Kenny Saved by the Bell: The Individual at School.

Above all, when we look at the episodes of South Park, especially the ones that are most controversial (see my blog earlier), it is obvious that Butters, or Kenny, or Cartman, or any of the others continually question the status quo around them. The established rules of society are unquestioned, until Matt Stone and Trey Parker do so in a hilarious and sarcastic way. The series has been banned in some places in Russia, and I'm sure have been banned from many households in America. Society has long kept those who question the world around them at arms length. Skeptics are those who question the rules of society, who evaluate the reasoning behind them, and often, as Jonathan Swift or Lewis Carroll did, write bitingly funny works of literature exposing the paradoxes of the cultures around them. Thus we have, in "A Modest Proposal," a quite serious argument to eat the 8-year-olds of the Irish poor, as they are being squeezed out of all other treasures through taxes and other rules.

Obviously, the powers that be have no wish to have people stabbing 95 Theses on the doors of the government, or of the church (nowadays it would be published at blogs). Therefore, the same characteristics that promote individuality would be the ones that society (the church, the school) would want to squash. Because different thoughts would be detrimental to the people who are currently in power. Thankfully, in America, such thoughts and questions are asked openly, what with the 1st Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech (that statement alone would take a blog of much length, but I'll let it pass.) However, in order to express those thoughts, one must first have to learn how to form the questions and base his or her opinions upon facts and theories. Thus one way to control skeptics and other thinkers is to control the education system so that everyone is taught equally, and taught in such a way that it is hard to form opinions and question those that are educating the students. In a similar manner, I have found it extremely hard to have any kind of philosophical or theological conversation in the churches I have attended, as anything that would be looked as questionable would be considered sinful. I want to look at, in this blog (and probably the next), the way in which education should work in this country, and also why questioning the church is vital for a person's spiritual growth.

I've often wondered, in my days since I taught, what happened to some of the students I saw struggling through the day. There was one student, last name Price, who did no homework, was a constant disruption in class, and probably should have been expelled long before he got to my class (probably through social promotions.) But I noticed that he did have skill, intelligence, the open eyes that signal some fire burning inside them. But as Prometheus brought that fire, I couldn't help but think that somehow, our school was trying to squelch it. I heard stories of his abilities, how he could easily take apart a lawn mower, repair it, and put it back together, with the skill of an expert mechanic. I've seen other students, who, while they couldn't understand or deal with reading assignments and abstract math problems, could draw wondrous pictures of images in their head. While student teaching at NW High in Macon, I had the students draw a picture of what they thought Grendel would look like. I had one student, who, while he failed miserably on English assignments, drew a monster that I'd substitute for Grendel from then on. I will accept that it is partially their fault that they have not learned how to become educated in audio or visual manners, I often wonder how we have failed in developing the talents of these individuals.

When we take a look at the education system as a whole, we see that students are herded like cattle into a school and taught as closely the same as possible, even while the talented are forsaken and the struggling students are forgotten, placed in broom closets and given ISPs. I would have given anything to see Price taken to a Technical school and taught the intricacies of the mechanical world. He would have (and might still now) make more money than some of the brightest students in his class. And I would give equally to see the truly gifted children taken to higher and higher levels, where their talent would shine forth, instead of languishing in the back of classrooms where teachers repeat things for grade after grade, or teach to some standardized test that means little to the children, and a whole lot to the school systems and their wallets.

Take the educational system that Thoreau used as a teacher in Concord, Mass in the 1830's. Concord Academy used the classroom the world gave them. Thoreau used the tools he had (his father ran a pencil factory) and took the students on trips picking blueberries, from which he no doubt taught as Plato and Socrates did, in the shadows of trees below the city walls of Athens. The children then read the books and did the homework they had to do, only to go on another quest the next day. With the small class size, each student was, hopefully, taught and trained to be the best they could be given their own specific abilities. He despised rote learning and canings for punishment, rather teaching self-regulation as discipline.

