Perhaps I'm being overly paranoid, but two ideas just clicked together for me:
1) I've seen a lot of articles about "helicopter parents" who hover over their children -- even going on job interviews with them! I have found this sad. Parents do their children no favors when they are so "involved".
2) This article, to some extent, says that colleges expect to brainwash children, and urges parents to back off and let the Socialism Machine shape their young minds without interference.
I think I see an effort to separate children from parents. To help the kids be independent? Or to make them part of the machine?
I see these as two separate phenomena. At least part of the reason for the first is that parents have only one or two children and lots of time and disposable income.
2) This article, to some extent, says that colleges expect to brainwash children, and urges parents to back off and let the Socialism Machine shape their young minds without interference.
It's been this way from the beginning.
The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army; 2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms; 3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function; 4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry; 5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues; 6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deedThen later, the Marxists sought to breakdown the current social order by destroying public morals. A population enslaved to vice is easy to conquer and govern.
My son is in college and it's strange that I can't call up the school and see how he's doing in his classes. But also, when we go give blood, they won't tell me his answers to all those personal/sex questions they ask. I don't think it's an effort to separate kids from parents, I think it's an acknowledgment, and a legal issue, that kids over 18 years old are adults.