the road to hell is paved with good intentions

i know so many people who were/are at the mercy of very terrible people because they literally have no other options. it's harrowing especially since ive been there.

and I think it's also partially because... there is this pattern I see in families that produce traumatized kids, wherein the narrative of who the child is is ultimately owned by the family. like, your parents own Knowledge Of Your Self. any attempts to assert expertise in the field of who you are or what you experience is met with derision mockery punishment etc.

this can present in a variety of ways, and some of them look fairly benign, including things like "my parents think I'm this kind of person, but they don't really understand that I am a different kind of person, and every time I try to assert the person I actually am, they argue with me and try to overlay their version of me on to reality instead of listening to me about who I am and what my experiences are"

and I think that depending on how you experience that, it can range from being Just Annoying in some cases to, in many cases, being quite traumatic in and of itself. because it means that you have been trained not to believe that your understanding of yourself and your experiences is ultimately something that is owned by you. which I think is incredibly incredibly damaging both on a personal and relational level. ownership of our own self narrative is a REALLY important thing for human beings to have.

functionally I think that this often presents as an inability to understand what your own needs even are, and a willingness to simply assume that whatever you are feeling at any given time must be the incorrect reaction, especially in the face of an assertion by someone else that the correct reaction would be different than the reaction you are having.

those are both very long-lasting relational harms that go on to cause more harm in the future, because it is impossible to have a truly mutually trusting and healthy interpersonal relationship with someone when you are not aware of what your own needs are, and are certainly not capable of communicating them.*

abuse in caregiving professions (like teaching or nursing) is not solely a result of power dynamics. it's also because people who go into those professions often have a idea of themselves as Good People, and are consequently incapable of recognising or acknowledging when they've hurt someone else. instead, they mentally put 'people who have inconvenienced me' into the Bad People box so they can freely abuse them while maintaining their moral high ground.

i read ross greene a lot when i was working with "difficult" or "behaviourally challenged" children. his refrain is "kids do well if they can" - meaning, in short, that most kids act out only when the demands of a situation exceed their capabilities. punishing them for this is not only cruel but also completely pointless, because they also don't want to be doing what they are doing.

that's a misnomer; neuroleptic drugs don't combat a singular biological state of 'psychosis' because there is no such observed or biomarked state. neuroleptics don't have good evidence for their efficacy in actually improving patient outcomes, and are known to cause a range of serious short- and long-term (including permanent!) side effects ranging from metabolic dysregulation to movement disorders (neurological damage) to sedation (they have previously been known as 'major tranquilisers').

on principle i think people should be able to use psychoactive substances of their choosing; in practice i think this is basically a moot point in regards to neuroleptics because the side effects are so common and severe, and the benefits so minimal. these are drugs that continue to be popularly prescribed because they make patients more 'compliant' -- ie, because our current social–economic situation is so profoundly hostile to variation in perceptions of reality that we render people more 'functional' when dangerously medicated into submission.

atypical anti-psychotics are also approved for and continue to be prescribed to treat "aggression and self-injurious behaviour" in children diagnosed with autism for example. i was introduced to this class of drugs and kept on them for half a decade at the request of my parents, without being formally diagnosed with psychosis for the duration, for what amounted to 'disobedience and disruptive behaviour' at home. i was thirteen. my psychiatrists* enabled my parents' abuse by keeping me in a state where i was incapable of defending myself

in many psych wards the first thing they do is give you a very high dose of an anti-psychotic to make sure you won't complain too much, as it dawns on you're in a prison and all your agency has been stripped away. it doesn't matter why you're there, they don't check your file before doing it. they just do it because it's effective at keeping people quiet

i'm thinking extra hard about how we've ended up where we are, with trans kids at the center of so much hatred, because children are not seen as people with interiority or an ability to narrate their own experiences. we've decided it's alright to lock children up for horrible diagnoses that psychs throw around like they're nothing, to strip their autonomy completely and force them through humiliation, invasions of privacy, and endless torment by "professionals" whose power over every waking moment of their lives has no end. these things cannot be separated.

I'll go ahead and summarize the arguments she made as to why she thinks homework sucks:

It doesn't actually promote self-sufficiency. Kids who don't struggle with organization and discipline at school will also not struggle with their homework, but kids who do struggle at school and need more help will also struggle while trying to get anything done at home.

It's inherently unfair/unequal. Children's home situations are so very different, some kids have their own desk and computer in a quiet room and at least one parent around who has the time & knowledge to help them plus the financial means to hire a tutor, while some children don't even have their own room and their parents might not be around or lack the education and means to be of any help at all.

AI exists and can be used to do almost all homework and most kids use it.

Assigning and checking homework and enforcing consequences when students don't do it is a waste of class time and creates an unpleasant atmosphere.

And also a very important point that many people in the comments made based on their experiences as both students & parents of students:

Okay, let them stay up till 5 in the morning and feel like shit for the next day, eat a bag of candy in one go and have a huge stomach ache, go out without an umbrella and catch a cold, watch a violent movie and get scared?