Are Public Schools Turning into Prisons?

Cevin Soling, known for his documentary “The War on The War on Drugs,” recently released his newest documentary film  entitled, “The War on Kids,” shedding light on the issues surrounding the modern American public school.

In his 95 minutes feature, Soling reveals how the public school system has failed children by depriving them of all their freedoms due to irrational fears. Touching upon topics such as the “Zero Tolerance” policy, the obliteration of students’ civil rights, and the invasive and ineffective security measures many schools have used their budgets on, Soling argues that the modern American public school has surprisingly become like prisons in their structure and operations.

Furthermore, Soling shows how psychiatric solutions to get children to “act properly” in school are actually physically and emotionally damaging to children rather than a help to them. The dubiousness of psychiatric treatments are also exposed as the documentary shows that most of kids getting treatment are the ones who question teachers and authority thus leading to Soling’s argument that these kids are actually being drugged into submission – to conform to what the way adults want them to be like.

Soling backs up his arguments about the present state of modern public schools with evidence such as Supreme Court decisions permitting schools to beat children without a prior hearing and allowing school officials to censor student newspapers and various others studies and news headlines on a variety of medias.

In an interview, Soling said, “I consider the film to be a civil rights piece more than anything else.  Kids in America are horrendously oppressed and we have systems of propaganda which obscures that fact… Kids are demonized and blamed for the degeneration of society.  Virtually every community in America has a curfew law on their books while in most other countries, children are a part of the community and not excluded from public spaces.  For kids in America, it is truly a fascist nation with terrible repercussions for the transgressors.  On average, children are punished more severely by the legal system for comparable crimes committed by adults.  In addition, many behaviors that are sanctioned for adults are considered criminal for a child, so there is a great degree of hypocrisy as well.  Schools are part of this repressive system and their structure reflects the societal desire to have power over kids more than it does their desire to nurture creative thoughtful and inspired people.”

“The War on Kids” was the winner of Best Educational Documentary NY International Independent Film and Video Festival 2009. It has had a limited release in theaters, a DVD version is on sale here.

You can check out the trailer here.

For more information about the documentary you can check out its website.