Who sets the priorities?

Who Set's the Priorities?

One problem in typical schools is the issue of who sets the priorities.

I work with suicidal teens. For them, learning about algebra is not the most important thing in their life. In fact, almost nothing they do in their school day is addressing their most urgent needs.

They desperately need someone to listen to them, someone to spend time with them one on one, someone to help them feel understood, accepted and emotionally safe. They also need someone to help them understand what is happening inside their homes. And they need someone to give them, at a minimum, emotional support, and possibly also physical or financial support to help them live in a more emotinonally healthy environment

Adults have learned the dysfunctional habit of telling children and teens what they "need" to do. But who is really a better judge of what we need? And can we put an age restriction on someone's ability to know what they need? If I were to ask suicidal teenagers what their most pressing needs are, it is is very unlikely that they would say they need to learn about any of the subjects they are being taught at school.

So why don't we simply ask children or teens what they most need?

For one thing, many of us truly believe we know what is best for them. We have all been taught the old "father knows best" concept. And the "teacher knows best" goes hand in hand. I question this though. I challenge it. And often I disagree with it.

Another reason we don't ask children and teens what they need is because it would complicate things. School systems are set up like factories. They are designed to be "efficient.". They are designed to produced a desired outcome. If we started asking students what they need and their needs didn't match the pre-defined goals of the school system, what would we do? Would we redesign the school system? Or would we stop asking the students what they need?

Sadly, I think we all know the most common answer to that question.

In an admitedly extreme comparison, schools are a little like meat processing plants. We don't ask the cows what they need. Those in charge of the plants and those in society believe it is best for humanity to "process" the cows so we find ways to justify the killing of the cows. Though we don't direclt kill students, I am afraid that all too often we kill their creativity, their self-confidence, their individuality. And tragically, some studetns will never finish highschool because their emotioal needs were not met and they felt so much pain that suicide was the only way they could see to stop it.

I have felt suicidal before. I can understand the intensity of this pain.In my case, though, it has happened at a time in my life when I had the freedom to decide for myself what I need and to take actions to try to fulfil my needs. And these needs have almost always been 100% emotional at times when I felt suicidal.

Most of us know that adoloscents are highly emotional. But what are the schools doing with this fact? Are they addressing it in healthy or unhealthy ways? Most school directors I know sincerely believe that adolescents are "overly emotional" and these emotions need to be controlled. In fact, control is the primary concern for most school directors around the world. Controlling people and asking them what they need would seem to be almost diametically opposed.

Let's look at another extreme example. Slaves. How concerned were the slave owners about the needs of the slaves? Obviously, the slave owners only cared about the slave to the extent that he or she was physically healthy enough to do the work desired by the slave owner.

Are school directors really that much different? Do they even have the time to get to know the individual students well enough to enquire as to their emotional needs? I am afraid the system is simply not set up to include individual emotional needs as a factor in the equation. The idea seems to be "get the students in the chairs. Get them to do the work and pass the tests." And that seems to be about it.

So one of the results is teen suicide. After all the teens I have directly talked to, I am simply not at all convinced these teens have all the "disorders" and "chemical imbalances" which are popular scape-goats for their emotional problems.

I recently read a website suggestion that if a teen was feeling suicidal they need immediate treatment, but I wondered: Is it the teen who needs treatment, or is it society?

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