svg
File:Ongoing conflicts around the world.svg
Notice how many wars are going on in Africa, the Islamic world & the Philippines, all circumcising cultures. Also remember how the United States of America has a one of the highest violent crime and especially homicide rates among developed countries, & is one of the few first world countries where circumcision is routine, other than Israel & Turkey.
School & Education.
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished.”
“The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty.”
But wait, there's more!:
Addresses to the German Nation
-
Which explains why schools are so similar to prisons.
(The above image comes from https://web.archive.org/web/20180323021238/https://collectivelyconscious.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/school-vs-prison.jpg.)
You’re made to go in at a specified time. You’re made to sit down at desks in nice & neat rows. You are made to do work which is to be completed at a specified time, & the quality of that work must be up to a specified level. A bell like that in a factory (which may also be a stand-in for military commands) rings to signal changing to other work types, with set times to do everything. It is common to walk in straight lines.
To go with all of this at the same time, there is a mandatory dress code, negative reinforcement, rules that fail to fully respect our real constitutional rights (particularly with zero-tolerance & restrictions on free speech/expression), an authoritarian structure with little to no real input in decision making, & there is emphasis on silence, order, & most of all, obedience. And all of that is before you are made to do homework.
No wonder why kids hate school so much, & feel like it is a factory prison.
-
Maybe if we did not treat school children like prisoners, they would not act like prisoners. Children who go through alternate education philosophies such as Waldorf, Montessori, unschooling, & so on, seemingly tend to be better behaved than those who go through the Prussian schooling philosophy. Many children who go through the Montessori philosophy of education actually do better than their counterparts who went through the Prussian schooling philosophy.
-
Montessori Vs. Conventional School
-
I know that every individual child is different & that there always have & always will be children who misbehave, but maybe children would act out less if they are not treated almost like prisoners.
-
VIOLATED SCHOOLCHILDREN: Corporal punishment-induced trauma
ARE PADDLING SCHOOLS SANCTUARIES FOR SEXUAL PREDATORS?
How school paddling can derail sexual development in children
Violence toward children in the classroom
-
Television shows like World's Strictest Parents, Teen Trouble, & Dr. Phil absolutely disgust me for what I see as anything ranging from unnecessarily restrictive parenting to borderline child abuse.
It disgusts me how children & teens have, in some ways, less rights than incarcerated felons. Children & teens can be practically beaten even for extremely petty offenses which are behaviors that are not even particularly problematic. This embarrasses me as an American. Americans preach liberty and individualism, but deny said liberty & individualism to their own young people.
If someone tried to beat you with a wooden board, you could fight them by any means necessary. Shoot them with a pistol with 10mm hollowpoints, shoot them with both barrels from a double-barreled shotgun loaded with flechettes, slit their throat with a Mark I trench knife, force a Ka-Bar knife through their sternum, use your thumbs & fingers to snatch their eyeballs out, etcetera etcetera.
Even death-row inmates are, in a way, more protected than children. It’s illegal to beat death row inmates (unless they’re fighting, obviously).
Hypothetically, if Jessica had brought a Glock 34 to school & blow the heads off of all of her assailants. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!…
As a death row inmate, she would have more protections from beatings from Correctional Officers than Teachers, even though both are government employees with authority.
Let’s rewind. If Jessica was to do that off school property, she would be completely & totally justified to make her assailants chill-out in the morgue.
(Disclaimer: I have no intention of promoting violence or bringing weaponry to school. I also believe that violence would be counterproductive even in cases where it would be morally justified. Seriously.)
Most people agree that we do not need police officers to pull light machine guns on jaywalkers & send jaywalkers to prison, or have countries going to war because a soldier tripped over a border or a helicopter accidentally crossed a border for a few seconds. We don’t allow police officers to beat people for jaywalking or slight rudeness. Likewise, I think that children should not be beaten with an implement for trivial offenses.
It’s absurd.
In a nutshell, do not allow teachers (inclusive to other school staff) spank children. The power will be abused.
-
Child corporal punishment laws - Wikipedia
(Use of School Uniforms by Country)
Poland will be my sample country.
Did Poland become A Clockwork Orange with Antifa in place of the Droogs?
No! Quite the contrary, Poland is a very right-wing country. Tough apparently, European conservatism is more about nationalism than, say, supporting school corporal punishment or banning prostitution (which me, being a libertarian, makes me more of a fan of the European conservatives).
