The War on Kids – A Review

The War on Kids is a documentary directed by Cevin Soling and presented by Spectacle Films.  It is a film that focuses on the injustices to children that are happening everyday in school.  It dives deep into the problems that exists concerning zero tolerance policies, security systems, the war on drugs, administrators and teachers, pharmaceuticals, public education, homework, and socialization.

Early on in the documentary we are told that children are assumed to do bad things unless they are absolutely controlled.  Or are we reminded?  Not so much when I was a child, but present day schools have adopted zero tolerance policies on weapons, drugs and alcohol. The War on Kids gives a multitude of examples of children being arrested, handcuffed, fingerprinted, and dragged out of school for seemingly minor infractions.  Children are being suspended for spit wads, pointing their fingers like guns, for having magic markers and Midol because administrators think they should “err on the side of caution.”

In the lesson on Zero-tolerance we see appalling, yet real comparisons drawn between a school and a low security prison.  Both are a policed institution, complete with metal detectors and security cameras.  For those who may not see it, it brings to light the destructive effects that controlling a child’s waking moments, thoughts, actions, appetite and body functions can have on a young person.

Especially important and insightful is the segment on pharmaceuticals.  It brings to light a lot of interesting and abhorrent facts concerning the drugging of our children.  The parents, the doctors and the teachers who drug children in order to force them to be someone other than who they are should be ashamed of themselves.  Drugs like Ritalin, and Adderall (and anti-depressants) destroy a child’s brain and immune system.  It causes depression, anxiety, stunted growth, obsessive compulsive disorder, psychosis, permanent ticks and in the worst cases suicide and death.  All in the name of  behaving, sitting still, and paying attention?  Really?

While I feel that knowing about atrocities like the ones shown in the film is important, I do not believe that school can be reformed.  The way the institutions run require these failures.  It’s fuel for more funding, more studies, more testing, and more control.  It keeps the school reformers focused on school reform and not the actual problem, the institution itself.  Children, human beings, should not be controlled any more than you or I.  While the film shows many extreme examples, like the shooting in Columbine or the SWAT team raid in Goose Creek, SC, it’s not wrong in making these assumptions about all public schools.  It’s worth noting that at my small high school in Vermont (which incidentally has a VERY LOW crime rate) my father was allowed to smoke cigarettes on the steps in his youth.   The next decade saw the school system stopping kids from leaving during the day, in the following decade stopped them from hanging out in certain areas, and a few years later built a fence to keep students on the grounds.  After I graduated, the students saw new security cameras  installed that even point at the bathrooms.  They already have a “resource officer” (policeman) so what’s next?

It also includes interview footage with John Taylor Gatto, and some other familiar names in the anti-school crowd.  I definitely recommend it. However, please know that it’s a strong film with extreme views and heart-wrenching footage.  It’s a warning for the future.  If schools continue on this path they will be freeing prisoners rather than graduating students.   Many already are.