Posted: Jul 18, 2010 8:28 pm
I agree that educating children is a noble goal. But, unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as that. I think, unfortunately, the complex world we find ourselves makes various demands on us, even on an existential level. We yearn for meaning, and in what we perceive to be a materialistic cosmos, meaning is hard to discern for some people. Worse still, they might not even be aware of it.
The example of the irrational person I mentioned above, T., follows this very closely. He is clearly 'lost' without his gurus, psychics, and 'alternative knowledge' peddlers - authority figures who can do the interpreting for him. The problem, as far as I see, did not occur in school. He fell into an ideological crack somewhere. Something, perhaps on an unsconcsious level, makes him want to seek the same pattern out: he wants someone to tell him the 'secrets' of how the world really is (exclusive access to knowledge), promise him that he can belong to a moral vanguard of 'truth-seekers', and so on. It's all very self-serving and quasi-religious, but it's not because he was brainwashed at school age. It's because he never found his place in the world, which seems very confusing and hostile to him (at least that's my guess), particularly when he's told that smoking and burning fossil fuels are immoral/dangerous. He clearly has a strange relationship to authority. On the one hand, he rejects it when it comes from 'mainstream' science because it tries to curtail his freedom, on the other hand he hands that freedom straight over to bullshit merchants who promise him freedom from the tyranny of authoritarian society. How does a person slip into such a mental state? I can't believe it's schooling only. That to me seems too simplistic. It can only be one factor.
Another example I can think of is Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project. He famously converted to Christianity in adult life (if I recall correctly, he saw three frozen waterfalls and was instantly convinced him the Trinity is real... or something). That is not a failure of his schooling. That is a failure of an adult to engage with reality on an existential level and come to terms with it without reaching out to an imaginary omnipotent father figure to help him through life. How does that happen?
The example of the irrational person I mentioned above, T., follows this very closely. He is clearly 'lost' without his gurus, psychics, and 'alternative knowledge' peddlers - authority figures who can do the interpreting for him. The problem, as far as I see, did not occur in school. He fell into an ideological crack somewhere. Something, perhaps on an unsconcsious level, makes him want to seek the same pattern out: he wants someone to tell him the 'secrets' of how the world really is (exclusive access to knowledge), promise him that he can belong to a moral vanguard of 'truth-seekers', and so on. It's all very self-serving and quasi-religious, but it's not because he was brainwashed at school age. It's because he never found his place in the world, which seems very confusing and hostile to him (at least that's my guess), particularly when he's told that smoking and burning fossil fuels are immoral/dangerous. He clearly has a strange relationship to authority. On the one hand, he rejects it when it comes from 'mainstream' science because it tries to curtail his freedom, on the other hand he hands that freedom straight over to bullshit merchants who promise him freedom from the tyranny of authoritarian society. How does a person slip into such a mental state? I can't believe it's schooling only. That to me seems too simplistic. It can only be one factor.
Another example I can think of is Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project. He famously converted to Christianity in adult life (if I recall correctly, he saw three frozen waterfalls and was instantly convinced him the Trinity is real... or something). That is not a failure of his schooling. That is a failure of an adult to engage with reality on an existential level and come to terms with it without reaching out to an imaginary omnipotent father figure to help him through life. How does that happen?