The environment most children are required to endure in American Public Education is abusive is many ways. Here is a simple, yet important, example of such abuse:
We require our children to sit in these desks from hell for about 8 hours a day 5 days a week:
Except they don't even look this new because the ones our kids are using are like 35+ years old. The baskets on the bottom were all broken off years ago and the legs are all bent out of shape. But even if these were new the seats are rock hard! Yes rock hard! These things are harder than the old wooden seats kids used to sit in back in the olden days. Sitting in one for 5 minutes is painful enough, but expecting our kids to sit in them for 7 to 8 hours while listening to boring lectures and being forced to remain seated even if they are experiencing extreme discomfort from sitting so much is obscene!
Not to mention that these desks are too small for some of our students to even fit in! Talk about large body size shaming....
Studies have shown that remaining sedentary for long periods of time is very destructive to ones health. Side effects include (but are not limited to the following): weakening of the heart (leading to heart disease and sometimes death), muscle atrophy, back problems, digestive disorders, bone deterioration, etc.
As a teacher I always tried my best to allow students time to get up and move around, and if they were feeling any discomfort I wanted them to be able to stand up and take a break from sitting for a while. Unfortunately, the school systems often don't give teachers even this much freedom. I was constantly questioned by administrators about why my students weren't always in their seats being obedient little robots with bad backs and was given poor evaluations because this was seen as a lack of conformity and obedience: even after explaining why I let them stand up in the back of class if they needed to.
This is only one of the many cases I found myself being coerced by the school system to go against my code of ethics. I became so disgusted with the person the school system expected me to be if I were to keep my job I had to quit, but I feel terrible leaving my students because I know the majority of people completely ignore their plights.
The sad truth is this problem is super easy to fix! Yeah, it's super easy to fix!
All we need to do is get rid of these damn torture devices and replace them with more ergonomic seating:
Give them some real chairs to sit in:
Replace desks with tables so the students can position themselves comfortably.
Put standing desks in the back of the room for kids that want to stand and seated desks for kids than need to or want to sit in the front.
"But that would be too expensive!" People say.... Well, not really, because the desks we are putting in new schools costs about the same amount as these alternatives, and guess what? Chairs, desks, and tables are a pretty old technology and they aren't hard to build either. Why not put shop/welding classes to use in creating things that actually improve the school? Or, here's another idea why don't we get rid of the government assholes who currently govern public education and high some people who actually care about funding our schools! I mean, there are american public schools who can't even afford to pay for heating and air conditioning or patching their leaky roofs!
I don't give a damn how expensive it would be to make school a positive and safe place for our kids, they are worth it! I'll repeat, they are worth it!
I have a few choice words for president Trump: instead of spending billions building a fucking wall please use that money for the sake of our children!
To all of you who voted for Trump I say this: in that vote you chose to put your xenophobia before our children. Change your evil ways and start giving a damn about our kids. We don't need a wall. We need education. We don't need to focus on gun control: we need to focus on educating people to value life, and how about we start by valuing the lives of our children--because they certainly don't feel valued. We don't need to focus on climate change: we need to focus on educating our children about the impact our wastefulness is having on our planet.
Ok, I could rant on for hours....
There's an even more obvious solution to this problem: how about we alter the structure of public schooling so physical activity and physical freedom are integrated into the system?
How about we have a system that doesn't require students to ask permission to use the bathroom? How disgusting is this? It's a violation of human nature! And I'm proud to say my students didn't have to. They simply had to sign out and take a hall pass. That way class wasn't disrupted, they didn't have to announce to everyone, "Hey I've got to pee. Is that okay with you?" and I had a log where I could keep track of where every one was.
Our students need more freedom and more respect.
I've heard people argue: parents, teachers, administrators that if we gave our students nice things they would destroy them.
Well, I know from experience this is NOT the case. I've worked in schools what worked with some previously 'troubled' teens who didn't make it in standard school systems. These schools surprisingly had nice seating, very nice facilities and guess what? They stayed in pristine condition.
The fact is our students treat things like desks in schools like crap for this reason: the desks are crap.
So, let's stop violating our students human rights and petition for better seating arrangements, more break time in class, and more freedom for our kids to move their bodies: that's kind of what they were made for.