We cannot do this with all the children that exist today (the thousands in Conyers alone would make it impossible). But perhaps the time is here to look at public education as not something to be given equally among all pupils, but more individually, to each according to his ability. Why would society think that, putting 1000 children in one building, that they should all learn the same way, getting the same information at the same time all for, supposedly, the same purpose. The idea of the school as some training ground for college is absurd, and should be rejected outright. There are other countries, such as Japan, that teach their children differently, and include the training needed to become successful in today's markets. Here's a proposal that might work:

Each child should be taught similarly until about the 7th or 8th grade, and this differs little from that of today's public schools. During these years, teachers should write down observations about the students and place them in a file (much like they have now), about the strengths and weaknesses of each child. They should be interviewed once every 3 years or so, and those wishes and desires of what they want to do should be noted and encouraged. A child should have his own say so into what path his education should take. At the point of 7th grade, the file should be looked at, along with the child's interviews and the opinions of the parents, and then they should be given options... stay in a college preparatory program, one that would prepare someone for a liberal arts degree... go to a school that would train students for technical and vocational work, much like the Rockdale Career Academy, but supervised by private companies that want to develop and train students in working with cars, computers, graphic design, accounting...etc... or maybe something much different, much like the Academy in Ancient Greece, which would train the literary and philosophical minded students in law, philosophy, liberal arts...etc... And there are others as well... medical school, athletic training, ROTC... as long as there is a private need for those students, and the private industry would invest into the children that are being trained, with instruments and instructors, and, if they are good enough, jobs for the graduates, this would be an excellent way to develop the kinesthetic learner into someone who would be truly successful in their lives. Learn with your hands, mold the knowledge with your fingers, create as God created, breathe life into the lifeless. I would so enjoy seeing the children of this country develop themselves into a force that no other country could compete with. And the advances and the technological breakthroughs that would result of this. Truly amazing!! The world would turn upside down, all because of the training of the individual, not the herding of the masses.

We cannot answer a child's soul until they ask "why?" And if they are punished for questioning the world they live in, then learning becomes a punishment. The most brilliant child in the world, one with bright, hungry eyes, asking their parents every question in the world, doesn't that make you want to lift them up so that they can bask in the realm of knowledge and wisdom and become the best person that they can be? But if we ignore them, talking on our cell phone and leaving the teaching up to those who are barely able to survive (today's modern teachers), then have we not failed in raising the children we have borne? They were brought into the world to achieve what no other human could, whatever that may be. We should do whatever it takes to enable our children to learn and grow and flourish, to reach the limits of what they can conceive, and then to keep on going.

Killing Kenny: Velcro Shoes and Hot Topic

Aesthetics and the Individual.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." That saying certainly is true There must be a set of standards in which something is either deemed beautiful or ugly. A set of standards, opinions, given by a culture at any one time that declares something to be of aesthetic value. These rules are crucial to understanding the individual's opinion for what is attractive, and what is not. I want to call this the Societal Norm or SN for short.

I have read and seen on different shows/articles that faces are remembered or forgotten based on how different or similar they are from the collective mean of all the faces that one sees in a lifetime. That some place, in the core of our mind, lies the "Form" of a human being, with the physical attributes of everyone we have ever seen. Then, as we see people's faces, we mark them as individuals
through the differences that we see apart from the collective face. The same goes for entire bodies, or anything else for that matter. Plato explained this concept as "Forms." I have internalized it, making the collective idea of a "chair" or a "person" to be the collective mean of all chairs or people that one sees in a lifetime.

Building a Hypothesis

But what are the set standards of the Societal Norm? What do we consider attractive or ugly based on the differences from the collective mean? I suggest a hypothetical experiment to find out. Go to the Internet, and find 1000 (or any number that's sufficient) pictures, randomly, of people in different poses. They have to be alone, but other than that, it should be totally random. Depending on your sexuality and gender, it will depend on which gender you choose. The easiest way of finding these would be to find porn sites, or modeling sites...etc... They can be clothed, naked, engaging in self-pleasure, but they have to be pictures of one person only in the shot.
Now, putting these images in a folder, use the slide show function on Windows to rapidly go through them (about every 5 seconds or so.) In that time, you have to push one of two buttons. Keep, or discard. The choice should be made instantaneously, with only the mind valuating the aesthetic beauty(or not) of each person. It's amazing how much information is analyzed in that short a time span.
Afterwards, return to those that you have discarded and ask yourself "why?" For male pictures, is it skin tone? Weight? Muscular build, facial hair, chest hair, facial shape, circumcision, race, tattoos, piercings? Or is it something outside the body (which can't be helped in a non-controlled experiment)? Could it be that he is smoking? Or there's an animal in the shot. Or the couch is red, or the wallpaper is ugly....etc.... For female pictures, is it skin tone? Weight? Muscular build, facial shape, breast size, shape of the buttocks, hair color, race, eye color...etc... There are any number of reasons why someone would be discarded in this manner. And given two or three shots of one person, one might be in a discard stack while another might be a keep one. Depending on profile angle, pose...etc... All of this is decided within a very few seconds.
Looking at the Keep stack, analyze each picture in the same time frame, giving 1-5 to each picture (let's suppose out of 1000,300 are keeps.) After this is done, take wallet size photo shots of each one of the 300, and place them on a grid, with 5's in the middle, and 1's on the outer edges. From this, you will see similarities in the people you found most aesthetically pleasing. If you wish, do that will all of them, although it will take longer. This gives you, at the center of the grid, the focal point of what you consider beautiful. Now, here's the important part. Where does that focal point fit in the grid that demonstrates the Social Norm (SN). In other words, how are aesthetic standards dictated by the ideas of society?

