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Beginning the New Millennium:
Education and False Idols:
Here are some more thoughts about education. In school
I learned some basic social skills and a few basic educational
things. That's really about all. After I learned to read and cipher,
I was not taught anything of much use in all the rest of my formal
education. What I learned, I learned on my own from bitter experience,
from books, from seminars, and from older people with experience.
Rarely from teachers. Teachers often had no real life experience
but too many of them did have an agenda when I was a student.
The ones with an agenda were the ones who stole my confidence
in order to control me.
The meanest thing our culture does to its
children is to steal their confidence in order to control them.
You intimidate and undermine the child in order to control him.
For many adults, nothing is more disconcerting than to see confidence
in the eyes of a young person. I know because I was once an adult.
When they see that, they will try to put it down with ridicule.
If that doesn't work they will try to intimidate it. If that doesn't
work they sometimes resort to the ultimate, physical force.
Lets I completely mislead you, I did encounter
a few real teachers. Real teachers do not need to control students.
There is no place for intimidation in real education. The real
educator's position will always be, "You can be and do anything
you want. Follow your gut and I will be here to help you find
the way. I cannot teach you. I can only help you to learn and
discover."
Formal twentieth century education does not
work well. It worked a bit better 60 years ago when I was a grade
school student, but not a great deal better. It is designed for
lazy people who would not otherwise bother to learn. Public education
is necessary, but for thinking people, it wastes too much time
and produces very limited results. At best it stamps out common
drones. People who know how to pass tests and please the power
players.
Now I must ask the questions, "If not
in school, what and where?" What are we teaching our young
people and where are we teaching it? This is not about what happens
in the classroom. It's about the examples we set by who and what
we notice and exalt. If we are to set the world's example in the
new millennium, I believe we must cease to deitize and worship
people who have directed their lives into whoring after wealth
and power. Of course, in our system of free enterprise, those
people must be allowed to operate. But, should we deitize them?
I pray not.
Whether it's Trump, Gates, or Jordan matters
not. I propose that we look away from these golden idols and turn
our hearts and our culture toward service. It is not about religion,
organized or not. It's about mental health. Our own, our nation's,
and the world's. America has the power to create enormous wealth.
Enough for all of us. Enough for the world. But, is that where
our focus should be? I think not. I believe we need to turn our
hearts away from greed and lust. We must direct our young people
toward a life of spiritual growth and service.
Think about what we are doing, now. Consider
a 60 Minutes show which I believe aired in 1998. This was about
a major sports shoe company. According to the story, they recruited
10 year old, athletically adept, kids to sell shoes using trusted
coaches and advisors to con the kids into doing it. Consider another
example of a highly successful athlete who makes much of his income
by selling grossly overpriced shoes to ghetto kids who can't afford
them. Is this really the example we want out children to show
the world?
Look also at our promotion of and addiction
to gambling. Just one example. There was a seven year old kid
raped and murdered outside a gambling hall in Vegas or Atlantic
City. I don't remember which. It was a TV news item. The single
parent was inside gambling. He had abandon his kid at the door.
Children, you see, are not allowed inside. Was the father an accessory
before the fact? Was Donald Trump an accessory before the fact?
Does anyone care?
Gambling is an emotional dysfunction of the
human psyche. To encourage and support gambling is no different
than to encourage and support any other social pathology. It's
the same as encouraging drug addiction. When the government does
it, It's beyond sick. It's evil. When Donald Trump does it, it's
to be expected. To encourage any pathology for personal profit
or for easy government income is fiendish and in itself pathological.
Is this what we want our children to learn?
The final question is, "Is this moral
and social pattern the attire we want to wear into the new millennium?"
I look around and I see a very ill society. I do not see the moral
force, setting the example for the world, which Ben Franklin and
his friends envisioned. I see a culture wrapping itself more and
more in the filthy rags of greed and lust. I see it in commerce
and in our government. For God's sake, let's cut it out.
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