Children: Manufactured Consumers

A Field Report on How Schools Train Appetite Without Production

 

by Richard P. Weigand

I watched a group of young adults who thought they had been given luxury. When told they would have to work for it, they reacted as if exchange itself were an insult.

That was the flash of recognition.

They were not merely spoiled.

From different walks of life these 19 year old children were all the same.  Kids are not like that. They should be different.  These weren’t.  That suggested hey were molded.

They had been formed to consume, display, demand, and believe, with pride, that they deserved what they wanted but had not produced.

The ultimate consuming machine is not born by accident. It is produced.

Not by one source alone. Home, media, advertising, entertainment, social platforms, government policy, and celebrity culture all help feed it.

But schools are central.

Schools are where children spend years being trained in what counts as effort, result, reward, authority, exchange, and responsibility.

If a school forms a producer, which is what the hope is, then the student learns that value must be created. Work matters. Skill matters. Discipline matters. Exchange matters. Results matter. Contribution matters.

If a school forms a consumer, the student learns that presence is enough, feelings are authority, standards are negotiable, rewards are expected, and the world owes him support before he has produced value for anyone else.

That is not an accident.

That is a mold. An identity. A consuming machine.

How does that come about?

1. Rewarding Attendance Instead of Production

The first method is obvious.

The student shows up, sits there, contributes little, learns little, produces little, and still moves forward.

What does that teach the child?

Mere presence equals entitlement.

In real life, presence is not enough. Something has to be produced. A value has to be created. A result has to be exchanged.

But the student has been trained to think, “I am here. Where is my reward?”

That is consumer formation.

2. Removing Failure for the kids

Failure is one of life’s great instructors.

But when schools protect students from real failure, they remove the natural link between effort and result.

Late work still counts.

Bad work is softened.

No real consequence follows.

The grade is adjusted.

The standard is lowered.

The student learns that the result can be negotiated after the fact.

That is deadly.

Because in production, reality does not negotiate.

The cabinet is square or it is not.

The bridge holds or it does not.

The patient improves or he does not.

The crop grows or it does not.

Reality does not care how the student feels about the standard.

3. Praising them for just being there.

A child should be encouraged.

That is not the issue.

The issue is unworthy praise.

A child is told he is wonderful, special, valid, important, unique, brilliant, expressive, and deserving before he can do anything well.

That creates a false self.

The student learns to expect the feeling of achievement without the discipline that earns achievement.

He learns to want the reward before the result.

He learns to protect the image before he has built the substance.

That becomes an adult who wants luxury without work, status without contribution, and admiration without earned value.

4. Treating the Student as a Customer

Modern schooling often treats students and parents as customers to be satisfied.

The school begins to ask:

Is the student happy?

Is the student comfortable?

Is the student feeling affirmed?

Are parents complaining?

Will this hurt our ratings?

But real education asks different questions.

Is the student being formed?

Can he read?

Can he think?

Can he work?

Can he tell truth from nonsense?

Can he face correction?

Can he produce?

When the student becomes the customer, education becomes a service experience.

The student consumes school.

He does not submit to formation.

5. Replacing Standards With Feelings

If feelings outrank standards, the child learns that discomfort is an argument.

The assignment is hard.

The test is stressful.

The reading is boring.

The rule feels unfair.

The correction feels judgmental.

The standard feels oppressive.

I didn’t do anything wrong!

Instead of learning to meet the standard, the student learns to challenge the emotional effect of the standard.

That produces adults who do not ask, “What must I do?”

They ask, “Why am I being made uncomfortable?”

That is not maturity.

That is trained fragility and produces a demand for goods and service to make them comfortable.

6. Making Group Identity More Important Than Individual Conduct

When a student is trained to think mainly as a member of a category, personal responsibility weakens.

His failures can be explained by systems.

His conduct can be explained by identity.

His resentment can be justified by group narratives.

His obligations can be shifted outward.

The student does not learn to ask, “What did I do? What can I build? What can I repair? What can I contribute?”

He learns to ask, “What am I owed?”

That is not education.

That is grievance training.

7. Devaluing Work With the Hands

Public schools often imply that real success means escaping physical work.

That is a cultural disaster.

Work with the hands teaches reality. It teaches sequence, weight, resistance, tools, patience, correction, and finished product.

You cannot charm a board into being straight.

You cannot flatter a wall into being plumb.

You cannot negotiate with a broken machine by saying you felt unsafe.

Physical work teaches the student that reality answers back.

It teaches the child to think!

When schools devalue that, they detach students from production.

Then the student may grow up surrounded by objects he cannot make, repair, understand, or respect.

He becomes a consumer of a world produced by invisible others.

8. The student learns the language of receiving not giving.

This is one of the deepest changes.

A student is taught to speak in terms of rights, needs, supports, accommodations, inclusion, access, and services.

Some of those things have a rightful place.

But if that becomes the whole vocabulary, exchange disappears.

The student learns the language of receiving.

Not the language of contributing.

He learns how to claim.

Not how to produce.

He learns how to demand support.

Not how to become support.

That is how you get the ultimate consuming machine.

9. Removing Chores, Duty, and Service From Formation

A school can teach information while still failing to form duty.

Students need to clean something.

Fix something.

Serve someone.

Carry something.

Show up on time.

Be responsible for an outcome that affects others.

Not as punishment.

As formation.

Without duty, the student remains at the center of his own experience. Everything comes toward him. Very little is required to flow outward from him.

That is consumption.

A child who is never required to contribute may become an adult who believes contribution is optional.

10. Making Entertainment necessary for work.

When every lesson must be fun, engaging, colorful, exciting, gamified, and emotionally pleasing, students learn their attention must be purchased.

But adult life requires attention without entertainment.

Work is often repetitive.

Mastery is often dull.

Discipline is often quiet.

Production is often unglamorous.

If school trains the child to expect stimulation before effort, the adult becomes dependent on being entertained into action.

That is not formation.

That is consumer conditioning.

The Product- A Consumer

Put these together and the product becomes visible.

Reward presence without production.

Protect self-esteem without competence.

Remove failure.

Treat standards and correction as harm.

Turn education into a service experience.

Teach the language of rights without the discipline of exchange.

Remove duty, chores, and service.

Devalue manual work.

Make identity larger than conduct.

Make entertainment the condition of attention.

The result is not a free person.

It is not a producer.

It is not a builder.

It is not a citizen ready to carry weight.

It is a manufactured consumer.

A person trained to want without producing.

Demand without exchanging.

Receive without gratitude.

Display without substance.

Complain without responsibility.

Expect luxury without work.

And when reality finally asks for exchange, he experiences it as injustice.

That is the product.

And someone wants that product.

The appetite market wants him.

The platform wants him.

The ideology wants him.

The state can use him.

The advertising machine wants him.

The entertainment machine wants him.

The credit machine wants him.

The whole system of managed appetite wants him.

Because a human being reduced to appetite becomes the perfect consumer.

He can be sold to forever.

He can be promised to forever.

He can be frightened forever.

He can be flattered forever.

He can be moved from product to product, outrage to outrage, identity to identity, promise to promise, without ever becoming strong enough to ask the real question:

What have I produced?

That is why this matters.

The child is trained to consume the world before he is trained to contribute to it.

That is not education.

That is betrayal.

Because man was not made merely to consume.

He wants to create, build, exchange, serve, repair, produce, contribute, and carry his part of the world.

The manufactured consumer is not an accident.

He is a produced product.

And the production must stop.