The Jessaverse | Change and Exchange

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1

I was shown this article fairly recently, and I must say that I was quite shocked. Not necessarily because there are racist singers around (I’ve been researching and analysing extremists for a few years now, and one of my main hobbies is tracking extremist movements and groups in America), but because Lynx and Lamb Gaede (is their mother grooming them for future Nazi porn-stardom with those names?) are only thirteen years old. Granted, most thirteen-year-olds I’ve known are competent and intelligent enough to at least have their own beliefs. However, in the case of Lynx and Lamb, their mother, April, has been home-schooling them consistently (until now), teaching them her racist beliefs and historical myths that have been disproved by mainstream historians. These girls have basically been groomed to be extremists. I believe in the right to free speech, but I do not believe in the right to brainwash one’s children with whatever beliefs that a parent has. Each individual has the right to learn what they wish on his own. In fact, situations like these are what makes me question the benefits of home-schooling.

I’m hoping that these girls will hit their rebellious streak in a few years and realise that hate is wrong. Maybe they’ll be so rebellious that they’ll each date black guys to teach their pushy mother a thing or two. Of course, that’s a futile hope. Most people who have been brainwashed need several years to deprogramme themselves.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m an enthusiastic supporter of home education if done properly. However, the current home-schooling movement has been hijacked by Christian fundamentalists who wish to brainwash their children with intolerance and bigotry. It’s one thing to take your child out of school to allow them to learn on their own, but it’s another to take your child from one form of brainwashing to another. A lot of parents see their home-schooled children as ‘property’ to protect from the ‘evil influences’ of the ‘world’, not free agents who are capable of learning on their own. This sort of home-schooling is just as inimical to youth rights as standard public schooling is. It’s the same ‘fill the child with bullshit’ mentality, even though it’s just a different type of bullshit. I’ve seen some of these fundamentalist Christian home-schooling curricula and programmes, especially since my younger sister in fifth grade is home-schooled and is being taught a lot of this stuff. The worldview espoused is obviously fundamentalist-Christian, one of the Bible courses outright insults atheists, and they are taught that Christianity is the only acceptable religion. Hyper-patriotism is taught by some programmes as well. Whatever happened to allowing people to discover religion for themselves? Some of the lessons are patronising. There is a strong support for Noah Webster, who was one of the first people to completely ravage the English language. He was a disagreeable preacher who created a censored dictionary that contained nothing that wasn’t Christian, and he took part in chopping up British words arbitrarily, obscuring their etymology or taking away their mostly French-derived beauty. Students are spoonfed conservative politics and are taught to obey anyone who has imposed their authority upon them unless they are not Christians. I have no problems with Christianity or home-schooling, by the way. I simply have a problem with brainwashing.

I’m sure that some of you might wonder why I tend to employ Commonwealth English rather than American English, even though I was born and reared (partially; I lived in Europe for six years) in the United States. No, it’s not to annoy you and make you all (meaning the Americans) correct me!

Well, I utilise that sort of English for various stylistic reasons. First off, living in England and Germany and reading several English-written books will do that to you. Secondly, most of my communications on the net are with Australians and Britons, so there is a considerable influence there. I can also co-ordinate my Europeanised spelling with French and German, which is far easier for me. This is also the reason why I tend to use Latin-based words like “intelligent” rather than their Anglo-Saxon equivalents (clever, for example)when the words aren’t that esoteric and are easily intelligible to my audience. I do have older writings which are very strongly American, but I need to edit them so that all my writing is standardised.

In addition, I plan on eventually expatriating to England or Australia, so it all makes sense.

Also, hardly any international organisation uses American spelling.

What I don’t understand is that so many people are opposed to globalisation and its effects. They clamour to “Keep the jobs here!” and “No intervention!” The thing is that in our post-Cold-War world, we are inevitably connected to each other through the United Nations, international trade, the internet, and through our shared experiences. Once globalisation came about, it was impossible to curtail its effects. It is impossible for one country to stay isolated from the rest of the world; what happens in another country will eventually affect us in some way. Isolationists tend to be obscurantists who are closed to most other cultures and other forms of experience. Also, I find that our globalised culture is an enlightening experience. In the old days, it was far more difficult to listen to a foreign composition or communicate with someone halfway around the world. Nowadays all that is feasible with a mere click of the mouse. Sometimes I take it for granted, but today it seems so staggering that I can speak to people from countries other than my own and listen to music that is not from my native country — and obtain it so easily. I just sat and thought about it, and I thought, “Amazing.” At this very moment in time, I am a Europeanised American sitting in Germany, listening to a Swedish group, posting on this site, with readers from Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia, and drawing pictures with a Japanese flair. I couldn’t have things better in this aspect.

But there are some downsides to globalisation, especially the American cultural hegemony that seems to be engulfing the world at the moment. Cultural exchange is excellent; I approve of it, but America seems to be taking over everything culturally, and traditional cultural aspects seem to suffer because of it. I am tired of the world becoming one big America. I like GLOBALISATION, not AMERICANISM. I see it all the time here in Germany. Certain advertisements are in English, and apparently some kids around here speak phony English to sound “cool.” And the thing is, it’s not British English that’s being spread around; it’s American English. I don’t think those ads should be banned, but I think they definitely highlight the pervasiveness of Americanism in Europe. Writing standards are starting to adhere to American rules, a big shift from the state of things in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. People clamour to go to America, and there is nothing they want more than to be Americans. I don’t get it. I seriously don’t get it. America has a better social situation than some lesser-developed countries, but right now, there is such a cultural and political upheaval by the conservatives that anyone who divagates from the norm wouldn’t be quite welcome in “average” America.

