Back-to-school redundant?

It's August! So if you live in Kentucky, your kids are probably back in school already!

But I'm wondering about something, and this applies to families all over America: Has back-to-school become a redundant concept? How can you go back to something when you haven't really left it?

I don't mean just in areas plagued by a year-round calendar. Although the family is supposed to be a basic building block of society, school has much more influence than the family in modern America.

Especially in more conservative locales, school is often not a benign influence. Rather, school exploits and indoctrinates - instead of teaching and guiding. When today's young people - on half of the days the year - spend more waking hours under school authority than at home or under their own self-rule, school provides the bulk of life's influences. This is true of public and private schools alike.

Exploitation occupies a space close to the heart of the modern American education system's agenda. Schools today train our children to become cheap, docile labor and carry on a right-wing political legacy. Basic civics have fallen by the wayside in many school districts. Schools no longer teach how to be independent, creative, and responsible. Instead they teach how to be good spokes in the corporatist wheel.

This abuse (which borders on child trafficking) has become almost a part of pop culture. Now schools are just expected to be a flabby limb of Corporate America, as people have become too accustomed to it to question it.

Not only are all school activities centered on this ideology. Now it's also expected that home activities are centered on school. Nothing is to exist outside the school's framework.

And if some of us get left behind because schools teach an ideology instead of teaching us, tough. Instead of schools taking the blame, we end up taking the blame. We get called lazy, insane, mentally challenged, you name it. When we realize we've had a shitty education, we get told that it's shitty only because we failed to make the most of it.

According to the school system, it goes like this: If something works out for us in life, it's because of our school. If something doesn't, it's because of us. It's a "heads, I win; tails, you lose" situation.

Most Americans my age or younger probably find school to be a much bigger influence in their lives than their family.

I feel as if I've broken this vicious cycle. So join me in helping to shatter this cycle of misery some more. Keep a close eye on what your kids are being taught in school. Make sure their individuality is respected and that they have the opportunity to let their interests play a role in their education.

Our young people are - well, people. Not property.