What I'm going to say here might offend or irritate some of my abolitionist vegan or animal-rights vegan friends. I hope their minds are open enough to receive it but this is something I've wanted to address for a long time. The bottom line of this is that children deserve freedom, love and compassion too. Kids need to be free in their natural environment. If you became a vegetarian or vegan because you don't see animals as "lesser beings" then I would ask that you please give the same consideration to those who are being forced into schools and universities against their wills. We often treat children as sub-humans or humans-in-training instead of giving them respect as the full humans they already are.
In The Real World, people are fragmented and fractured. People give up trying to piece all the parts together and just fill a few roles, and this is something they project onto their children. The Real World says that school is a separate entity from home life or summer holiday and that learning is something achieved only by sitting in The School Box and receiving Learning from Mama Bird Teachers who moosh up all these Heavy Educational Concepts and feed them to the Baby Bird Students. Because most of us who are sending our kids out to school or sitting them down to learn with purchased curricula at home were once publicly or privately schooled ourselves we see this as Normal. Maybe we've even forgotten how binding and restricting we ever felt school was, or how much we hated to get up the mornings or how we never wanted summer to end. I think most of us ended up dealing with is as Something to Endure and took the best with us. That speaks more of the resilience and perseverance of human creatures than it does of the goodness and necessity of the school culture.
But the thing is, in the same way that a factory farm isn't the place for an animal, neither is a factory school (or factory curriculum) the place for a child. Of any age. School is not the natural environment for kids to learn or live. In fact, it stifles, represses and harms. One of the reasons I originally became a vegetarian was because the though of animals stuffed in amongst each other, in fear, being treated cruelly broke my heart. As time went by and children became a serious consideration, I realised that school and it's authoritarian curricula were absolutely no different from a factory farm. It truly was very much the same as a veal crate or batter cage. What school did was force children out of their natural habitat (the family) into an environment populated by people with agendas and rules governing natural bodily functions. When you wake up. When you can eat. What you can eat. When and what you learn. When you use the bathroom and even how clean that bathroom is. You cannot leave this environment unless given permission or until The Authorities tell you that you can leave. When you are given freedom, it is to yet another structured environment - either the playground, school activities or home. And even home is regulated with homework, school projects and early bedtimes so kids aren't too sleepy to learn the next day. There is little to no freedom at all for a student, no say over how his/her own life is lived. Only compliance with what their parents or educators dictate.
A private school or school-at-home might seem like a better compromise. Less cruelty, in many situations (Montessori, Waldorf, etc) children are treated with a little more respect and open-mindedness. School-at-home allows kids the "freedom" to learn in a less competitive, open environment. In many ways, this is similar to small, family-owned farms or families that raise their own meat for slaughter. The animals may receive a bit more kindness and interaction than factory farmed animals. They may have access to open pastures, fresh water and cleaner stalls. But the end result is still that the animal is a Secondary Being and will be slaughtered. Its real existence has been simply for us to consume it. It exists for our own personal purposes, not because it is a living being put on the earth to live. When we prepare our children to be sent out into The Real World we are, in essence, preparing it for slaughter, we are preparing it to suit the purpose we brought it into our family for, not the purpose he or she is here to fulfill.
Yes, this is only my viewpoint. It's Just My Opinion. As one who has chosen to be vegetarian and vegan in a country that sees meat-eating as not only normal but a human right, as someone who lives among people who believe that animals are property for us to use as seen fit (ie: consumed and treated poorly) I have answered countless questions, been derided and mocked or what I believe. I understand that not everybody believes that animals have feelings, thoughts, ideas and emotions of their own. I've had years of experience with a variety of animals and know that to be a fallacy. They feel pain, emotions and fear. They feel love and can be kind and thoughtful. Yet I understand there are people who cannot comprehend this. But to my vegetarian and vegan friends who aren't unschoolers I would ask them to please step outside of The Schooling Box and give the same thought to their children that they gave their decision to give up consuming animals. Be willing to question your motives and beliefs, be willing to stand up for what is right when others might not understand. Please, just think about it.
I cannot separate the reasons I became a vegetarian (then vegan) from the reasons I unschool. Life is precious. Living creatures deserve freedom. Living creatures deserve life.
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