Stephen Dill

Adultism isn't just common—it's the norm. Schools, laws, media, family structures are all built on disrespecting kids. You don't see it because it's everywhere. We all grow up disrespected.

Forced schooling isn't education, it's indoctrination. When you're legally required to absorb state-approved 'knowledge', you're not learning - you're being programmed.

The nice 'respectful' teacher teaches kids that they should tolerate mistreatment and violations of their consent as long as the perpetrator is nice about it. This sets them up for a lifetime of self-doubt and difficulty advocating for themselves in the face of friendly coercion.

Forced schooling is a human rights violation that is widely considered to be justified, but the justification is not based on any wrongdoing, as it is in prisons and jails. It is based on inhumane, unscientific and ignorant stereotypes about kids, not unsimilar to racism.

Adults seem to think that kids are dependent children until they become independent adults, but the truth is we're all interdependent humans all the time.

To trust children, we must first learn to trust ourselves… and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted. — John Holt.

School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. -- Ivan Illich

The available evidence suggests quite strongly that school is bad for children’s mental health. Of course, it’s bad for their physical health, too; nature did not design children to be cooped up all day at a micromanaged, sedentary job. -- Peter Gray

Our whole world is caught in a cycle of abuse largely unexamined and unnamed. And at its root lies our dehumanization of children. Stinney Distro

'Compulsory' means 'forced' and force is violence, and what people call 'education' is violence against kids. To respond to that as if this were something subjective by saying, "I'm sorry you feel that way", ignores this in your face and very objective truth.

The Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights declares, "No person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law." Nowhere in the Constitution...is there any statement that a human child is not a person. Yet children are regularly deprived of liberty. -- Peter Gray

Children are schooled to understand that despite how they feel about it, compulsory education is not abuse, and teachers are not abusers. And any child who disagrees with that will be punished.

No one is more truly helpless, more completely a victim, than he who can neither choose, nor change, nor escape his protectors. --John Holt

Don't be fooled by their smiles. Schooled kids long for the freedom to control their own lives.