Jason Kuznicki doesn't think that the "It Gets Better" project goes far enough:
[I]t’s simply not enough that when you’re an adult, you get to move on. We need to face down the problem of high school itself. Rather than focus on the tragedies, let’s look at the deeply weird, deeply authoritarian place that is high school.
Let’s look at how it’s set up, which seems designed only to foster cliques, to identify scapegoats, and to stomp out all individual differences. How a place like this can possibly be a good thing for our society is beyond me.High school seems made to hurt, which is insane. I knew this back when I was in high school. I faced it every day. I also knew of social spaces for people my age that weren’t designed to hurt. I could never understand why I faced abuse by my schoolmates, but not by the friends I found outside my school. In time, we developed a social circle composed entirely of outcasts, and we had some great, great times together. But that only made me ask all the more insistently: Why is high school the way it is, not just for gay-identified kids, but for all kids?