(Police contingent, 3rd May Parade in Warsaw)
(Officers of polish military police)
The European right has earned loyalty from the youth, unlike Southern American conservatives who have an attitude that children are property & disparage the youth, with a few being akin to World's Strictest Parents & still demand loyalty, carrying the attitude that parents are entitled to the loyalty of their children by doing little more than busting a nut, even though their children entered the relationship involuntarily & said conservatives would never tolerate such bullshit treatment from their own employer.
-
When it comes to spanking, I'll just give you a sample of my
4 most recommended sites (these are goldmines for arguments against spanking):
"20" Reasons NOT to Spank (""20" Reasons NOT to Spank" is the single best site, full of arguments against spanking & using the Bible.)
-
Project NoSpank external links (archived to fix dead links)
A notable article:
Robert Green Ingersoll on Corporal Punishment (1891)
Overlooked articles by ""20" Reasons NOT to Spank":
Does more spanking = less crime and delinquency?
What happens to kids if you don't spank?
Links for Christians:
Christians for Nonviolent Parentin
Christians for Nonviolent Parenting links
Recommended videos (I consider these to be more like audio, as that there aren't any necessary visuals.)
Corbettreport:
Solutions: Peaceful Parenting
Stefan Molyneux:
The Science of Spanking! A Conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Gershof
Why Spanking Does Not Work | Elizabeth Gershoff and Stefan Molyneu
Negative Effects of Spanking | Murray A. Straus and Stefan Molyneu
Ending Corporal Punishment | Robbyn Peters Bennett and Stefan Molyneu
Parenting Without Punishment - Dr Elizabeth Gershoff InterviewedStudy: Children Assaulted 936 Times Per Year
Less recommended (since much of the following material goes far beyond spanking):
Psychohistory In Perspective | A Conversation with Lloyd deMaus
The Origins of War in Child Abuse | Lloyd deMause and Stefan Molyneu
The Origins of War in Child Abuse | Full Audiobook
Ryan Dawson:
Horrible Japanese Propaganda about Corporal Punishment
-
Before some conservative or Youth's Rights critic comes & talks about Australian and British teens from "World's Strictest Parents", remember that television shows only show those extreme cases because such cases are the exception & not the norm, & I feel that the behavior displayed by the British & Australian teens actually come from American teen culture due to language connections. This makes me think of the copycat effect, which is an actual subject in psychology, particularly the subjects of copycat crime & copycat suicide.
I this this mostly comes from Hollywood & Scottish culture;
The origin of the redneck culture from Britain | Thomas Sowell
How The Scot-Irish Transformed The American South
If you want a deep dive into this, listen to The Origin of Black American Culture and Ebonics | Thomas Sowell.
-
If you want a sample of the culture that Thomas Sowell talks about, read When School Feels Like Jail - the Marshall Project.
-
Much of what you see from "World's Strictest Parents" would be prevented by decent parenting (albeit not all. I do not believe in the ‘blank slate view’ of man. Even the very freest & richest countries in the world, such as Switzerland & Liechtenstein, still need prisons).
-
This isn’t to say that there aren’t students that I would have no sympathy for if they were spanked. I’ve known some students who were undisciplined troublemakers or at least annoying, who misbehaved while simultaneously I behaved myself despite the fact that I hate school.
I love how Scotland has 16 as the age of majority & giving juvenile offenders a chance to work instead of incarceration, which are enormous improvements for a place where striking children with the tawse was normal.
Even in Germany, the birthplace of Prussian authoritarianism, the Prussian schooling philosophy, & National Socialism, has made leaps and bounds in making its schools humane. Most European schools don’t have uniforms or even dress codes.
However, a humane prison is still a prison.
People should do more to stand up against unnecessary child circumcisions. We should stop being politically correct to people who are barbaric & backwards enough to think that it is okay to cut on a child's genitals outside of a medical emergency or medical last resort.
Republicans/conservatives are not helping themselves when they treat their own children like dogs that need to be tightly controlled, beaten for minor infractions, & genitals cut up out of tradition.
-
If you are worried about your children becoming weak, then take a hike. No, really.
"Humans are really tough beings when pushed. Having hiked the Appalachian trail from personal experience (sic), I have seen the shocking transformation of relatively soft city people turning into people who can handle shocking amounts of suffering and discomfort."
"I know comparing the Appalachian trail to a nuclear war is silly, but you'd be shocked how people you'd consider to be "basic frat girls" can in a matter of weeks transform into badasses who can walk 30 miles a day, entirely live off ramen, deal with bears and horrifying weather, live without any civilization for a week, improvise failures in equipment and still have the energy to help other hikers in need"
- Whatifalthist, What if the Cold War Went Nuclear?
