reading, writing, and cultural revolutions

or (how to write a title that sounds good, but is only marginally related the content).

or random thought of the day:

here's the summary: kids should be integrated into a well-functioning (good luck) community, instead of rounding all the kids up and shipping them off to a special place as we do in primary schools now.

i was idly thinking about education and the school system today. as well as why we (US...possibly the West) have such a difficult time bringing our youth through adolescence where in some other cultures there is no such huge shock for their children moving into adulthood.

(of course i'm generalizing from my own experience in reasonably affluent districts of US public schools. hopefully i will avoid looking through rose colored glasses at the 'other cultures' and avoid simply saying that public schools in the US suck).

the ideas that were sort of floating around my head were:

• 1. people tend to act according to the norms of their society. as people grow up they want to play some perceived role.
• 2. i have heard many people say that as children and young adults they had an easier time relating to adults than their peers.
• 3. one society can't force their social norms on another (the other reacts in some way)...social norms are set by the community itself (almost by definition).
• 4. most healthy societies (ie the ones i would like to be a part of) have close connections between people of all ages and those wiser (and probably older) provide role models and mentoring to the younger. the younger ones provide social connections and vitality to the older.
• 5. societal indoctrination vs preservation of civil society

1 and 2 are the most interesting to me. together they imply that their is a culture particular to young people. perhaps this is obvious (the amount of marketing to young people), but it also may imply that their is a distinct culture whose goals do not overlap with what we consider to be adult society.

this to an extent follows from the balkanization of our society among various age, income, racial factors. here we just consider age. we cart grandma to the old folks home to die, we cart the kids to school to be babysat, and we cart the rest to work. and to a large extent their cultures do not overlap: each one is its own microcosm of values and norms. the younger generation finds the older's values to be silly and vice versa. our society basically provides little room for interaction between these groups.

moreover, the interaction it does provide is largely insufficient. a small group of administrators and teachers (often poorly paid, and poorly trained) trying to police a much larger group of children. they attempt to enforce the adults society, but being so few, and being foreigners with respect to the student's society, they aren't role models, and they aren't effective policemen. the children's culture thrives and is only occasionally impinged on by the adults. (to the extent that it can become a lord-of-the-flies scenerio).

it seems analogous to what happens on the internet (newsgroups, chatrooms), where people can act however they like with impunity. they are insulated from law, but more importantly they are insulated from the glare and simple condemnation of normal society around them.

people, being social animals, are designed to look for cues in indivuduals around them to figure out how they are supposed to act. some people (consider gandhi) have advanced far enought ethically and socially to codify a set of values for themselves so that they need to depend on outside judgement less often, and in general as we mature we depend on outside judgement less and more on our internal values and beliefs.

basically though it seems we abandon people growing up when they most need to be integrated into society and given role models and mentors showing them 'this is one way to successfully live a happy life in our society'. when they leave their cloistered society and move into adulthood, they find themselves without the social cues, without a good example of how to be happy and productive. at this point, they either have to very painfully learn to tread water, or die.

a way of mitigating this specific problem then is clear; (whether it is an answer to larger societal issues is doubtful). basically, you outnumber the young folk by the old folks; and hopefully it will lead to a more gentle introduction of children into society. at the same time it will allow us to buffer the people who need it from bullies etc. i suspect that if their is constant reenforcement from everyone around them people will figure out faster what is acceptable behaviour. (what if the adults are also bullies? method of due process?)

of course doing this is not easy. and i kind of hand-waived my way through the last part. i'm not going to try to give you a good argument here, because at this point i don't think you can: there is a lot of research and stuff to be done. from intuition and experience, it feels like a good thing. you surround impressionable children with good people and hope they are impressed. (don't try to beat them into the society, simply immerse them in it (instead of having them create their own alternative society without benefit of the larger society) and let nature takes its course).

to start off with you could begin to increase the number of teachers in a single classroom (not just a better ratio, but have more than one teacher physically present among any closed group). using trained volunteers could to mitigate the cost could be useful (retirees?) (although "more teachers" == "yeah right, good luck getting the money").

of course we must examine the negative consequences of the idea. my misgivings are basically along the lines of 'what do you want the '50s?', and the question of whether it is just a new way to more effectively crush the child's soul and spirit. what if society is wrong?

(N.B. the royal we is used below, but i don't mean to ascribe any beliefs to anyone but myself...and maybe not even myself).

my intuition on these is something like 'you can teach anyone how to paint, but you would have had to teach michealangelo or da vinci how *not* to.' you and i are products of this culture. i consider myself to be becoming a really *good* person after all these years of struggle. i think some of you are also becoming great people, people with wisdom and intelligence and compassion. we are becoming the people we are becoming both because of and in spite of our society. in all society's no matter how backward, stupid, and repressive have had great people (and even extraordinary ones). basically, in spite of the way we demonize our societies and the lemming like people who inhabit it, some of the basic core is both necessary and good (and in the case of society unavoidable). we are not as different or separate from our societies as much as we may like to think we are anarchic, counter-culture whatevers. like any other complex thing we must be very careful about understanding the good and bad points before throwing it away (cf. religion and human nature) because of our bitterness and bad experiences with their negative aspects (religious wars, racism, catholic guilt trips, gender inequality, ..., ...).

misc: it also may be helpful to look at japanese culture. most people are familar with the extremes of portrayal of the culture: being one with strong familial and societal ties and being one which turns out uncreative clones as the raw material for corporations. i don't know enough about the actual issues to comment...i think this example reinforces the ideas above in several cases. there are lots of other cases and points to understand especially wrt generalizing with other groups and individuals experiences. also note cultural differences wrt the emphasis on the values of being a member of the society vs being an individual). also in some agrian societies there is no strong delineation between childhood and adulthood: they don't have this larval pupa stage.