I’m not sure whether or not I’ve brought this idea up in the blog before (I can’t read the blog and write it at the same time, a minor flaw in the system, or in my knowledge of the system) but there is a single thread running through really quite a lot of what ticks me off in the world, in the church and in how things are run in modern western society. This spills down into so many aspects of human life that it becomes the source of much of my irritation in an average day.
Our image of success no longer includes or even supports relationships that exist solely for the purpose of human interaction. We’ve professionalized so many functions of life that we no longer have a visceral attachment to the things and activities of our lives and have lost the relationships that spring from those attachments.
Not clear? It was hard enough to write but I’ll spend some time hashing out what I mean.
We seem, as a society, to have discarded much of what makes for genuine relationships, not just with people, but also with the things of this world. Our food is sanitized and packaged and is therefore far removed from having been a living creature at one point, or having been dirty at some point, or even of having been in any other state than the one we purchase. (as if Twinkies were “born” in those little cellophane sleeves) One of the hallmarks of success for many people is that they no longer have anything to do with the maintenance of their vehicles. Their oil is changed in tidy little oil-marts and they are treated to coffee and CNN in the waiting room. When was the last time you heard of someone doing their own brake job? When was the last time you heard of a High School that still had an auto shop? They’re out there, but they’re rare. Most of the time, we shuttle “those people” off to Vocational ED centers where all of the “non-academic” schoolkids go. Out of sight, out of mind, apparently. So now people who do excel in academics have little or no opportunity to even learn about basic physical, vocational skills.
I can build a boat, conjugate a verb in five languages, weld and cast metal, calculate the speed of a chemical reaction, fix my brakes and rebuild a carburetor and dissect a shark. This isn’t bragging on my own account, but rather a demonstration of the things you had the opportunity to explore in my schooling.
I suppose that the aim is to make the students more able to compete in the workplace. They need the advanced skills in order to secure admission to a good college, a good job and a good life, so the story goes.
But what seems to happen is that the people who are shuttled off to Voc Ed end up being the shadow mechanism that enables the livelihoods of the “elite” who stay in academic classes. They may have to get dirty for their living, but without them, the lives of the others would grind to a halt, not because they grow the food or they provide the services that the others desire, but because the elites have been denied the skills to live a life that is in actual contact with the things and processes of the world.
I think that this is one of the reasons that some of the most important people on the planet, the teachers, are more and more being viewed as functionaries in the lives of those that they teach, as if they were the vocational underclass who is there to implement the curricula that their bosses select and pay tax money to acquire and nothing else. If they are simply servants of the system, another way to separate people from the vicissitudes of raising children, then we grow to trust the system” rather than the teachers. The system teaches our children what they need to know. The system is the depersonalization of life and so some are groomed and some are doomed because of forces beyond their control, their birth, their social situation, their income. I’m not trying to say that there are not ways to overcome this, but many people fall prey to it anyway.
I think that this little screed may take as many as fifteen iterations to get it free of my head, I’ll try and interesperse them with more uplifting topics
It’s a disturbing trend. I see our country turning into a service based economy. With the out sourcing of our production jobs, which serves as the basis as a industrialized nation, we find that the middle class is shrinking and that the “new” jobs created are service based. With the over commercialization of American Society, we have created huge trade deficits with countries that, if we purchased with out hearts and not our minds, we would other wise not do business with. There is multitude of reasons for the shift in our society. Whatever the reasons, there needs to be an adjustment in the minds and hearts of the American public for a change to happen. We, not Walmart, need to realize what is truly important: people.
I too am frustrated with some of the “wrongs” of our culture and nation. However, having been from a “welfare to wealth” background, I see far more positive than negatives with the system. Our society truly does teach that our dreams can come true, but you must honor those dreams by working hard and walking a moral line. Another positive is that our country, for the most part, provides the resources through schools and libraries to realize an individual’s potential. It is a personal choice whether to accept and explore those resources or not.
