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So how is this different from jail? You're forced to be somewhere you hate, unable to go outside, for a part of your life just because you were born?



Jailers are not very professional, and are allowed to treat you like livestock.

Teachers are professionals who are generally trying to help you become a better person (even if a few degenerate in Stanford Prison Experiment style guards, and they are the ones some people really remember).


You can't drop out of jail.

You can't be home-jailed.

At the end of it, you get a degree.


Probation/parole/bail jumpers

House arrest

Prison education is pretty common

Granted, not everyone can leave jail. But take a boarding school and a minimum security prison and you're getting pretty close to the same thing.


If you drop out of school, you simply don't get a degree. If you jump bail, you get more jail time. And you're reaching to consider house arrest the same as home schooling. As for prison education, that's commonly available, but far from the purpose of prison. And boarding schools are private, there is only one public boarding school in the US, and it only has 80 students.

So your analogies don't exactly work. I would suggest reading the work of John Taylor Gatto, A.S. Neil, Francisco Ferrer, and Paulo Freire, though, if you're interested in critiques of education systems and their alternatives.


"Schools are jails for kids." -- John Holt




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