the worst insult you can throw at somebody today is "you're a child". because in the minds of the US citizen, the child is the worst things in existence. schools exist to quarantine them, to remove them from society, to make them "proper" humans, adults, in other words.

the reason why the child is considered the most despicable object in US mainstream culture is because the child represents nature, the thing that is a direct offspring of biology, instinct, and whatever we consider "uncultured uncivilized being". in the US, the child is like a piece of dirt, or clay maybe, that has to be sculpted and burned into porcellaine before it's considered worth anything. even more, the child - through its playful instinct and lust for life - might even represent the animal instinct that has been so successfully repressed in every Grown-up human. and we cannot accept what was never accepted about ourselves.