The Myth of the Respect Retreat

As long as we're discussing education here, I'd like to (briefly, I hope) bring up what I consider to be the most outrageous waste of time and resources ever to enter the schools: respect/kindness "retreats." Admittedly, this will be more of a rant than a considered argument, but I think it's interesting to note that everyone under, say, twenty-eight knows what a load of bullshit these things are, while everyone over twenty-eight thinks they're great. There's one going on here right now whose mission is to help our second- and third-graders be more respectful.

When did it become the schools' responsibility to teach children to be nice to each other?

Here's how these things work. You take some time -- depending on how old the kids are, it can be anywhere from an hour to a whole day -- and you stick them in a room -- or rooms -- with a bunch of Crazed Weirdos from a group called Youth Frontiers. Then they sing songs, learn about how important respect is, and, if they're in grades six and above, they light a candle and make embarrassingly voyeuristic confessions. If this last part sounds familiar to you, it may be because you're familiar with brain-washing techniques used by mid-century Soviet intelligence operatives. Then, after some kind of affirmation, everyone is sent home or back to class or wherever, glowing with the love of respect and a newfound sense of awe for their fellow students. Isn't this awesome?

Yeah. Awesome like awesome in the phrase "you guys, Jesus is awesome." Because maybe fifteen hours go by and you're back in school... and then what? Well, then people are still getting their asses kicked, still being hated on, and still ripping each other to pieces, and all the while the over twenty-eight adults in the building are weeping softly, wondering why these kids can't have paid more attention at the retreat yesterday.

Come on. Give me a break. Kids are bastards to each other because that's what school does to people. Adults over twenty-eight, how would you like to be stuck in an overcrowded space with a bunch of people you hate and know that for the next seven years, you couldn't get out? You'd hate it, and you'd lash out at the people you hate that surround you. As usual, there's no workable solution here (except to make the schools less like prison-warehouses, but that's another post entirely), but the best we can do is to stop giving money to organizations like Youth Frontiers. These goons are carpetbagging schools all over America and laughing all the way to the bank. The question is, why doesn't everybody laugh back?