Not everything is doom & gloom for American teens, though. All States states allow individuals who are under 18 years of age to have instructional or learner permits to drive, some allow 16 or 17 year olds to have full driver's licenses, & some even have hardship licenses that are available to 14 or 15 year olds. Even better, some states allow minors to emancipate and be freed from control of their parent(s)/guardian(s).
I've also stumbled across pages from a few schools that have students read Robert Epstein's "The Case Against Adolescence" or "Teen 2.0", which gives me a grain of optimism.
That's enough of me talking about parenting for this article, though I will say that combining empathy & common sense goes a long way. You will not be perfect, but you will probably do fine.
As much as I criticize the right, it’s not as if the left has its own glaring issues. Opposing school choice, supporting raising the legal age to obtain/posses weapons (your parents can legally kick you out before you can legally arm yourself to defend yourself), while supporting drag queen story hour & transgender surgery & hormones for children, the left especially shoots itself in the face on the last 2 issues (mostly the Social Justice & Marxian/Post-Modernist faction). Some are also afraid to criticize circumcision because minorities are involved.
My concerns with the LGBTQ community.
The case for Liberty in education
When it comes to why teacher’s unions oppose school choice (the only arguments I’ve read against school choice are mental gymnastics & grasping at straws), the California Correctional Peace Officers Association advocates increasing the funding to prisons & prison staff instead of funding programs that may reduce recidivism by released inmates. The CCPOA unsurprisingly supports laws that would increase the incarceration rate that benefit the members of the unions with keeping their budgets and unionized government careers, but may not necessarily benefit the public.
Crowded Prisons, Unions, and CA Three Strikes: Why We Can't Just Build More Cages
Overcrowded: The Messy Politics of CA's Prison Crisis
Not to mention parents who never discipline their children, & raise brats.
The reason why I criticized the right more than the left is because the left’s issues are more obvious (I don’t feel the need to point out the obvious), while my issues with the right are more subjective & about values.
-
People who have neither empathy nor common sense should do the following 3:
1. Get themselves permanently sterilized.
2. Remove themselves from child-rearing, education & politics.
3. Have a steel cactus forced up their ass.
I try to avoid being too graphic, but come on, am I not allowed to get emotional about shitty parenting?
Don't take this as me saying that child abuse & generally bad child-rearing is a British, German, or American problem. It is a human problem.
This is reason number two why I say that am am grateful to be an American citizen as opposed to being proud to be an American, along with the points made in the video Are You Proud to be an American?, in which it only makes sense for one to have pride from accomplishments or contributions to accomplishments as an individual & not an accident of birth.
Notes:
. I support the Absolute Nuclear Family. Watch the video How Family Structure Drives Ideology. Winston Churchill once said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”. I feel the same way for the Absolute Nuclear Family. Societies with the Absolute Nuclear Family have a track record of respecting human rights better than Authoritarian Family societies, but are more functional than Egalitarian Nuclear Family societies, & if you want to have freedom, you need discipline. The Nuclear Family also has a track record for both human rights & progress that’s so good that there is no competition whatsoever (Understanding Western Civilization.).
I find it ironic that some leftists (seemingly mainly Marxists & postmodernists) hate the nuclear family when the Nuclear Family has, hands down, has a track record for both human rights & progress. Dutch culture, which I sang praises to in this article, has the Absolute Nuclear Family.
. Articulating “I also believe that violence would be counterproductive even in cases where it would be morally justified.“ The Civil Rights Movement worked in part because of nonviolence. Violence does have its places, rather it be individual self-defense or fighting back against a totalitarian regime.
However, I’m a reformer. The vast majority of school corporal punishment happens in just 10 states, being Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, & Florida. In Kentucky, Kansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arizona, & Wyoming, school corporal punishment may literally be done by one or two school districts, & in Kentucky, is heavily regulated anyway to the point where I consider it to be a negligible issue. If students were to use lethal force against paddlers, even if it may be morally justified, would strategically backfire by totally derailing the progress made against corporal punishment. If Anti-Segregation protesters killed Law Enforcement Officers & National Guard Soldiers & Airmen, even if it would be morally justified, would strategically backfire by totally derailing Civil Rights reforms.
In other words, corporal punishment in schools is already on its way out, & could become irrelevant by the next decade if trends are to continue.
Corporal punishment in US schools By C. Farrell - corpun.com