Now that Borders has their calendar selections up, look at the swimsuit women / shirtless men calendars, and you'll see what people in the calendar industry feel is the SN. They populate their calendars with those models because the models they have chosen will appeal to the greatest number of people, and therefore create the greatest amount of profit. I doubt very seriously if many calendars of 300 pound shirtless guys with beer bellies will sell to be placed on kitchen walls. It's not the standard by which people evaluate beauty. This is not to say that some culture in the past, where food was a great scarcity, might have found that appealing. And there are people who would definitely buy that calendar and relish it daily. The former is a SN from another time, another culture. The latter is someone who's aesthetic standards have deviated from the SN, resulting in an Individual perceptive of beauty.

Derivation from the SN

Perhaps society has done something to alienate the individual. Thinking back to the South Park episode, the Goth group was on the outside of the social system. And whether that was because of their standards, or the other way around (they were rejected, so they rebelled against society and developed individual standards), is unclear. But the idea of rebelling against society is an appealing one, so I shall look at it further.
I guess rebelling isn't really the word I would use for myself. Ignoring would be better. When I moved to Georgia from Oklahoma, I had already garnished the "Victim" sign on my forehead. When I complained to my mom about it, she simply told me to "Ignore it all, it'll go away." So I simply ignored everything. What was popular, was not for me. Everyone went gaga over Aladdin, I have never seen the movie totally. When people started wearing WWJD bracelets or whatever little knickknacks they thought were "cool," I could have cared less. Course, I didn't have any friends to try to impress. Nor, at the time, did I want any.

I think the main fashion rebellion I insisted on was Velcro Shoes. I wore them because I didn't want to take the time to tie regular shoes. In fact, I only stopped wearing them after the 8th grade because they no longer made them in my size. To me, Velcro was so much easier to deal with than having these shoelaces everywhere. My mom thought it good to, as the shoes most everyone else wore, Air Jordans, Nikes, Reeboks, all were $100 or more. Mine could be had for $20 or less.

I still feel that way, finding more fashion at Goodwill than the Gap, and finding no real need to get brand names when normal clothes will work just as well. I traveled along at my own pace, ignoring everything that society told me was appropriate, creating my own standard of living. And while I have some regrets, that maybe I didn't do some of the things I should have, maybe gotten in trouble a little more, let my conservative stance slack a little, it all worked out*.

As I have finished reading Ayn Rand's main novels, I can relate to the fashion and appearance taken by Dagney Taggart, or Hank Reardon, or Howard Roarke, as outward expressions of the inward simplicity of their philosophies. They are unique, individuals in a sea of socialites, uncaring about the rest of society thinks. To me, there is nothing more beautiful in this world than the characters of those novels, shining in individualism while society crumbles around them.
****

I have a friend who, having lived a short life filled with drama and hard times, has decided to die his hair. He feels that the "Emo" style fits his personality best. When I asked him why he wanted to dye his hair, he told me that he wanted to be unique, to find his individuality in school and in life. He wanted to express himself. While I don't necessarily believe that the unjust and unfortunate treatment that the world around him gave him had a direct correlation with him dying his hair, it is a possibility. I have often told him that he could write a memoir of his life so far, fill it full of the truth, and no one would believe it. It would read much like Augusten Burroughs' memoir Running with Scissors. Now, taking what I have mentioned above about the Societal Norm, why would he, after having been mistreated by the world around him, want to emulate what society says is normal? It is very natural for him to rebel, as a lot of teenagers do. His focal point for what is attractive is much different from the SN. His standards are different, unique, and he has achieved what he started out to do when the majority of his hard times ended (give or take being run over by a car.)

