My school was like that when I was growing up.
I'm not justifying what China is doing, and I didn't like it myself. But I find it weird to find it quoted here like that.
"Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth"
My school was like that when I was growing up.
Your school proscribed when you go to the toilet and how to close a door?
Then what's the point of quoting the the first portion?
We had things from the second part too, we were also forced to pray and sing the national anthem (otherwise we'd be disciplined and punished), but the first quoted part was exactly like that.
Grew up in rural Midwest US in the 80s. We walked in lines on a schedule for bio breaks.
We had to “shut a door respectfully” basically library rules for the sake of others.
Our school had 25-30 kids per class. How else does one manage that? If you really needed to go you could and this article does not say that’s explicitly disallowed.
I think you’re losing the forest for a tree here. The problem is the whole kidnapping & cultural cleansing.
HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but do need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I keep noticing from other browsers that comments never show up so I start over.
Also apparently my home IP is on some list and so I hop on LTE.
Your own enforcement efforts seem to at least partly responsible for pushing me into this behavior.
Dunno. The teachers (nuns, priests, and monks) in my East Coast elementary school had 30-45 students per class, and somehow we didn't run amok.
(Yes, 45 was not an uncommon number. When your performance in class is publicly ranked weekly you become acutely aware of how many students are in the class.)
You don't have to be generally pro-China to be fully in support of what China is doing. You can hate the Uighers (Muslims) even if you also hate China. When you see your enemies fighting, you can pick the side you find to be less-bad or you can just cheer the fight in the hope that both suffer.
I'm not talking about China or comparing myself to them. There are much bigger issues than what was quoted.
But I just find it funny that someone would say "Is it even possible to not be broken by something like this?" about something that happened to me, in a western school.
I've always felt arguments like "the parents can choose not to send their kid to their" or "the captor's intention was good" to be insufficient. No matter how that changes, the information/data flows from the captors to the 'captive' person's mind does not change much.
At the same time, it might not be possible to eliminate 'captive' information systems, especially if we loosen the definition of 'captive'. For example, you can pretty much only consume news in the language you know so you are held captive. However if you consume only English news, then you're worldview will be biased. English news only covers the more sensational international stories and journalists, who mostly have good intentions, are biased as well.
I ended up rambling a bit, but the main point is that axiomatic arguments don't solve the problem and the lines between good/bad are too 'fuzzy'. Practical solutions around info/data flow and a good understanding of how it makes the lives of 'captives' and others in the world might have more potential
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor
[1] http://old.seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2002050731_startz01...
[2] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2010/02/23/chainin...
So you're just going to generalize on all parents like that? Believe it or not, there are actually some parents out there who are interested in their child's well-being and involved in their life.
> I’m not going to defend it
It seems to me like you're grasping at straws to do precisely that.
Having spent 10 years in China and having actually visited Xinjiang before, I can assure you I’m not grasping at any straws.
And the fact I survived while they might not has nothing to do with the things I quoted.
Which then “justifies” harsh, potentially fatal, punishment.
Sorry, but the Chinese have camps for ethnic (or religious) targeted detention and/or brainwashing.
This is nothing like "what we do" in education, American or otherwise, and the similarities (the students having a specific desk, queues to eat, etc) are irrelevant and superficial...
In this case, I'm against things like the e.g. Native American re-education camps, because I believe that they have the right to their own culture (plus, they were there first).
But I'm in favor of mere education camps, also known as schools.
And guess what? Populations that was sent to "re-education camps" also are in favor of such things. They also have schools (or similar processes and teachings for their youth).
There's a whole lot of difference between a society teaching its children (which is how we're not animals merely grazing grass but have culture, technology, science, etc), and to be taken from your family for forced re-education to a different culture you don't belong to (and who is even adversarial to your people).
"The purported purpose of schools is to teach reading, writing, mathematics, and other academic fields of thought. But the message that institutions of “education” actually teach, far more effectively than any useful knowledge or skills, is the idea that subservience and blind obedience to “authority” are virtues. The “grades” the student receives, the way he is treated, the signals he is sent — written, verbal, and otherwise — all depend upon one factor: his ability and willingness to unquestioningly subvert his own desires, judgment and decisions to those of “authority.” If he does that, he is deemed “good.” If he does not, he is deemed “bad.” This method of indoctrination was not accidental. Schooling in the United States, and in fact in much of the world, was deliberately modeled after the Prussian system of “education,” which was designed with the express purpose of training people to be obedient tools of the ruling class, easy to manage and quick to unthinkingly obey, especially for military purposes. As it was explained by Johann Fichte, one of the designers of the Prussian system, the goal of this method was to “fashion” the student in such a way that he “simply cannot will otherwise” than what those in “authority” want him to will. At the time, the system was openly admitted to be a means of psychologically enslaving the general populace to the will of the ruling class. And it continues to accomplish exactly that, all over the world, including in the United States."
"Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth."
Is it even possible to not be broken by something like this?