I believe that teachers are our nation’s greatest resource. But I also strongly believe that most lessons are taught in the home. It is my duty as a parent to instill in my children the importance of educating themselves (as opposed to a person or system). It is the teachers’ duty to recognize and understand my child’s learning style, the system’s duty to provide a plan and resources for the teacher and student, and the child’s duty to accept these gifts and to take the whole thing seriously.
Yes the system is somewhat “depersonalized”. But that is not always a bad thing. It’s O.K. that the teacher is not as emtionally wrapped up with the child as the family is, the better to evalute a bigger picture. The educators and administrators that I have known and worked with (I worked in a County Superintendent of Schools office for several years) have been without exception dedicated professionals who are truly interested in the welfare and advancement of children. Not only their education, but their environment and what they are exposed to socially.
I guess my point is, be frustrated, but be mindful that there is an awful lot that works out there. We are sometimes only aware of that that does not work, and forget to count the many billions of blessing with that that does work smoothly (in the background — so as not to be noticed).
But isn’t part of the problem that we’ve made schools into factories? Depersonalization by herding?
And I applaud the desire and dedication to teaching life lessons in the home, but I’m afraid that the system work to discourage such dedication. I heard on the radio recently a young person in Mendocino County lament that the schools were failing because they were “suposed to teach us how to be citizens.” I wondered when that became the norm of thinking, because I think that it is. We ask the schools to teach morality, civics, faith or the lack thereof while we have become removed from the system to such an extent that we think of it as something we can pay for,but not take responsibility for.
I’ve NEVER met a teacher who wasn’t a professional dedicated to their craft. They’d prefer not to have to teach morality, civics or be behavioral engineers but society has left them little choice since those lessons are being taught in few other places.
this is largely what I’m talking about, we’ve allowed ourselves to turn over so many of the daily, visceral functions of our lives to other people, and we consider that a sign of success, that we’ve lost the ability to take those reins back without some kind of personal upheaval.
How many of you can explain the ideas behind a bicameral legislature? Can you explain the how a carbeurator works? How about how to separate the loin from the short loin in a cut of meat? Oddly enough, my grandfather could do all of them, and he was not a well-educated man.
I guess that my pont is that Teachers shouldn’t be required to raise peoples children as well as educate them. They shouldn’t have to do either in a results-based environment because learning is seldom truly results-based, it is a process that we have to go through in order to emerge not just more knowledgeable, but also better.
Lots DOES work, but it depends upon the system for its support, we need to weed out the lower-performing students into voc-ed so that the others will have someone to change their oil > we need to move the auto-shop away from the higher-achieving people so that they’ll need to have thier oil changed because they’ve never learned to do it.
By no means do I want to tear down the system. But it is not just my right to criticize, it is my responsibility to do so because there is only one perfect place adn this isn’t it, we can always do better, no matter how well we’re doing now.
I think the one thing that is being over looked between say, fifty years ago verses today in the system is the family. Children have more resources and advantages now than they ever did. The fundamental difference is that a lot of the vocational knowledge is passed down with in the family. My father taught me how to rebuild a carburetor, plumb a bathroom, change my radiator, and roof a house. My Aunt Minnie and my Mother taught me my way around a kitchen and how to get stains out of my clothes. My grandmother taught me the importance of reading and knowledge and, I know this will kill her, but has been the main reason why I am so politically obsessed.
My teachers taught me what my family didn’t. I think a great deal of the children on this nation don’t get the attention at home that they did a half century ago. I think most parents if asked are going to say they wished they had more time with their kids. The more time that you spend with them the more that they want to learn from you.
I wouldn’t change any of those times be scolded by my Dad “hold the light so that I can see, not so you can see”, when I attempted to help work on one of the vehicles. As gruff as he could be, he never failed to answer a question. Never failed to explain in the simplest terms why something was engineered the way that it was. My father and my mother are the working class heros that still pass on the knowledge that they gained from their experiences and from what they were taught by the previous generations. I will do the best to teach everything that I can to my son.
