What we teach in school

Our original intent for schools was simpler than today.  For a young America, literacy was first and foremost; we needed an informed citizenry.  We needed to band together as participants in democracy for the principles that mattered.  Today, information overload hinders our maintaining that result.

Today, our children are bombarded with more information in a

year than early Americans would see in a lifetime.

Or ten. It's a flood, an overload, and more than

can be processed.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic - the early curriculum ... today, our children are bombarded with more information in a year than early Americans would see in a lifetime. Or ten.  It's a flood, an overload, too large to consume and process.  There's personal and cultural impact that happens without our consent. Flooding our children's minds, there's a casual worldview that is not constrained by what might be helpful in their personal development.  At an early age, they're fed materialism, consumerism, class & wealth, competition & superiority, violence & discrimination, judgmentalism, and secularism. Is that a problem?

We remember how children behind the iron curtain were educated, the specific worldview they were given. They were told that countries in the free world were wicked and corrupt and immoral. Children in Germany were educated about how immoral and inferior the Jews among them were. Hitler Youth, they were called; sweet kids being warped and misled by an inhuman ideology. Government controlled education has often been bent for political goals.  Today, with the help of a polarized media, is like that but in a hugely chaotic form.

In a child's learning process, they'll note what they see.  You and your kid can sit and discuss some persuasive advertisement or Kardashianesque scene they just saw.  It can be broken down and evaluated, and a child can learn to discern good from trivial, information from persuasion, and values.  

A dozen such exposures in quick succession without thoughtful review, however, can shape a child's thinking about 'normal' before the content is even processed.  Fashion and style can become preeminent personal values, sexual innuendo can become the norm in conversation, possessions and consumerism can become a lifestyle, all before the issues are thoughtfully evaluated.  It's the flood of exposure from media, from friends at school and in the neighborhood.  Much is advertising mixed in their entertainment content.

Traditional schooling, much like traditional church, is having a hard time keeping up.  Today, pretty much everyone has access to pretty much everyone.  We're interconnected in an uncontrolled public plaza.  Haters are still campaigning among us as are anarchists and other oddities. Anti-religionists, religious fundamentalists, and violent extremists spew their polarizing versions of reality as do similarly extreme liberals and conservatives.  And political bullies and biased media.  It's difficult enough as an adult to remain objective and adequately informed in the aggressive flood of information.  It is incomprehensibly difficult for a child; their chance of reaching the ethical and moral clarity of an early American child is small.

Cultural change has removed many of the needed safeguards.  Employed parents working outside the home may reduce the common interchange and safe processing of ideas.  Issues of character are frequently untaught and undemonstrated.  Schools have been tasked with progressively greater responsibility for character formation.  Most things that mom and dad taught their children in early days are now part of the mass production process of public education.

Absent parent situations have changed the message a child receives. Marriage and family have lost the endorsement of the national forum and have been redefined.  Issues of morality and personal integrity have been eroded into obscurity.  Church communities are having a difficult time being relevant.

How then might we make a way for our children that lets them climb up above the easy acquiescence of today's youth?

Opportunities for us and our children:

• Early introduction to difficult decisions and important values - equality, discrimination, generosity, compassion, honesty - with deliberate discussion and practical walk-throughs
• Homeschooling - today, support and inexpensive resources are available everywhere
• Apprenticeship/Internship - one-on-one education (as opposed to classroom)
• Cross-cultural engagement - pursuit of a worldview that reflects real life for all rather than just the wealthy, perhaps including international travel (engagement rather than vacation)
• Practical introduction to faith issues - how to know what's right and good (as opposed to having just an opinion) - life values are honestly built over time, not proffered by others.
• Broad and aggressive academic exposure (by professorial provocateurs rather than hubristic lecturers) that requires thoughtful development of convictions and values; perhaps both inside and outside the traditional educational institutions
• Talk about everything -- do your best to provoke visionary ambition and continual inquiry.

The key -- deliberate action, frequent review, and prioritization.

And where might we go if we want to pursue such a course? From an interview with MIT professor emeritus, Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist:

Q:  Have you considered leaving the United States permanently?

A:  No. This is the best country in the world.

The Alternate Target

Qayin, so the historical account tells us, killed Havel, his brother.

There's no record of the weapon he used or of any interest in what it might have been.  At issue is not the weapon but the killing.  It was perhaps because of jealousy, but we don't really know.  After Qayin (Cain) killed his brother Havel (Abel), no one asked about the weapon.

Heart issues remain the primary question, but they're hard to face and even harder to address. It's perhaps understandable that we might move on to less relevant targets and focus our efforts there.

