Soul Monitors

The American Mind ^ | 12/06/21 | Emina Melonic

[PoliticallyShort]

The American educational system has been infected by the tyranny of mediocrity for decades. The emphasis on strange and unattainable forms of equality, self-esteem (as opposed to balanced emotional health), and ideology have nullified the possibility of good education. Of course, this is not true of all schools. But generally speaking, schooling in America is an exercise in destructive ideology rather than learning.

In the last 20 months, our COVID-19 response has morphed very quickly into an authoritarian ideology that is trying to spread its infectious tentacles ever deeper into students’ lives. As bad as we knew things had gotten before COVID, few imagined that we would be talking about “parents’ rights” in America. But the strange use of critical race theory as a pedagogical cudgel, the relentless enforcement of mask mandates for children, and the push to vaccinate kids against COVID-19 have led us into that position.

This is a serious fight, and there are no just comparisons to other totalitarian systems that can describe our current situation. Having grown up in socialist Yugoslavia, I can say with firm belief and knowledge that what is going on right now is far worse. My elementary and middle school education was rigid, but the joy of childhood was not negated or villainized. We would simply not have taken such an effort seriously. Although there was plenty of propaganda, we were never forced to alter or police the private sphere of our own thoughts. Today’s level of dehumanization has reached another level entirely.

[HKMk23]

Creativity “makes the individual feel that life is worth living,” writes Winnicott:

Contrasted with this is a relationship to external reality which is one of compliance, the world and its details being recognized but only as something to be fitted in with or demanding adaptation. Compliance carries with it a sense of futility for the individual and is associated with the idea that nothing matters and that life is not worth living. In a tantalizing way many individuals have experienced just enough of creative living to recognize that for most of their time they are living uncreatively, as if caught up in the creativity of someone else, or of a machine.

Machine, indeed.

The late John Taylor Gatto made exactly this point -- extensively so -- in his landmark work, "The Underground History of American Public Education." GET a copy, if you have children or grandchildren.

https://amzn.to/3donLOz

[lightman]

Fear is the primary mover behind the COVID ideology as well, and behind the strangeness of critical race theory: each is a way of shaming children for simply existing in a normal, human way so that they feel deserving of punishment and fearful of what form it may take next. When fear takes root, so does compliance. When anxiety about the future, and the denial that children deserve any kind of future at all, becomes the drive behind life, then any shred of free thought and creativity will die along with it.

[lightman]

[lightman]

Pink Floyd did it well with the extended music video "Another Brick in the Wall".