As a friend of mine once said, the way we treat children is one of humanity’s greatest crimes against itself.
This isn’t only because of school, but because of modern society requiring that immature parents raise their own children, resulting in general strife, antagonism, spite, conditional love, emotional abuse, authoritarianism, etc. But in this writing, I’m only going to talk about school—which, by the way, exacerbates all of the above by putting pressure on parents to make their children succeed in school.
Children are naturally curious and don’t need to be forced to learn out of fear, but perhaps they do when what we want to teach them is generally not truly interesting or natural, nor is it tailored toward the individual, but is rather one-size-fits-all.
Not only is the content of what we teach them unnatural for them, but so is the setting. We require them to sit still and not talk for most of 8 hours 5 days a week (and not to mention all the labor when the get home per homework and studying), which is completely contrary to their nature and stifles the play and socialization that not only come naturally to them, but are both more enjoyable and better for their psychological development. The setting isn’t much better than a prison; in some ways, it’s worse: it’s prison plus mental labor. It’s a labor camp.
The backpacks we make them wear, full of heavy books to carry from class to class, causing their backs to develop kyphosis, is symbolic of the psychological and spiritual burden we also place on them; as usual, everything is connected.
What we teach children in school, both behavior-wise and content-wise, is aimed toward making them future efficient cogs in the economic machine, and the economic machine isn’t as necessary as we think it is…see, for example, “The Critique of Civilization” by Richard Heinberg at https://web.archive.org/web/20191231043606/http://anotherwayofknowing.blogspot.com/2005/11/richard-heinberg-critique-of.html. See also “Industrial Society and Its Future” by Ted Kaczynski at https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm, and my own essays/writeups at https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/on-transhumanism/, https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2023/12/17/on-simulation-theory/, https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2019/09/13/no-were-not-living-in-a-simulation/, https://iyaelsorai.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/technology-is-bad/, https://iyaelsorai.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/a-theory-on-kissing/, and https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2024/08/12/5718/.
What I’ve written so far really understates pain and suffering we force children to endure for 12+ years, and it also doesn’t get into the natural creativity, imagination, open-mindedness and fluidity that we rob children of with formal education, replacing natural a left-vs-right-brain balance with pure left-brain imbalance, leaving them with a permanent spiritual void that they’ll spend the rest of their lives seeking to fill.
Have you ever noticed that the inner spark and happiness of a child generally leaves them by the age of 12-13? That’s not just the natural progression of things; that’s formal education and other sociological As a friend of mine once said, the way we treat children is one of humanity’s greatest crimes against itself.
This isn’t only because of school, but because of modern society requiring that immature parents raise their own children, resulting in general strife, antagonism, spite, conditional love, emotional abuse, authoritarianism, etc. But in this writing, I’m only going to talk about school—which, by the way, exacerbates all of the above by putting pressure on parents to make their children succeed in school.
Children are naturally curious and don’t need to be forced to learn out of fear, but perhaps they do when what we want to teach them is generally not truly interesting or natural, nor is it tailored toward the individual, but is rather one-size-fits-all.
Not only is the content of what we teach them unnatural for them, but so is the setting. We require them to sit still and not talk for most of 8 hours 5 days a week (and not to mention all the labor when the get home per homework and studying), which is completely contrary to their nature and stifles the play and socialization that not only come naturally to them, but are both more enjoyable and better for their psychological development. The setting isn’t much better than a prison; in some ways, it’s worse: it’s prison plus mental labor. It’s a labor camp.
The backpacks we make them wear, full of heavy books to carry from class to class, causing their backs to develop kyphosis, is symbolic of the psychological and spiritual burden we also place on them; as usual, everything is connected.
What we teach children in school, both behavior-wise and content-wise, is aimed toward making them future efficient cogs in the economic machine, and the economic machine isn’t as necessary as we think it is…see, for example, “The Critique of Civilization” by Richard Heinberg at https://web.archive.org/web/20191231043606/http://anotherwayofknowing.blogspot.com/2005/11/richard-heinberg-critique-of.html. See also “Industrial Society and Its Future” by Ted Kaczynski at https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm, and my own essays/writeups at https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/on-transhumanism/, https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2023/12/17/on-simulation-theory/, https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2019/09/13/no-were-not-living-in-a-simulation/, https://iyaelsorai.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/technology-is-bad/, https://iyaelsorai.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/a-theory-on-kissing/, and https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2024/08/12/5718/.
What I’ve written so far really understates pain and suffering we force children to endure for 12+ years, and it also doesn’t get into the natural creativity, imagination, open-mindedness and fluidity that we rob children of with formal education, replacing natural a left-vs-right-brain balance with pure left-brain imbalance, leaving them with a permanent spiritual void that they’ll spend the rest of their lives seeking to fill.