But was the hair dying and Emo look necessary? Couldn't he have expressed himself similarly without changing so drastically? Truly, I don't know. The inner rebellion must have an outer expression, at least, for the extrovert, such as he is. To me, going away from society's standards does not mean changing my physical appearance, the music I listen to, the things I do. But to some people, that's exactly what it means. They must change their own standards as a symbol of rebellion from society. This makes them, as well as myself, unique. Individuals who have changed from what everyone else thinks for whatever reason, and they have moved away from the cliques and the stereotypes. They become themselves.

Of course, society would be amiss not to notice this, and to profit off of it. While most people shop at the Gap, or A&F, or wherever, there are those who try to stand out, to be unique, that find Hot Topic the place to find clothing. Society benefits from those rebelling against it. That's capitalism for you, and it's very fitting it should be this way. It begs a question, then. When does the expression of individualism become swallowed up by the standards of the masses. Again, cue the South Park episode.
The Goth kids (the true individuals in the school) increasingly become outraged at those who are just playing "vampire," emulating the popular Twilight series. So they burn down the Hot Topic store.

So I'll conclude this part here. Next I'll take a look at some of the other books that have dealt with individualism, and deal with parity in the NFL, which is probably the most Socialist business venture in America today.

Killing Kenny: Introduction

Every year, I attempt to look at some aspect of the world I find interesting. It usually comes from reading some book or pasting together ideas from any number of sources, and it gets to the point where one single blog just won't do it justice. The scope is too large. (In 2007, I looked at Neil Postman and the Media, and in 2008 it was the Medium of Architecture with the rise in gas prices.)

Steven, in a facebook conversation, called me "Unique," which is the highest compliment one can give to another, in my opinion. Many different things have happened recently which have made me think about myself as an "individual" person. What makes me unique? Why do people try so hard to distinguish themselves from the masses? Why have, in times past, people resisted so vehemently against individualism, and who profits from keeping people the same? Granted, I've been influenced by books and philosophies as I've been thinking this through. It might be helpful to list them here:

☺ Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

☺ The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin.

☺ Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

There's no better way to start than with the show South Park, for as I was thinking about all this, an episode (Season 12, Ep. 14, "The Ungroundable") came to me, the one where Butler joins the Goth group (whom he thinks are actual Vampires) in order to stop Hot Topic, the store he thinks is turning everyone else into Vampires. Turns out that everyone has started shopping there and falling in love with the book and movie Twilight. The Goths, which had been individuals for so long before, were now cast into the masses of people that looked just like them, but not for the same reasons. They have the episode on Hulu.com if you want to see it.

And in the world of South Park, no other character is more unique than that of Kenny, who wears the orange outfit, pulled up past his mouth so he can't talk. In each episode (as if you didn't know already), they kill him off in different and grotesque ways. You could argue that it is the individual nature of Kenny that is killed off, generally by the forces in which the four boys fight in each episode, be it Disney, or Twilight or World of Warcraft. So the title of this series will be "Killing Kenny," in honor of the brave soul.

I'm very interested in why people want to have tattoos, piercings, dyed hair, and other physical expressions of individualism. And has this trend backfired in the form of Hot Topics retail store? How does materialism, the pursuit of goods through credit cards, capitalism, and the free market, actually hurt individualism? Does the NFL actually hurt the talent it tries to develop through parity, and what does that have to do with socialism? How does the education system hurt individual thinking, and how can we change public schools from producing brainwashed clones of today's youth?

So lots of thoughts, and hopefully I'll be able to make some sense out of all of it and tie it all together. It's worth a shot.

Movie Review: Star Trek ('09)

To Boldly Go...

It seems that Abrams was able to do what Rick Berman was inept at, namely, in reinvigorating the Star Trek franchise. It was done through superior special effects, brilliant acting, witty dialogue, and a return to the fundamental philosophy behind Star Trek that Gene Roddenberry had created so many years ago.

The remarkable part was that Abrams did this without undermining the universe as it stood prior to the movie's release. After all, what would be better in a Star Trek movie than time travel, in a spectacular reenactment of the parallel universe theory from Back to the Future II, it allows Abrams to alter the reality of the universe without altering the original line of reality (the one in which Nemesis was created and box office receipts died). But, since this is only a temporary line of reality (at the point where Spock fails to fix the supernova sun that destroys Romulus, a fleet of people from the alternate time line can fix the problem, sending the time loop back in on itself, dissolving that reality with the real one), Abrams can create more movies, a TV series, or anything that he wants without making Star Trek purists mad.

