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Part 71: The Machine:
October 6, 2003:
In essay Part 70 I briefly mentioned the socioeconomic machine. Now I want to expand on that. This is how I see it. There are two totally contradictory views of how education should go. The traditional view is that children should be fitted or tooled to become working parts in the socioeconomic machine. They should be trained and conditioned as engineers, laborers, clerks, lawyers, etcetera. They must become the standard cogs, gears, and levers that fit in and make the machine go.
Of course, in order to do that we must dehumanize them. Healthy human beings would not tolerate becoming parts in a machine. Since our society is inhuman, we must dehumanize our children to make them fit in. We dare not let them become philosophers. We dare not develop their full potential in traditional education because they will not work well in the machine. They will cause it to malfunction. The machine will be angry with them. It will say they are not doing their job. They are not team players.
I believe society does have an undercurrent of will. That will is to maintain itself as it is, the status quo. Society will punish us if we change. When we change the way we treat children it will punish us severely. It needs those machine parts to keep itself going even though it is clear that the looming destiny of this current socioeconomic machine is the destruction of mankind.
These demands of society are where the educators and I diverge. I don't think there needs to be a machine. I think kids can remain what they are even as they become adults. I don't think we need to dehumanize our kids. I think there is a good chance, if they are not forced into the machine, they will be outside where they can begin to rebuild it. We all make the same mistake. We cannot see enough to fix the machine from inside it. We must be outside of it. I should think we would want to rebuild it such that we control it and it is not dehumanizing.
The alternative to our kids becoming machine parts is my own view. In that, children would be supported in developing their own unique identity and realizing there innate potential. They would be allowed to actualize themselves. Our different positions as to these opposed views will determine how we educate our kids. If we let our kids optimize themselves and become unique, they would not tolerate spending each day of their lives screwing bolts into a part, counting pennies, writing reports, or whatever. They would not tolerate that kind of mind numbing mechanization of themselves.
Perhaps the biggest difference between my idea of interest driven education and others is the persistent notion by even the liberal educators that there is a common set of information that must be imparted to all children. I now understand that that mindset comes out of wanting to meet the demands of society, to fit the kids into the machine. They insist that certain subjects must be taught and learned, that learning will not normally happen, that we need to make it happen.
I disagree that we need to make learning happen. That is only true if we have a preconceive model of what a kid should become. I insist each child is unique and has a particular genius. The child should be supported in developing that particular bend. They do not need to be like every other child. They don't necessarily need to learn 10 semesters of math like everyone else. They only need to learn what they need to develop their particular genius and naturally diverse nature. That genius is what is sorely needed to change out stupid world and save it.
Let's look at our current society. We have created a worldwide socioeconomic machine which has a life of its own with momentum. It goes on by itself. We lost control long ago. We have become victims of it rather than beneficiaries. For the most part we have become replaceable parts in the machine. It uses us up then dumps us out. The goal of our educational system has become nothing more than the creation of replacement parts for the machine. When educators render their twaddle about meeting the goals of society, that is really what they mean. They are molding our kids to replace the worn out parts. Nothing more. We can have no philosophers, no thinkers, no leaders, no geniuses of any kind, only replacement clones.
As far as I can tell, the big mistake in all of education including so-called progressive education is we are still manufacturing parts for the socioeconomic machine. We are not letting the kids blossom in their uniqueness. We are still telling them what they must become. We let the kids have a great deal more fun while they are doing it, but they are still being conditioned to be cogs, levers, and gears in the machine. How can we ever have a better culture if we continue to force kids into the standard cultural model? It is not just education that is failing, it is our entire socioeconomic system. We are rushing toward disaster as we continue to destroy our environment.
We can have fun doing it, we can bring kids along at different speed, but unless we change the goals it won't matter. I insist that preparing kids to pass a SAT is not a worthy goal for education, no matter how much fun they have along the way. The only goal is full humanness. That is for every kid to become his own philosopher, to examine his own life for its meaning, to reach for his best. If education cannot do that, it is not true to itself or to the culture that created it. It is a sham. It is not education it is a manufacturing plant supplying parts to a machine.
Real education is what all of the so called educators, legislators, and bureaucrats will reject, ridicule, and run in terror from. They will never knowingly let us do it. They will pretend to progressive education. They will even let the kids play, for a while. They will let us have fun, so long as we follow the rules and continue to manufacture machine parts. But, if it ever looks like we are succeeding in nurturing human wholeness, they will stop us.
Real education will actualize whole real people and that spells doom for the powers that be. Real whole people will see the hypocrisy and act to change the machine that maintains and perpetrates it. If we let our kids become real, they will destroy our world. They will create a better world for themselves. If they remember our world at all it will be with scorn. Like monarchy, oligarchy, fascism, and communism before us, we will be dumped on the heap of failures that usetabe. That is where we belong.
I want to help them. I want to find a way to help them get control of this machine so that it serves us rather than uses us. I want mankind to reach for its greater higher purpose and values. I want philosophers, not machine parts. The socioeconomic machine destroys the very sense of self that makes us human. It takes away our individuality and with it our humanness. Currently, the tiniest handful of us escape that fate at an enormous personal emotional cost. This is what happened to me.
They ridiculed me, they beat me, they intimidated me, they
terrorized me, they terrified me, and they subdued me, but they
did not break my spirit. I submitted and I did it, but I never
did it their way. The sad thing is, I never did it my way either,
because I did not know what my way was. What I did, I did in rebellion
as best I could. It was rebellion against the machine rather that
the execution of a proactive endeavor for myself. Now, at age
73 I am finally doing what I was meant to do by nature and instinct,
what I was prevented from and pooh poohed out of doing from the
start. I am becoming a humanist philosopher. My goal is no less
that the creation of the good society by first saving the children
that they may make it happen.
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