Have you ever noticed that the inner spark and happiness of a child generally leaves them by the age of 12-13? That’s not just the natural progression of things; that’s formal education and other sociological factors, but probably mainly formal education and the parental strife that comes with it.
We tend not to really think critically about any of this, taking it for granted or justifying it with some superficial level of thought about how it’s supposedly necessary for their own good or something. It’s easy to do this, since we, ourselves, are sleep-walking through life, due in part to our the same sociological influences that afflict our children.
For tons of good advice regarding how to parent well as opposed to perpetuating the chain of psychological affliction from generation to generation, in the form of separate independent sentences and paragraphs, see https://inhahe.com/pics2/memes%2C-etc-child-rearing.html.
Here’s a short Facebook exchanged summarizing the above, embellishing on a couple of points that were glossed over:
Patrick Compton:
To what degree are we naturally civilized, homo sapiens as so called, and not upright apes with ego problems, relying on language-based and law-based methods to temper our limbic urges?
In what ways are we “evolutionarily displaced”, psychologically, behaviorally, socially, cognitively, in our ability to be educated, and how much?
Please provide evidence for claims. Well informed anecdotes and personal stories are also valuable 🙂
Also, what mental capacities must be developed in one’s “formative years”; which become more difficult to learn as we grow up?
Me:
Uhh, I won’t comment on the first parts of this message, but regarding the last question, you have something backward. Children have more than enough mental capacities just by virtue of being alive, which of course they’ll naturally build upon by living and growing over time. The problem isn’t so much that we don’t equip them with the right mental capacities, but that we attempt to *do it* by fixing what’s not broken. Formal education is by far the worst offender, which is where we cut off their proverbial wings, taking away their imagination, creativity, perception, connection to life, feelings and happiness by training them to become left-brain-imbalanced like the rest of society, and not to mention training them to be obedient and not to question authority so they’ll be good cogs in the economic machine when they grow up, and all the while forcing miserable mental labor on them for 19 years so they can learn mostly frivolous skills and facts that don’t have much to do with what it means to live, and taking away their valuable fun and social time in their formative years. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot causing them emotional trauma and feelings of unworthiness that they’ll take with them for life from conditional love by their parents by putting so much pressure on the parents to put pressure on their children to go to school and do well in it.
Patrick Compton:
Richard A. Nichols III there are true observations in this but it may benefit from some nuance. Though I do see the education system working like this still, exploiting just as much as it teaches, if not more.factors, but probably mainly formal education and the parental strife that comes with it.
We tend not to really think critically about any of this, taking it for granted or justifying it with some superficial level of thought about how it’s supposedly necessary for their own good or something. It’s easy to do this, since we, ourselves, are sleep-walking through life, due in part to our the same sociological influences that afflict our children.
For tons of good advice regarding how to parent well as opposed to perpetuating the chain of psychological affliction from generation to generation, in the form of separate independent sentences and paragraphs, see https://inhahe.com/pics2/memes%2C-etc-child-rearing.html.
Here’s a short Facebook exchanged summarizing the above, embellishing on a couple of points that were glossed over:
Patrick Compton:
To what degree are we naturally civilized, homo sapiens as so called, and not upright apes with ego problems, relying on language-based and law-based methods to temper our limbic urges?
In what ways are we “evolutionarily displaced”, psychologically, behaviorally, socially, cognitively, in our ability to be educated, and how much?
Please provide evidence for claims. Well informed anecdotes and personal stories are also valuable 🙂
Also, what mental capacities must be developed in one’s “formative years”; which become more difficult to learn as we grow up?
Me:
Uhh, I won’t comment on the first parts of this message, but regarding the last question, you have something backward. Children have more than enough mental capacities just by virtue of being alive, which of course they’ll naturally build upon by living and growing over time. The problem isn’t so much that we don’t equip them with the right mental capacities, but that we attempt to *do it* by fixing what’s not broken. Formal education is by far the worst offender, which is where we cut off their proverbial wings, taking away their imagination, creativity, perception, connection to life, feelings and happiness by training them to become left-brain-imbalanced like the rest of society, and not to mention training them to be obedient and not to question authority so they’ll be good cogs in the economic machine when they grow up, and all the while forcing miserable mental labor on them for 19 years so they can learn mostly frivolous skills and facts that don’t have much to do with what it means to live, and taking away their valuable fun and social time in their formative years. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot causing them emotional trauma and feelings of unworthiness that they’ll take with them for life from conditional love by their parents by putting so much pressure on the parents to put pressure on their children to go to school and do well in it.
Patrick Compton:
Richard A. Nichols III there are true observations in this but it may benefit from some nuance. Though I do see the education system working like this still, exploiting just as much as it teaches, if not more.