And what we wanted to see, from the beginning of Kirk's life (actually his father's death) to the end of the movie was the emergence of an individual who challenged the societal role that was placed upon him, used his brilliance to basically save Earth, and become the hero that we expect him to be. Not the wishy-washy characters from Enterprise or the noble statesman Picard was.

This is what Star Trek should be. A continuation of the philosophies that Gene Roddenberry created at the start of the series. The show that was rejected by studios, financed by Lucy, and ultimately gained fans world-wide. It did this because of the individualism that each Captain showed in maneuvering his/her ship through the vast unknown. They became Ulysses, from Tennyson's poem, "to strive, to seek, to find, but not to yield," as he stands resolutely on the deck of his ship, or tied to the mast as the sirens beckon him forth. The philosophies that they held, from the first time they stepped onto the Enterprise (Voyager...etc.) through fights with the Borg, Dominion, Klingons...etc... was what kept the ships alive and fighting. It is also what made the fans of Star Trek love the show so much. In a world where right and wrong seem blurred, where corruption seems to ooze from our leaders as readily as words, the idea of individualism that comes from Starfleet Earth is as enticing as the Siren's call.

To be on Earth in the 23rd century, where technology and human inventions have done away with many problems, where individuals can become anything or anyone they want to be, that is the ideal world. I've already said that Starfleet Earth is the most livable place in all of the literary universe, and this is why. Because on that Earth, so far into the future, you can boldly go wherever you want.

It's the phrase, "to boldly go" that stuck in my mind for the past little bit, as I have read Ayn Rand's novels, and as I have seen the events unfold around us, in the news, in the world. I wonder, is there anyone that can "boldly go" today? Can anyone stand atop the mountain as the Traveler does in Caspar David Friedrich's painting does? Or Ulysses? Abrams so wonderfully symbolizes this in Jimmy Bennett's portrayal of the Young James Kirk at the beginning of the movie. His leap out of the car as it careens off the cliff is absolutely amazing, and is an act of clarity, of skill, of brilliance. Kirk, at that moment, and in subsequent moments throughout the story, becomes the Hero that Ulysses, that Howard Roarke, that the Traveler was. He becomes the Hero we all want to be. And in our daily lives, we must take the steps to "boldly go" as Kirk did. I fear, however, that the world in which we live is far more apt to find individual skill and success a negative trait, and one that is beaten down at every step.

In education, children are drug down by their fellow pupils, by teachers that have to teach the same thing to everyone, for "equality" purposes. In sports, like the NFL, the word "parity" comes up as the key word for keeping things even. And while this is okay to keep dynasties from happening, it also creates the Lions and the Bengals. Man cannot reach his full potential when being pulled back by society that feels that "Equality" is preferable over "Success." And while we cheer for Kirk as he beats the Kobayashi Maru test, and find Spock irritable for playing the "status quo" part of that area, we are quick to criticize people who have become too successful in their fields. Why is it that, in Survivor and other Reality TV shows, often the most successful of any of the contestants are often voted off first, while those who are supremely mediocre win the major cash prizes? It should be the weak and corrupt that are voted off the island first.

J.J. Abrams has produced two movies (this and Cloverfield) which have shown the heroic efforts of individuals despite the drowning masses of society around them. No one on the transport (except Pike, of course) thought that Kirk would have succeeded in becoming an officer in 4 years, much less become Captain of the Enterprise. Of course, these are the stories that good movies tell. Everyone is going to support Rudy in his quest to play for Norte Dame, just as everyone hopes Harry Potter will find the Sorcerer's Stone and defeat Voldemort. It's what movies are. And maybe, just maybe, we can take a little from those heroes, and become a little more of those individuals ourselves.

Dreams Deferred: Ranting about Education.

"What happens to a dream deferred?" Langston Hughes had it right so many years ago, that dreams and goals might languish and die, or explode, if not given the chance to be fulfilled. I was thinking about my friends, about Lee and his sister in Milledgeville, and about how such potential, such intelligence, might be left like the belongings in the homes they leave behind. When does it become too much? When does the strength give in because breaking is so much easier to do? When do the dreams die because there is no use in wishing for them, as someone will knock them down?