Falling back on gun control as an easier target ignores the obvious, that murderous behavior is not brought about by the available weapon.

Is hitting that secondary target a solution to the primary problem?

The Arab Spring, Tahrir Square, Egypt - Christians
guarded Muslims during the violent times.

Not wise, but certainly understandable. Tackling the actual cause would require of us a measure of greatness, of courage, of nobility, would it not?

So how might we begin to address the primary problem?
What course of action might change the heart of mankind for the better?

First published 02/2013, but the issue remains off target.

Observations by a white mother of black children

A disturbing story in the Atlantic from July this year
explores a bit about how such thinking and
behavior persists in American culture.
The fact that it does, is troubling.





It's today, not ancient history.

Kate Riffle Roper
(from her facebook post) July 19, 2016 at 7:20pm · As a white mother of two black children, three white children, who all have a white father, I have something to say.

Racism exists. It is real and tangible. And it is everywhere, all the time.When I brought my boys home they were the cutest, sweetest babies ever. Wherever we went, people greeted us with charm and enthusiasm. Well, not all people and not everywhere. But, to me, they were the “wacko” exceptions. I thought to myself, “Get over it.”

Now my boys look like teenagers. Black teenagers. They are 13. Let me ask you these questions. Do store personnel follow your children when they are picking out their Gatorade flavors? They didn’t follow my white kids. Do coffee shop employees interrogate your children about the credit card they are using to pay while you are in the bathroom? They didn’t interrogate my white kids. When your kids trick-or-treat in, dressed as a Ninja and a Clown, do they get asked who they are with and where they live, door after door? My white kids didn’t get asked. Do your kids get pulled out of the TSA line time and again for additional screening? My white kids didn’t. Do your kids get treated one way when they are standing alone but get treated a completely different way when you walk up? I mean a completely different way. My white kids didn’t. Do shoe sales people ask if your kids’ feet are clean before sizing them for shoes? No one asked me that with my white kids. Do complete strangers ask to touch your child’s hair? Or ask about their penis size? Or ask if they are “from druggies”? No one did this with my white kids.

Did you tell your kids not to fight back because they will seen as aggressive if they stand up for themselves? Have you had to honestly discuss with your husband whether you should take your children to the police station to introduce them to the officers so they would know your children are legitimate members of your community? Have you had to talk to your children about EXACTLY what to say and not to say to an officer? Have you had to tell your children that the objective of any encounter with police, or security in any form, is to stay alive? It never occurred to me to have these conversations with my white children. In fact, it never occurred to me for myself either.

There is no question that my boys have been cloaked in my protection when they were small. What I did not realize until now is that the cloak I was offering them was identification with my whiteness. As they grow independent, they step out from my cloak and lose that protection. The world sees “them” differently. It is sweet when they are adopted little black boys so graciously taken in by this nice white family. But when they are real people? Well, it is not the same. And they still look like little boys. What happens to them when they look like the strong, proud black men I am raising?

The reason why the phrase All Lives Matter is offensive to black people is because it isn’t true. Right now, in America, my black children are treated differently than my white children. So when you say All Lives Matter as a response to the phrase Black Lives Matter you are completely dismissing the near daily experience of racism for those with pigment in their skin, curl in their hair and broadness of their nose.

I am posting this so you can see the reality I have witnessed and experienced, because, frankly, I didn’t believe it was true until I saw it up close, directed at two souls I love, over and over again. So, please, use this post as a pair of glasses to see the racism that surrounds you. Then we can actually make progress toward all lives being valued and cherished.

_______________________________

If every day, I had to work my way uphill against prejudice, I don't know that I could be gracious through it. If the world had a way forward for most but not for my kids, I wouldn't take it quietly. None of us should have to.

... we strive for better in ourselves and in our circle of influence; there's much yet to be changed.

One Day ...

In the Indonesian village of Lamalera, a whale is enough to feed everyone there (pop. 2,500) for a couple of months, and they don't waste any of it.  They are among the last of the whaling communities.

Most of us in the developed world live with some consistency.  Ever noticed how, payday to payday, you can sort of settle into the routine.  You get paid, you eat and sleep and travel and work, and then you get paid again.

About a quarter of the adults in the world have a regular paying job, maybe 30+ hours a week. The rest of the world folks are perhaps like the Lamalera whale chasers who depend on catching a whale every couple of months so they and their children can eat.  Some years are better than others.

At the end of the day, poppa gives the kids a chance to play in the boat.

In the developed countries, you'll get paid more in one day than a family makes in a month in the developing world.

