Outsourcing Childhood
If you're not paying attention, parenting starts to look a lot like middle management for rules and ideals you didn't choose.
“GPA contests.
Endless homework.
Standardized test pressure.
Behavioral “standards”.
Forced ‘tolerate everything’ culture.
Parent’s aren’t just ‘raising kids’.
They manage compliance with an external authority.
That ain’t partnership.
That’s outsourcing childhood.”
-Ray Zingler on X
We call it an Educational system, but when you look closer (if you’re willing to, most aren’t) it’s compliance management.
While I believe any half decent parent has kids to start a family and “raise their kids up into strong, capable, integral, contributing members of society”..
When I look around, I don’t see a lot of that.
I see brokenness.
Weakness.
Compromise.
Lack of leadership.
Parents think they’re raising kids because they’re “doing all they can to keep up!” but the reality is they’re tracking assignments, enforcing deadlines, and regulating behavior (very often with drugs) to match institutional expectations.
I don’t know about you, but the way I see it, that isn’t parenting.
That’s acting as middle management for a system you don’t control.
School will tell you they “partner with parents”… But do they?
Partnership is shared authority, it’s negotiating. It’s working together to create optimal environments for our children.
When is the last time you had any actual say in the (government) school systems construct?
Never, right?
But you are told when you have to call out of work to be able to stay home with your kids on virtual learning day, despite not signing them up for virtual school.
You know what parents get?
They get compliance requirements.
Performance metrics.
Social conditioning. “Your kid can’t say that these days!”
(Yes, he can, Woke Steve.)
Next year, when you get your mass-generated county wide school system “partnership email” before you read it, just replace “partnership” with “delegated enforcement” and then proceed reading.
It blows my mind that people will outsource time, attention, and value formation like it’s plasticware at a fast-food restaurant.
And with the outsourcing, kid’s learn that rule following equals “thinking”.
Kids today are smarter than ever before on paper, but can’t critically think themselves out of wet paper bags.
They live on high alert trying their damndest to meet systematic demands.
Grades, scores, “I GOTTA GET IN..” and that need for external validation drives their internal judgement.
If you’re managing the system instead of directing your child’s life, who’s actually in charge?
At what point did raising your kids become enforcing someone else’s rules and ideologies?