And I would say to them, "But if you don't make good grades, you won't be able to go to college!" And then I would think about the people in their lives that have gone to college, and I think, "What's the point?" I could have done so much more than working at a bookstore, and some of their other acquaintances have multiple degrees, but are still living off the government's roles, and caring little about the dreams that they once had. What difference does going to college make in their lives, other than the opportunity to live out the lives of college students, complete with the socializing, fraternizing, and other joys that are experienced and left way too soon for the cold world of reality.

If the school systems would care about the individual, and teach and mold each of the minds of the students into works of art. If they would hown them into sharp minds, sharp blades that would be as skilled as any tool, then there would be something to contribute to the world. But unfortunately, the role of the public school system looks more like the cowboy, driving herds of cattle toward some unknown destination. Would that it looked more like Plato and Aristotle's classes in the days of the Academy in Athens, or the schooling that Henry David Thoreau did as a teacher in the town of Concord, Mass.

I don't blame them for low grades, for dropping out, for giving up. Society lays out for children paths that are easy to follow, but are ultimately useless. They don't allow for the specialization of education and the different needs of the students. I've said over and over again, that I had students in my teaching days that didn't do any of their homework, or care about the lessons they were forced to learn, but they could take apart and put together auto parts and lawn mowers expertly. I found myself agreeing with them. Why should you learn how to conjugate verbs and the meter of poems and how a plant creates photosynthesis? If, instead, they could have learned how to put together automobiles expertly, they would contribute a valuable service to society. Or better yet, teach them how to construct computers, and work their way up to the space shuttle...etc... Or even better, I was listening to Clark Howard, who was talking about conversion kits that would allow a standard gasoline engine to run on electricity, with no dependence on oil coming from the Middle East. What would have happened if all these students that were tacitly proficient, could have been taught to assimilate cars into environmentally and fiscally conservative ones? It would help solve the dependence on foreign oil issue in a matter of months or years, instead of decades. But now where are these students? They have quit school, and although some are working in Automobile shops, others took the negative paths and have gotten in trouble (drugs, crime...etc...) and are now languishing in prison.

This all comes from a certain basic assumption that has gone back to the founding of the country. Namely, that all the citizens of the US have a right to a free, basic education, and that if all men are created equal, the education they receive must be made as such. This was compounded upon in the 1950's by the civil rights movement, which, while their achievements were necessary and critical for the social healing of our nation, the idea of everyone receiving an equal education is certainly flawed. For people are not created equal. Some people have intelligences that go toward math, or science, or technology, or art, ...etc.... And these intelligences go untrained in an education program that only emphasizes core learning. Frankly, it's time for the 19th century idea of public education to wake up, get into the 21st century, and specialize teaching to individual students. They're not training current students to solve the world's problems, but rather herding children towards menial jobs that will do nothing but pay credit card bills from the results of a consumerist society (see previous blogs).

I realize that the previous statements are generalized and definitely do not apply to everyone. There are wonderful teachers out there, and students that will one day change everything. I get discouraged, however, by witnessing the teenagers that come through the mall everyday, languishing as they do (my word for the day), and doing nothing to further themselves. And I've seen friends, who, because of life circumstances, and the coldness of reality, and people who care nothing but greed and power and self-serving interests, are beaten down to the point where a thorough education means little. If a child is struggling for the basics in Maslow's pyramid, how can they hope to achieve self-actualization, to care about learning when they are needing shelter, food, love, happiness?

I guess these are two separate issues, but they blend together easily enough. There is such a magic about what teaching could be, if in an ideal society, where the individual needs of the students, all needs, are met, then they can grow and flourish. But, alas, this does not happen here.

One last thought. It seems to me that the program started by the Bush administration, "No Child Left Behind," is aptly named, but not for what was intended. Looking at the education system as a whole, the program has worked, because no child has been left behind...they curtailed the front-runners so that everyone is in the same place. This is done by reducing expectations, teaching to tests that are created to manipulate numbers to insure passage (and therefore continued funding of programs). And I've experienced this first hand. When I was student teaching at NW High in Macon, the principal at the time gathered all the teachers together for a pre-first day pep talk. And the most important goal was....and of course, I thought there would be some lofty ideal of education and help students achieve their dreams... But no, it was... to teach to the test. So they would continue getting funding and the teachers would get good reviews. The fate of those students were sealed before the year began. The NAACP has a saying, "A good mind is a terrible thing to waste." How true that is.