Parents have more of a responsibility to teach this vocational information to their children than the schools. Not to slight the great and wonderful teachers of the world but the people that can teach the children best is their parents.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to respond, rather than having to bring the conversation there, Ken. I’d hoped we’d end up here in this particular thread.
But the question rapidly becomes “which came first?” Did parents begin to cede the teaching of citizenship voluntarily or was that role assumed by the schools first? Did society willingly stop having more family interaction or was it forced upon them by the pace of society? And who decided on the pace of society anyway?
My dad was not a workman. He probably changed the oik when I was growing up but just as likely he resented having to do it. He was the first member of his family to go to college and, like many in his generation, I think he saw that in some sense as a way out of the traditional family where work was one place and life was in another, where you did what you had to do in order to support your family but you didn’t necessarily expect to like it.
The family anecdote is that my grandfather and father were talking on the phone and Grampa asked if Dad liked his job. When Dad answered that he did, my grandfather asked with some incredulity, “really?” as if the thought had never occurred to him.
I think that WWII sped up life. The rapid pace of the war run-up, the re-industrialization in a lot of places and the amount of ready labor and capital when the war was over was a turning point away from fishing on the banks of the river and hunting at the cabin purchased for just such an activity. Suddenly you traveled to good fly-fishing streams and hired a guide, or you hunted in game areas but never got too far from the truck, the you hired the local butcher to dress your meat. More capital and more opportunity almost inevitably led to more desire for things, suddenly the things of the wealthy were no longer out of reach, they could be had if you just took one less week of vacation or borrowed a little more money. Less time, more need to repay loans meant more time at work and less time at home, less time at home meant more lessons had to be taught elsewhere.
I envy and emulate those parents I see moving away from the depersonalization of their relationships with their children. I am lucky enough to have a job where I can work from home and even if I am at work, can do the necessary things to care for Caitlyn when needed. when she’s sick she can often be found hanging out with me at church. We set up a play station (two words) for her and build her a “nest” for sleeping and I read books to her on a fairly regular schedule. Many parents also commit themselves to spending more time with their kids, to talking with them as if they were real live people and caring what they say. Were it not for my faith in God I would worship those people.
But they are a recent development, one that has grown out of the somewhat less “contact oriented” upbringing I and many of my generation expereinced in the 70’s and 80’s. Carl Eeman has a wonderful book based on another wonderful book. It’s called “Generations of Faith” and it concerns the pattern of generations over the last three or four hundred years and it is pretty telling. My generation has happened before, as has GenY and the “new millenials” who are just beginning to be heard now.
It’s pretty hard on the Baby Boomers, and in some cases rightly so, but it then goes on to remind us that it is AWFULLY hard to escape the upbringing we’ve received, and so the Boomers raise children in response to the way that their parents riased them, who responded to the way that their parents raised them and so on. The new movement toward more contact and real concern for nurturing children is the same movement that abolished sweat shops, and created Sunday School so many years ago. It was seen as counter-cultural then and is still is now.
Will we go back to “hold the light so that I can see, not so you can see”? I really hope so, because despite the gruffness, there was the presence of someone who cared an awful lot about you and who wanted to show you what made them happy.
But if Carl is right, we’ll go back the other way in about 40 years . . .
If it’s okay with all of you, I’d like to keep this one going, centerd on the family and school issues even when the next one comes out (pt. 2) (soon, I hope) which will concern social and relationship behaviors.
I feel like such a hack social commentator, but I gotta get this out . . . (we’ll get to the church in this context, as well as some other postings soon, I promise)
[...] ekstasis The art of having one’s life, one’s being and one’s very existence outside of oneself. Almost Buddha Dharma’s Anatta, but somewhat different. Unachievable through effort, found only as gift. « I hate to be grouchy about the society in which I live, but . . . (pt.1) [...]
[...] (how’s that for an intro after a few months?) <check back through the previous two posts (here and here) to figure out where I was going where this was going [...]