An eloquent thread now in GD bemoans the current state: "Another “dogs with stars and elected ponies’ show” today, all with straight faces. Another bunch of multi-millionaires commenting on it, all with straight faces...Who believes those who say they believe? Who says the truth without calculating the risk to their jobs, to their way of life?" It got me to thinking once again about The Passive American.The Passive American. Witness the evolution of American childhood and see how our behavior is being shaped like rats in a cage. See the passive way we spend our youth. Notice the lessons that each will learn: you will be forced to sit in a classroom for 12 years or more -- do not speak up, do not complain -- and will be spoonfed content not of your own choosing at 45 minute intervals,
told what to work on and when, stripped of your free will except in the most narrow places imaginable (free to write "on any topic of your choosing"), wildness and farm chores stripped from your life -- no building of forts, no creeks for catching minnows, no time for learning carpentry or weaving or the making of useful things by your parents' side.
Stop now, skeptical reader, and consider that the elites shaping the schools a century ago wanted to control 'indiscriminate fraternization' -- among the poor, among the immigrants. Consider that perhaps some of the immigrants who rioted over the imposition of compulsory school were not know-nothing anti-intellectuals, but people who knew what the powers were actually up to.Fascism gets established in part through factory schools. That which is unique is suppressed, a ranking and a hierarchy established, the dangan is written.During these 12 years, you will NOT be given increased freedom and responsibility -- you will not be given the reins, you will not be entrusted with care of the farm. You will be subjected to basically the same routines over and over, and held captive by the same threats. Even though you make progress in the skills you are told to learn, you aren't mixed with younger or older kids, so you may not notice your own mastery, because what matters is the grades. You will be constantly judged and ranked, not on whether you eventually master a subject at your own pace, but on whether you master it as fast as the fastest in your particular age group -- in your "production lot", we might say. Since you will be constantly judged relative to that same group, you are likely to continue to get the same grades -- A's at the top of the heap, D's and F's at the bottom -- which will help you to "know your place", to get accustomed to the bottom rung, or become accustomed to feeling "special" and "entitled" on the top rung.
All experience with anything other than paperwork and bookwork will be greatly curtailed or minimized. Exercise of a strong will basically be forbidden during this long confinement. Give up the childish desire to build real things, from now on, nearly all of your accomplishments are to be contained on an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper. Are you prepared for a job in corporate America yet?
Ask yourself: was this behavioral regimen designed to create
consumers and employees or
producers and citizens? Self-sufficient, or living "on the grid"?
You may say to yourself 'But childhood has been like this for a hundred years!' Yes. But if our father's fathers grew up with an independent livelihood on a farm or as a cobbler or a waggon-maker or blacksmith, didn't our fathers get handed those values, albeit in a diluted fashion? How far back do you have to go to find independent livelihoods, or childhoods built more of family or hard work or experiences in wild nature, than of sitting as passive recipients of a mandated curriculum, spending no time unsupervised?
If you want to understand the Passive American, look at his Passive Childhood.
Gatto's list in The Underground History of American Education of 15 ways NOT to raise a whole child -- we liberals aren't likely to agree with all of them, but it is definitely food for thought. Read it if you want to consider HOW we are all shaped to accept our corporatist lives, subservient to 'the system'.
Remove children from the business of the world until time has passed for them to learn how to self-teach.
Age-grade them so that past and future both are muted and become irrelevant.
Take all religion out of their lives except the hidden civil religion of appetite, and positive/negative reinforcement schedules.
Remove all significant functions from home and family life except its role as dormitory and casual companionship. Make parents unpaid agents of the State; recruit them into partnerships to monitor the conformity of children to an official agenda.
Keep children under surveillance every minute from dawn to dusk. Give no private space or time. Fill time with collective activities. Record behavior quantitatively.
Addict the young to machinery and electronic displays. Teach that these are desirable to recreation and learning both.
Use designed games and commercial entertainment to teach preplanned habits, attitudes, and language usage.
Pair the selling of merchandise with attractive females in their prime childbearing years so that the valences of lovemaking and mothering can be transferred intact to the goods vended.
Remove as much private ritual as possible from young lives, such as the rituals of food preparation and family dining.
Keep both parents employed with the business of strangers. Discourage independent livelihoods with low start-up costs. Make labor for others and outside obligations first priority, self-development second.
Grade, evaluate, and assess children constantly and publicly. Begin early. Make sure everyone knows his or her rank.
Honor the highly graded. Keep grading and real world accomplishment as strictly separate as possible so that a false meritocracy, dependent on the support of authority to continue, is created. Push the most independent kids to the margin; do not tolerate real argument.
Forbid the efficient transmission of useful knowledge, such as how to build a house, repair a car, make a dress.
Reward dependency in many forms. Call it "teamwork."
Establish visually degraded group environments called "schools" and arrange mass movements through these environments at regular intervals. Encourage a level of fluctuating noise (aperiodic negative reinforcement) so that concentration, habits of civil discourse, and intellectual investigation are gradually extinguished from the behavioral repertoire.
Zinn recommends it. So do I.
