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Comment by leotaku | Hacker News Reader

I sincerely do not understand what you are talking about. I, and I assume also you, have just read about an education system where boys aged 7 are separated from their parents, underfed, whipped, beaten and basically forced into sexual relationship with older men. How do any of these horrors compare in the slightest to what is happening in any 21st century western public school?

I know that my experience was most likely more idyllic than most, but which outgrowths of modern public education (active shooter drills, windowless rooms, zero-tolerance policies?) make you hold it in such low regard?

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Your school experience mostly depends on who your peers are, not on the official policies of the school. The adults control only superficial 10 % of the situation, the rest is upon the kids, with a possible punishment afterwards, if some boundaries are visibly and publicly crossed.

People describing their school lives in modern Western countries will tell you completely different stories. From almost idyllic to hells of abuse (even sexual) and bullying that made them consider suicide before the age of twelve.

If we judge schools by the average, they are much better than the Spartan agoge, but if we judge them by the worst ones, I am not sure if it is still the case.

I partly agree, but isn't that more of an issue about children being barbarians than about school being a barbaric institution?

As you say, adults only have control over superficial parts of these dynamics. I'm dubious that they can exercise more control without extensive restrictions on the youths freedoms and in turn their development. So these problems just seem inevitable wherever groups of children or teenagers meet.

> modern public education (active shooter drills, windowless rooms, zero-tolerance policies?)

Note that most of that is unique to USA education. Especially "active shooter drills".

>outgrowths of modern public education (active shooter drills, windowless rooms, zero-tolerance policies?)

All these seem to be uniquely US problems..

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