Family Pictures, Lord of the Flies: Chaos and the Individual

I was digging through a box of family pictures the other day, and after pouring through tons of pictures, I came to a startling conclusion. My brother has tons of pictures, in all his uniforms, from ROTC to Police officer to whatever. Even my cat has around 30 pictures taken of him in different poses. And don't get me wrong, my brother and even my cat are very photogenic. But after going through that box of pictures, all the pictures taken after 2000, I could find only 2 pictures that were clear and were taken of me. It's a shame really, that only a handful of pictures were taken of me after I finished my English degree. When I came to Borders and observed this phenomenon, I found I was not alone. Most of the people that worked with me just didn't have pictures taken of them that are recent.

Now, there's something to be said for getting pictures taken every few years in order to give the police something recent to go on, and it's also reasonable to assume that pictures are much more often taken of children and people in uniform more than regular people not doing anything. And pets. Hopefully I'll be able to put more pictures on my Myspace page when I get some made, not just of me, but of my friends (which will be so that only those friends can see them), and maybe some other things as well. Anyway, I was miffed at the lack of pictures of me at the moment. You'll have to forgive the moment of self-centeredness.

***
I just realized that I've been doing this for a year now, and I've written 75 blogs in that year. I've learned so much doing this, being able to write and extrapolate and cogitate, mixing theories and possibilities, and realizing how much more I have to learn, socially and physically and mentally. Balance is the most important aspect of anyone's life, and it's something that, right now, I'm lacking in.

***
CBS is currently running a show called Kid Nation, which is a reality show with little pretense that it actually is a show where children make all the decisions. Of course there are adults on the other end of those cameras, and there are doctors and educators and all kinds of people taking care of the actors and actresses. This is less about a social experiment and more about contrived entertainment. More of a true social experiment was the novel (and subsequent movies) Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The social experiment in the novel was that children were stranded on an island without adults, and they had to survive, create a social structure, and organize a society in which everyone could survive. Well, according to Golding, it is impossible, and the children turned into savages and the ones who couldn't survive, didn't. Of course, Golding was also paralleling the idea of the island as a microcosmic social experiment to the Earth and humans as the so called children who are trying to survive. As a novel that is actually a social commentary, the novel works excellently. The movie made in the 1990's shows this explicitly as, after the boys are rescued, there is a shot of bombers flying overhead toward their destination, in some past war. This shot alone instantly compares the animal behavior of the children with the primitive ideas of mankind that blowing each other up would actually solve anything. The social and political heirarchy will break down into chaos. And while this is normally true, I believe, because cahos will always reign over order, it does not always have to be this way.

Where Golding falls short in his experiment (or perhaps he does include it in the two main characters), is that individuality often succeeds in maintaining order and goodness while society degrades itself into anarchy. This is such a Romantic idea that most cynics cannot see it in modern times. I cannot help but think that an individual who maintains the ideas of right and wrong and keeps them solidly has to overcome most of the temptations that would lead one down the path of societal denigration. A child by themselves, when faced with his own morals and beliefs, will come closer to doing what's right than a child influenced by , say, a school class of his peers. Morality and ethics only preservere in the individual, and will constantly break down in the face of society.

But I've often wondered if that idea of individuality could be harnessed in such a way that the society of individuals that exist in that microcosm might withstand the temptations of the unmaker (OSC reference) and maintain the heirarchy intact. And I'm not just talking about a society or a town or a classroom (for an interesting read on this, try The Butterfly Effect, by an author I can't remember right now, but rather a family structure where children live basically without the effect of a competent parent. Would it be possible, given individuals that have an ingrained moral and ethical code (which I believe most people have), to have a collection of children that could maintain the social heirarchy and not denigrate into cahos the way Golding would have us believe? I do believe it is possible. I once thought about writing about a program where orphans or children who had been put in foster homes...etc... would be put into a program where they would live with themselves, govern themselves, and use their skills to contribute to society. It had sort of a Lord of the Flies feel, and also some of the more nostalgic elements that I was talking about in my last blog. And I have found that, in some instances, it can work, for individuals. In a world without parental guidance, some children can grow up with ethical and moral values and function quite well in society. Of course, I have a feeling that such cases are rare. But of course, there wasn't a plot, just an idea, a philosophy.

Of course, this blog post is connected to one I did earlier about Golding's work Darkness Visible.

(I don't like the cover of the book below, try finding the green one in a used bookstore someplace)