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Sunday, March 07, 2010
Infantilizations: A Screed-Rumination “Twofer”
It's all but impossible for one my age to look at "student protests" in our day and feel anything but contempt. Consider the one Don Douglas reports on here, and see if you can disagree.
"Student power" and "student protests" have always been ludicrous affairs. Adolescents with neither experience of social or economic reality, nor any responsibility for their own well-being, claim to have something significant to say to those who labor to cushion them against those realities and that responsibility. Such a combination of arrogance and ignorance deserves nothing but a dismissive laugh.
But one cannot remain dismissive when "student protests" become disruptive or violent:
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - Anger over increasing tuition and school budget cuts boiled over as students across the country staged rowdy demonstrations that led to clashes with police and the rush-hour shutdown of a major freeway in California.Students, teachers, parents and school employees rallied and marched Thursday at college campuses, public parks and government buildings in many U.S. cities in what was called the March 4 Day of Action to Defend Public Education.
In California, protesters evaded police and walked onto Interstate 880 near downtown Oakland just before 5 p.m., forcing the closure of the freeway in both directions for more than an hour and causing traffic to back up for miles....
Elsewhere, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee police arrested at least 15 people protesting tuition hikes after demonstrators tried to enter an administrative building to deliver petitions to the chancellor.
Some protesters threw punches and ice chunks when police turned them away, university spokesman Tom Luljak said....
At the University of California, Davis, about 75 police officers responded after nearly 300 students tried to block a freeway onramp near campus, university spokeswoman Claudia Morain said....
Protesters at the University of California, Santa Cruz blocked campus gates and smashed the windows of a car while its uninjured driver was inside. University officials urged students and employees to avoid the campus because of safety concerns.
At the University of California, Berkeley, a small group of protesters formed a human chain blocking a main gate to the campus. Later, hundreds rallied in a busy intersection before marching to downtown Oakland....
In Olympia, Wash., a group of about 75 protesters arrived at the Capitol bearing a faux coffin emblazoned with the slogan "R.I.P. Education." They were ejected from the state Senate gallery after interrupting a debate with a protest song that followed the tune of "Amazing Grace."
A great deal of this "student protest" is backed, overtly or covertly, by powerful, well-funded "educators' unions" -- one of the principal forces that has bankrupted school districts and states across the continent. The adolescents in their charge are hardly aware of how callously they're being used.
Yes, I call them adolescents regardless of their ages. Anyone who dares to demand that others provide him, gratis, with what he wants is both emotionally immature and morally deficient. He does not deserve to be called an adult, be he 18 or 80.
But then, our educational system is designed to turn adolescent high-school graduates into whining, screaming toddlers, albeit with many times the destructive capacity. It's inherent in the structure of the thing. Consider: the typical university student:
- Doesn't pay his own tuition or any part thereof;
- Relies on his parents or sweetheart loans to cover his expenses;
- Is housed among thousands of other students receiving the same benefits;
- Inhabits an essentially unpoliced environment within which many offenses that would be punishable by law outside the university's walls are tolerated open-eyed;
- Is told daily, by tenured lecturers, how special he is and how much his opinions matter.
Given all that, the protests mentioned above should come as no surprise to a thinking person. Indeed, the surprise, if any, is why we haven't seen more of them. Yet when these selfsame "educated" young persons stream out of the ivory towers that have coddled them for four, five, six, seven, or eight years, they routinely find that no one will hire them. Then they whine about that, as if a bachelor's degree in Deconstructionism or Art Theory constitutes a guarantee of remunerative employment. It is to laugh.
But we cannot laugh about having built a system designed to infantilize our youth, nor about shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars per year into its insatiable maw. Nor do Americans appear appropriately angry about the products that flow from it.
We sin against our children when we fail to prepare them for adulthood and its responsibilities.
Yes, governments at all levels are complicit in the offense. That doesn't relieve us of our share of the odium. Indeed, it ramifies our parental duties: to the extent possible, we must prevent the State from working its infantilizing ways upon our kids.
The duty begins on the day the youngster learns to read. It compounds when he heads off to school, be it kindergarten or college. From that instant forward, it's a parent's job to see to it that Junior is kept on a righteous course: neither too soft nor too hard. In particular, any influence that would tend to divorce him from full responsibility for the consequences of his decisions and actions must be repelled with extreme prejudice.