Folks who fish to feed their families are being put out of business by big industry. Kind of like when Walmart started putting an end to the mom and pop businesses.  Fishermen in western Africa have seen a 90% decline in pelagic fish populations due to overfishing by outsiders. It's mostly illegal.  Now local folks have to work harder, sail farther, and get less.

And sometimes, our friends (right) tell us, they come home at the end of the day with nothing at all. Rich countries fishing illegally did that to them.

Folks here are among the world's nicest, and it's as beautiful a place as
any in the world, but it's difficult to get an adequate diet for your kids.
About a quarter are undernourished.

They're doing their best to defend their territorial waters and put the illegal players out of business. We're helping with that; we work with navy and coast guard groups for training, international cooperation, and technology.  There's a lot to be done and meanwhile, they've got kids to feed and keep in school.

You can lend a hand, if you like.  Or better yet, you can go see for yourself.  And take your kids along.  It'll change the way you feel about being rich and perhaps give you some ideas for getting involved in the real world..  :)

The Hierarchy*

The academics among us have struggled with nature, nurture, natural and supernatural for centuries.  Among those who must understand everything in scientific terms, describing humanity and human behavior has been a difficult challenge.

• Art and music, literature, and philosophy make little scientific sense and remain beyond adequate explanation.  
• Class and conflict are perhaps just competition, like monkeys might do.  Or Wall Street.
• Free will is scientifically impossible, or so the scientists tell us, 

                  ... and the entertaining debate continues.

The rationalist prefers a 'self and survival' based reality.  For them, even charity and philanthropy are self-serving, and as Ayn Rand popularized, selfless sacrifice is a fiction.  Pursued further, such reasoning quickly descends to an end of meaning for existence, an end of value for life or labor.

In our hearts, we know better, and every time we touch the truth, we're reminded.  Our lives are filled with purpose and opportunity, with difficulty and challenges and transcendent experiences, all of which require us to grow and learn.  And, there's extraordinary joy along the way, not in satisfying our own selfishness, but in truly loving others as we love ourselves.  Funny how that works.




*Maslow's Hierarchy is one of many attempts to contain the human experience in a defined context.  Popular for years, it has been generally abandoned by academics in favor of even more narrowly specified behavioral mechanics.  Scientific rigor is everything, we're told.  Are they right?  Or is there even more beyond a life purpose of loving others?  

It's the ideology

Immediately following the Bastille Day incident, this meme

circulated on social media. Exactly who do they have in mind, I wonder?

An ideology isn't a religion, interestingly enough; it's "a system of ideas and ideals,

especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy."
Governance, position, influence ... I'm right and you're wrong.

If you've got a solution in mind, here's the root problem that has to be resolved.

Justifying the murder of innocents is based on a willingness to do harm to another, to reach your goal at the expense of another.

It's not a new idea.

Recent perpetrators include ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram.  And governments.

In the early 90's, 857 cartons kept by the Iraqi secret police surfaced.  They contained detailed files describing genocide against the Kurds.  Time reported, 1 June 1992: 200,000 to 300,000 killed (late 80s).

The years before gave us the Rwandan genocide, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Holocaust under the Nazi Reich, the Armenian massacres by the Ottomans, the Nanking massacre, the Holodomor ....  In each case, the slaughter of innocents was directed by political leadership and justified by some rhetoric of superiority.

The colonial era cost the lives of more than half the population of Africa and the Americas with similar justification by perpetrators.

Centuries have passed, and they've not yet recovered. Ask a Mijikenda what it's like to be driven from your own lands. He can tell you now, but prior to the new constitution (2010) he'd be arrested and imprisoned for speaking ill of the government. Most of the 2000+ African tribes spent a century or more without any voice in their own governance while their  cultures were systematically destroyed, their resources were stolen and shipped off to foreign lands. And then, of course, there was three hundred years of slavery.

Untold millions have died in the name of our way, our rule, our empire.  What we see today is nothing new although the demographics of both perpetrators and victims have changed.  The world's population has tripled in my lifetime, and population densities have changed the geography and rhetoric of conflict.  The rationale, however, is unchanged since Herod ordered the execution of male babies in Bethlehem.  It's a power play risen from selfishness, perceived vulnerability, and perhaps opportunity for advancement.

Contributing to the problem, oppression, discrimination, disenfranchisement, and injustice have provoked an extraordinary degree of frustration and violence in communities, cultural groupings, and the world.  Add the two together, the power players and the oppressed, and the result is perhaps predictable.

It's the ideology, but go to the root.  It's not politics or religion, it's conquest for power and position, the climbing up over the bodies of others for personal gain.

The willingness and intent to do harm to another, to reach your goal at the expense of another ...

If you've got a solution in mind, that's the root problem that has to be addressed.