Indoctrination

All kinds of lessons are being taught to our children in schools. I'm cynical enough that I'm 99% certain that most, if not all the lessons are intentional, but I am sure not everyone thinks the way I do.

Let's take the recent Worms and Composting talk that was furnished to our day campers, free of charge, by our local regional government, Metro.

Patty* the petite, perky, positive presentation person, was really upbeat and cute and great with kids. She brought in a composting box full of red worms, a cheerful face and trendy Birkenstock-with-wool-socks feet on the end of her jean-clad legs.

In introducing the topic of composting to the kids, she propped a white board on the worm box, and they all helped her tell the story of a day in her life.

She gave them choices of what to tell the little stick figure she'd drawn to represent herself.

"Should I eat the oatmeal or the toast with fruit for breakfast?"
She went through her day, deciding for and against foods, some based on packaging, some based on what was best for her to eat.

For dinner, she asked the kids what she should have. Suggestions of chicken, hot dogs, steak were all tossed out.

"No." she said. "I don't eat bad food. Meat is stinky and you can't put it in the composter, so I don't eat it. Meat packages don't compost, either."

She briskly moved on and 'finished' her evening meal, then asked the kids what she should have for dessert.

There were suggestions of pie, cake, pudding, chocolate... and she said again, "No, I don't eat things that are bad. I need to choose between cherries and blueberries."

So she talked about composting, but tossed into that lesson?
Meat is bad.
Desserts are bad.
Bad to buy certain packaging.

Oh sure, they'll tell their parents about the cool worms. Worm eggs. Little potato bugs. Compost. But the other, more subtle lessons are there, too. Regardless of a person's feelings about food (I think anyone who eats hummus has, at the very least, extremely bad taste) those things are a personal choice. And when someone comes in and forces in little lessons around the edges, the kids don't even realize it. Those lessons stick.

During Spring Break, we were to teach a unit on "Global Warming."
Now you'll probably realize without me telling you that a curriculum unit about that topic will be slanted in only one direction. There will be no mention made of other possibilities, the fact that the dire predictions haven't come through, bogus emails, junk science, and the Goracle who started it all.

You know... the Goracle. He of the nine mansions and the carbon offset businesses and the private jets and the lavish lifestyle of a famous philanderer (massage, anyone?) He who makes a bigger carbon footprint on one little trip than I will for the rest of my life? Yeah. Him.

So a couple of the kids informed me during our unit that the polar ice caps were going to melt and that someday we'll probably drown because of it. So I stopped the lesson and inserted one of my own.

I put a large, solid plastic cylinder inside an even bigger pitcher. We filled the big clear pitcher with ice cubes, making sure to stack a lot of them on top of the cylinder. Then, I poured water into it until the surface tension holding the water together was clearly visible above the rim of the pitcher.

Then I asked for predictions. And every single kid thought that when the ice melted, we'd have a flood. They worried that there were no towels around the bottom of the pitcher.

They were shocked with the final result.

And although it was tempting, I didn't say a whole lot. I did tell them, though, that as thinking individuals, they were free to draw their own conclusions about what the non-flood may mean. And about anything else they were told is absolute truth. That sometimes, they may hear conflicting ideas, and it's really up to them to find their own truth. That real truth usually exists somewhere in between all those ideas.

And I left it alone.

We had another discussion that week, too.
About cutting down trees. The kids were convinced that cutting down a tree was tantamount to murder. Seriously!

So I asked one of them, "Taylor*? What is your house made of?"
She didn't know.

Well, I do, because I drive past the wooden house Taylor lives in on my way to work.
She looked mystified when she admitted not knowing what her house was made from.

So I told her. She was shocked. Disagreed. We decided to ask her dad when he came to pick her up.

Then, I asked the kids where paper comes from. Fully half of them did not know! So we talked about that, too.

We then walked around the room and up and down a couple hallways in the school, identifying the objects we saw that had been made from wood. The kids were very surprised.

I refrained from preaching again, but I am glad I got them thinking. Someone sure as hell needs to.

We discuss politics. As much as I'd like to, I don't put my personal beliefs out there. I'm not trying to influence them to think my way... but I admit to trying to influence them to think. There doesn't seem to be a lot of that allowed.

So what do you think? Do you find you're having to argue with 'absolute truth' that's brought home from school with your kids/friends/nieces/nephews. Do you think school should be a place of social engineering so we can all learn to think the same way?

'Cause even if you don't agree that it should be, social engineering is one goal of a mainstream public education.