Whether his kids are boys or girls, prodigies or dullards, fit or unfit, the parent's responsibility is the same. It's grounded in an unalterable law of nature: You're the only force in his life on whose love and support he can confidently rely, and you won't be around forever.
There are other parental obligations apart from supplying intellectual nourishment and assuring its purity. A father's duty is to raise his sons to be men. A mother's duty is to raise her daughters to be ladies: that is, upholders of sound standards of conduct fit to bear and raise children in their turns.
What does it say about the Boomer generation, and those that have come after us, that we've largely abdicated all those responsibilities to the not-so-loving hands of the State?
The homeschooling movement has been accelerating steadily, which suggests that all is not yet lost. Homeschooling parents take full charge of their kids' intellectual and moral development. It's no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of such parents are devout Christians. We're taught early on about our duty to protect our children from corruption. The importance of that lesson is reinforced by news articles in every day's papers.
Needless to say, the State and the unions that batten on us through it are implacably hostile toward homeschooling. The relentlessly leftist and religion-hostile government-run schools justify their immense rake-offs on the grounds that their "educators" are the sole force qualified to "socialize" our kids, to mold them into "good citizens" ready for "civic participation." Granted, they get a last shot at our progeny through the universities, but they know that their influence is far more likely to have full and permanent effects if it starts before the age of eight. Worse, homeschooled children, particularly those from religious homes, routinely beat the products of government-run schools hollow in contests of intellect and knowledge.
Monopolists hate competition. Governments and their union clientele are the most ardent monopolists of all. They've never ceased to seek for a way to make homeschooling either illegal or impractical, and they never will.
The three legs of a free society are weapons, communication, and education. Though there are arguments for the primacy of each of these, none of them can be done without. Like a house divided against itself, a stool with only two legs cannot stand.
No matter how long it's been sloughed, a parent's duty to undertake the proper rearing of his children never ends. This has particular force with regard to the "student protests" covered in the first section of this tirade. The proper response to these outrages is a complete financial boycott of the affected institutions. Not one more parental penny should go to any of them; their enrollees should be cast onto their own resources entirely, regardless of the foreseeable consequences.
There is no alternative. To permit such an exercise in arrogance without punishing it will inevitably result in more of it, for these clamors have innate pleasures, even when not materially rewarded. Worse, the forces that stand to gain materially from any response -- the "educators' unions" and "administrators' associations" -- have an even stronger interest in keeping the thing going; the longer it persists, the more likely the relevant government agency will intervene in their favor. The only counteragent is absolute parental negation.
This is more than just a rebuff to overweening government and its parasites; it's a parental obligation. No one who permits his child to be molded into an immature, whining parasite, an infant in a full-grown body who holds that his desires constitute enforceable rights, has fulfilled his Christian duty to that child.
Forgive me, Gentle Reader. I know this has been an uncharacteristically angry screed for a Sunday Rumination, but I felt it had to be said.
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
Four dead in O—HI—O.
The notion that BigEd is about education is myth. The fact that BigEd is well situated in the fabric of everywhere America is the “root problem” of our collective decline.
Just about everyone is on the take, one way or another. How in hell can we defund ourselves? In many areas, the school district is the only decent job available. Competition for no pay School Board seats draw blood.
Many of the same elements already infect BigMed. ObamaCare will copy the school district model.
At this point, reform is impossible and collapse is inevitable. Looting is a transition strategy, when the goods are gone, so are you.
We are witness to the un-ravelling, let it roll.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/07/2010 at 07:54 PMBut Commerade Poretto, the academics have wisdom and knowledge. They know better than those who labor without tenure or shelter for silly ideas. /sarc off
Posted by Blackiswhite, Imperial Consigliere on 03/07/2010 at 08:23 PMWhat Rotgut Saloon said is exactly right. Cheer them on, pass out the snacks, give ‘em the thumbs up for “solidarity”. The surest way to bring ‘em down is to give them what they want. It worked in, say, Detroit.
Posted by Ol' Remus on 03/07/2010 at 08:29 PMJerry Pournelle’s comments on the matter
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/08/2010 at 03:34 AM
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