School Sorrow

For some children going back to school means returning to torture

Many kids are excited to go back to school. For them it’s back to old friends back to the comfort of structure back to opportunities to succeed and shine. For others though it’s back to torture of various kinds.

Academic Torture

Although the word “torture” is often applied to the intentional physical suffering one endures at the hands of another and frequently conjures up images of warfare and political agendas it has other meanings as well. Specifically torture can refer to any form of physical or mental anguish.

Some children experience decades of anguish as they are forced to confront an academic curriculum. It might be that they find their studies excruciatingly boring. This may be because the work is beyond their capacity or it is far too simple for their quick minds. Maybe it lacks personal relevance or other interesting characteristics. It might also be that the work is exhausting taxing their intellectual perceptual or physical skills far beyond a comfort zone. This may happen because the child has severe or even mild deficits that impact severely on normal forms of classroom instruction (such as having to attend auditorily to someone lecturing at the front of a classroom or having to read copious amounts of material or having to sit still for long periods of time).