| Former UK Student's Letter I went to school in the UK. Using
the definition of abuse from EQI.org, I quickly
remembered many ways school was abusive. Here are some of
them, put into categories of abuse from the EQI
definition.
Abuse
is any behavior that is designed to control and
subjugate another human being through the use of
fear, humiliation, intimidation, guilt, coercion,
manipulation etc.
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Fear:
At all three schools I went to, threats were the commonly
accepted practice for controlling behaviour. Obviously,
threats work only by causing fear in the person being
threatened.
Threats of not being allowed to go to the prom unless
attendence is high. Threats to call your parents if you
don't behave/obey. Threats to cause psychological pain
through punishment, of being isolated or kept behind in
"detention". Threats of losing your free time.
Of being moved away from your friends. Of being sent
outside and made to stand by the door for an hour. Of
having your phone taken away from you. Of being expelled
or excluded. Of being put "on report". Of being
disqualified if your phone rings during an exam. Of
informing your prospective university of your bad
punctuality so that you have less chance of being
accepted. Etc.
One teacher threatened a girl with detention if she
didn't learn how to use Microsoft Word properly before
the next lesson.
Then there are the other, implied, vague threats about
ruining your life and becoming a failure if you don't do
well in your exams, schoolwork, etc.
Humiliation:
A large number of girls in my school used to bring a
small purse to school instead of a schoolbag. To
discourage this, the school had a policy that if they
caught you carrying a small bag, they would give you a
yellow, plastic shopping bag from the "Netto"
supepermarket, and force you to carry it around all day.
They knew this would humiliate the student, as the
"Netto" brand was very unpopular, and it was
thought to be embarrassing to shop there.
My English teacher had several tricks for getting her
students be quiet. When a girl and boy were talking in
her class, she would try to silence them by making
embarrassing remarks and comments about them being
together romantically.
One of my primary school teachers disliked it when her
students would tie their jackets around their waist, so
she would make disapproving, embarrassing remarks about
any student she saw doing this. "Is your butt cold,
or have you decided to start wearing skirts?"
Intimidation:
It is normal and acceptable for teachers to yell and
scream at students.
Guilt:
Lectures. Lots of lectures during school assemblies. A
lot of it trying to make the students feel guilty about
their 'bad' behaviour. For example, our school had a huge
problem with people being late. Students would often walk
in halfway through morning assembly or halfway throuh
lessons. There were guilt-trips about how rude and
disrespectful you are when you show up late, because
everyone has to wait for you, and you're disrupting the
lesson, making more work for teachers, etc.
Coercion:
Forced Schooling: Just the fact that you are required to
go to school under the threat of legal action, eg. prison
time for your parents in the UK, is extremely coercive.
Whether you actually want to go isn't taken into
account.
Students who hate school have to be coerced into going.
Most schools function through a generally accepted system
or rewards and punishment. But you would not need these
if you actually had the student's voluntary cooperation.
This practically means schools are by definition
coercive.
Manipluation:
Rewards, through grades and praise are very common. In
one school, students were given "merit stamps"
from teachers whenever they did something that was
approved of. After collecting a certain amount of stamps,
you would be formally presented with a 'silver', 'bronze'
and 'gold' certificate in front of the whole year
group.
In my primary school some teachers gave out marshmellows
for answering math questions.
There are also elaborate systems of punishment. For
example, 'three strikes and you're out': If a teacher
told you to stop running in the corridor, and you
disobeyed, you would be given a 'warning'. If this
happened again, you would be put "on report"
and/or given detention. If this happened a third time,
you could get excluded, letter sent to your parents, etc.
Goolgle
Searches
Althought I can hardly
believe my eyes, when I searched Google today for "Emotionally
Abusive Schools" I found zero results for
that exact phrase.
When I tried "Schools
are emotionally abusive" I found just three
results. One was from my article about governments being abusive.
This one was most interesting. It is about boarding
schools. Here is one quote
The people I talked
to told me all about what they went through. It left
many of them hating life, hating god, hating
themselves. (Back up copy)
"School is
emotionally abusive" gave just 2 results.
Both were talking about a school of dentistry.
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| Google Searches -
Sensitive, Intelligent People March 30, 2012
 No results found for "schools
are not designed for sensitive people".
No results found for "schools
are not made for sensitive people"..
No results found for "schools
are not made for sensitive"..
No results found for "schools
are not designed for sensitive"..
I thought of this when a student
named Nelia told me that a teacher told her that he
wanted to see her the next day after school. He didn't
say why. She was afraid it was about how she has been
missing so many days of forced school. So she was scared
for the rest of the day, that night and the next day
before she had to see him. (Actually she didn't
"have" to see him, but of course she would have
been punished or hurt in some way if she didn't obey
him.)
Also,
No results found for "schools
are not designed for intelligent people"..
No results found for "schools
are not designed for emotionally intelligent".
also
No results found for "schools
are not designed for intelligent".
No results found for "schools
are not made for intelligent"
These results mean there is nothing
found for intelligent students, teens, children or even
teachers.
Another search
"schools are designed
for"
About 141,000 results
"schools are made for" -
About 71,900 results.
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