It's Rick James' birthday, bitch!
And in 1662, Taiwan surrendered to the Chinese pirate Koxinga, after a nine-month seige.
Continuing from yesterday's post:
So, what kind of kids might you expect from a situation like the one I described? Clinical psychology can tell us something about this. It seems that lab animals which are conditioned to believe something and then have the circumstances changed so that their old beliefs are no longer valid, become introverted, exhibit symptoms of extreme emotional and mental stress, and become more easily controlled, apparently because they no longer trust their own minds.
They no longer trust their own minds.
Kids today are told that they have to attend school because they need to learn. But this is only part of the truth. Kids are also sent to school to keep them supervised until they can be trusted, but more importantly, they're sent to enculturate them, to teach them things by rote and example as opposed to by lecture and practice. I mean things like "we wait in lines," and "this is how to budget your time," as well as "you are not in charge," and "you are a tiny cog in a system so large that you can't possibly comprehend it." Kids know this, too; you may even remember knowing it yourself (I do). They realize it early, but adults continue to tell them that they go to school "to learn." Observed truth (that they aren't really learning anything new after about 3rd grade) does not equal Revealed truth (that they go to school 'to learn'), and cognitive dissonance arises. They no longer trust their own minds.
It's no wonder that they turn to video games instead of homework, television instead of conversation with their parents or adult friends, or use experience-expanding drugs instead of mind-expanding books.
Yeah, honest to god, once upon a time, people had friends of wildly different ages. It was a cheesy TV show, God knows, but "Dennis the Menace" was also a snapshot of its era (early-mid '60s), and Dennis had a good, friendly (however antagonistic) relationship with his adult neighbors. They talked. They had a complex relationship. Yes, it was fiction, but we can read it just like we read Shakespeare: of course it didn't really happen, but events like the ones described almost certainly did.
That it doesn't happen anymore -that kids are becoming increasingly less-well-informed and more apathetic-- is a result not only of this cognitive dissonance and the resulting mistrust of authority, but also as a result of the culture of fear developed by the TV industry to boost ratings ("Don't talk to strangers! You could be next! News at 6!"), and because of the deadly combination of our fascination with shiny things, and our ability to produce ever-more-captivating ones.
I am generalizing, of course. Not every kid is like this, and I don't know the relevant statistics, but I see it everywhere, and whenever I bring this up, I am met with a chorus of agreement. I am led to believe it's true, generally speaking.
So, what's going to happen when the last of the Responsible Adults dies? Lord of the Flies??
2 comments:
Wow. You didn't go anywhere close to where I thought you were going with this follow-up. I thought you might mention how we're taught that "Democracy is good." "We have a say in what happens in our country." And when we realize it isn't so, we introvert ourselves and become detachted.
I thought about this today when I heard the kids missay the Pledge of Allegiance by starting with, "I pledge of allegiance." I thought, "these kids have NO idea what they're saying. None."
But hasn't the education system always been that way? If anything schools expected even more conformity during the age of Dennis the Menace. As far as "standing quietly in line" and other such conformity issues, aren't those necessary tools for creating a civil society?
This would be a much better conversation in person. Man, I miss you.
Excellent point- I could just as well have mentioned the lessons you mentioned, as well. It's the Mommy-state lying to us, causing cognitive dissonance.
The apathy, the detachment that we see right now, that we take part in (yeah I admit, it gets to me sometimes), is just the beginning of a much, much more serious problem: what happens when not enough people care enough to maintain civil society?
I don't think the educational system has always been the same. I know that things have changed in the last 50 years- class sizes increase (leading to less teacher-student contact, more likelihood of students falling through the cracks, standards changing and lowering, curriculum change, etc.
I don't think the problem IS the system. I think The System does a lot of good things (or better: "is a good attempt at a good thing," maybe). It has its faults, sure, but on the whole I think it performs a valuable service (how to wait in line is a very important thing to know).
Conformity- excellent point. Yeah, it sure seems as though conformity was more encouraged back then. I suppose that was probably the stuff that greased the wheels of society then.
If we were to boil this down to its essence, then, would we be forced to choose between Civil Society on one hand, and Individuality on the other? (And wasn't there a Star Trek episode about this? eeep)
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