My daughter got it. It took me a while to define it as an illness. But it is. And bit by bit I am discovering more and more kids who have this disease to various extents.
Over the past two years plus my daughter got sick a lot of times. Really sick. Dark circles under her eyes, running nose, nausea, stomach aches, dizziness, weakness, sleep disorders, lack of appetite, headaches. We went to the doctors. Ran the blood tests. Nothing pointed anywhere. When the first long vacation of the school year came, and all symptoms disappeared I got the first hint. It all came back with school, and disappeared again with the next vacation.
We sat down and had a long analytical discussion. Now, I am not a doctor, nor a psychologist. I am a mother. A very attentive mother. And I decided I need to get to the bottom of this.
The background is also relevant: my daughter is highly gifted. From the time she joined the special class for the gifted on 3rd grade, till the time she left this class and went to high school, on the 9th grade, she never wanted to miss a day at school. She loves learning and does a lot of learning by herself. Her grades have always been perfect. Even now, with the Disease, she is a straight A student.
But now she hates school. In that eye-opening conversation she confessed that her main problem with school is that “school is preventing and delaying learning”. In those words. Being a mother of gifted kids that’s a startling truth to hear.
But even if they weren’t gifted… I mean, if this is the way a gifted student is feeling, then those who don’t share such a motivation for learning must be feeling even worse, don’t they??
A little asking around confirmed that high-school-frustration manifests in various physical ways – similar to what my daughter has been experiencing over the past two years plus.
Like other diseases there are several ways to prevent and to treat it. Unfortunately, prevention demands a deep reform into the education system. Treatment – well, the only thing left to do is to let her go. Skip school as much as she needs to in order to feel better. But that could work with kids who can learn by themselves. I am at loss when it comes to kids who really need the classroom and the learning enabler. This is taken back to ed-reform table.
But one thing I do wish: I wish that parents all over would realize that this is real. A real disease. It’s not laziness or some other form of “I want to skip school” naughtiness. This is a real illness and please treat your kids-with-Schoolitis exactly the same way you would care for them when they have the flue or even Angina.
Or-Tal's Writings 
July 1, 2011 at 10:40
Well put, good warnings Or-Tal. It’s not the best of advice, but ‘This too shall pass’ – as long as unschool learning is still happening!
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July 1, 2011 at 11:21
That’s exactly what I was thinking: what happens to those kids who aren’t the self-teaching types? But a twitter exchange with an American high schooler made it clear to me that having the ability to “take a break” sometimes gets them back at school re-energized. That’s got to be worth something, no?
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June 16, 2012 at 05:52
Reblogged this on ImagineACircle and commented:
A really excellent article about what schools are like for some kids. I’m not sure really who schools are working for – the teachers don’t seem much happier than the kids. I’m glad there are other choices.
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June 16, 2012 at 05:57
What we all need to realize is that “school” is relatively new. And compulsory education was not greeted with open arms in the beginning. Families were used to educating their own children and did not want to turn their children over to the state to educate.
Our family has tried public, private and alternative forms of education. They all had their good and bad points. But what has worked the best for us is unschooling. Simply allowing our child to learn what interests her while providing a rich environment for exploration. Now granted it helps that both of us parents work at home and we like to travel as much as the budget and work allows.
The benefits of having our child around have been enormous. We have fostered very close relationships and have had the joy of watching our child blossom into a delightful and thoughtful adult. Because of these secure relationships our child has had the courage to leave the nest for several months at a time to visit other cultures while learning abroad.
No, no schoolitis for our family either. Way back in junior high we dropped out and have never looked back. When I saw that school was holding my child back, that was it, we left.
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June 16, 2012 at 18:02
Darleen, this is wonderful. I do envy you. I wish I could have provided it for my kids, whenever they needed that. It’s not that simple, especially legally in my country. Even homeschooling is closely monitored and supervised. But I do believe in finding the appropriate education solution that fits each child. And don’t forget some kids are quite happy with school.
Aaron, I’d love to hear more about these other choices you mentioned.
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June 17, 2012 at 02:21
Thanks. It boggles the mind to think it is illegal to teach your own child in many places. I see it as a universal right, a freedom of choice, especially since the notion of going to school at all is a relatively new one. We parents do the best we can with what we are given. Thank goodness you listened and did what you could for your child.
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June 17, 2012 at 07:45
Darleen, you are right. I think this law was meant originally to prevent parents from using their kids as cheap workforce instead of sending then to school. Rather silly in our culture (“The people of the book”…).
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August 3, 2013 at 23:04
Amazing that your young child could see this so precisely–“school is preventing and delaying learning”– but the entire education establishment can’t figure out how to fix it. (Methinks they like it that way.)
I write a lot about the perversities in our public schools. And normally it’s an uphill slog because I have to persuade adults that what they think is a serious attempt at education is actually a fake attempt. But your child saw it quickly enough. This gives me hope. Maybe more adults will start to catch on.
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