Keep globalisation, but tone the Americanism down.

Many of you are familiar with the fact that a lot of my posts seem to be virulently anti-conservative. Although I like most people and try my hardest to get along with everyone despite their political views, I have a hard time dealing with social conservatives (I have more patience for economic conservatives). They seem to be so intolerant and opposed to social progress; if something is new, it is automatically bad. That is what makes me so mad about them. They think that THEIR way of having a family is the only right way. They think THEIR way of politics is the only right way. It’s absolutely maddening. So many of them are homophobic and don’t want gays to get married just because their bigoted interpretation of Christianity says so. Hello, if you don’t want a gay marriage, then don’t freaking have one. There is no valid reason to oppose equal rights for all people — anything else is bigotry.

(I also have problems with liberals being bigoted towards those who don’t agree with them. I actually have a problem with bigotry in general. This post is mainly addressed towards conservatives because they are primarily the ones who are spreading bigotry across the nation right now.)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1582423,00.html

I had heard that Pope Benedict XVI would be more moderate than some of the other candidates, but the current pope makes George W. Bush look like Madalyn Murray O’Hair. He demands that all Catholics follow the strict rulings of the church, no matter what the local law might be. No room for interpretation here…He has strongly expressed his opinion regarding same-sex marriage, abortion, and other contentious issues — they’re all sinful, and there might even be a risk of not being able to take communion if you take a stance outside what the church demands. Apparently, he’s not too wild about materialism and capitalism as well. Why, he’s even saying that women should return to their traditional roles rather than work.

I swear, religious leaders are moving us further and further into the Dark Ages. This is supposed to be a decade of progress, not regression. I wouldn’t be surprised if Catholics got fed up and started to start a new sect of Christianity.

Ah, my second set of book reviews, and it’s definitely not as nice as the one for The Lexus and The Olive Tree…

The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown

Last year, I bought Dan Brown’s best-selling book The Da Vinci Code at the airport based on my friends’ recommendation. (Remind myself to be a bit more cautious when I take others’ recommendations.) Anyway, I was going to read it at the airport, but I never got around to it, since I spent the bulk of my time on the flight from Cincinnati to North Carolina sleeping. When I got back to my dorm room, I started reading the book. It was all right, and that’s about all I’m going to say about it. All Brown did was just fabricate a bunch of things about art history and theology to make an interesting read. It definitely wasn’t the super-brilliant tour de force that the blurbs on the book made it out to be. His facts are wrong, his narrative is so-so, and his characters are cardboard. I think that even I could write something with characters with more depth and intelligence, and I’m only 18 and haven’t even been in school that long. Heh. Brown’s narrative is insipid. Wouldn’t a supposedly excellent author be able to produce something of timeless beauty or elegance? The plot was fairly formulaic, with the super-smart man and the attractive woman (who coincidentally is smart, but the important thing is that she’s beautiful) hunting for clues about a so-called “Da Vinci code.” It reminds me of something straight out of a comic book. I think it could’ve done better as a graphic novel rather than a mainstream bestseller with pretensions of sounding intelligent. It drives me mad how everyone finds it brilliant, but I just found it dull. It’s definitely not on the way to becoming a classic.

Grade: C
If you want elegant prose and excellent characterisation, don’t read this book.

Left Behind — The Rising
By Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
Yes, I’ve been reading the Left Behind series for years. I started reading it when I actually believed in that sort of eschatology, and now it’s just a bad habit for me. I think LaHaye and Jenkins have milked this series as far as it could go, and The Rising is no exception. It supposedly details the young lives of the male lead, Rayford Steele (what a name!) and Nicolae Carpathia, the chief antagonist. The narrative itself was passable — it was far from being the sort of rich narrative that either Margaret Atwood or Umberto Eco could produce, but it wasn’t exactly chock-full of elementary grammatical errors. The story itself could definitely use some work. The Rayford portion was terribly boring. He definitely didn’t sound like someone you wanted to get to know later. He sounded like your typical, clean-cut Midwestern boy with hardly any vices to begin with. If LaHaye and Jenkins wanted to present Rayford as someone fallen and left behind during the rapture, couldn’t they have picked a more dramatic personage than that of the straight-arrow Rayford Steele? Second, it sends the message that if good ol’ Rayford wasn’t good enough, then neither are we. (I’m sure that’s what LaHaye wanted, but sheesh. Fundamentalists annoy me.) The Nicolae Carpathia narrative was more intriguing, but they spent far too much time focusing on the deliberations about Nicolae’s artificial insemination rather than actually writing about Nicolae himself. Nicolae possibly only utters about fifty sentences in the whole book, and I would think that the book would be largely about him. LaHaye and Jenkins also attempted to use the Romanian language in the Carpathia sections, and they failed miserably. Even with my short study of Romanian, I could still detect the errors that they used. Unconjugated infinitives, incorrect gender adjectives, and other such errors littered the pages.

All in all, I’d recommend everyone to skip this one.

Grade: D-
What I said about the Da Vinci Code applies here as well.

Stay tuned for my next book report on:
Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
and Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.
(I’ve just started these and I feel that you’ll actually hear me saying something good…)

I used to define myself as a pure liberal (I’m even a registered Democrat, as some of you know), but I’m starting to question that, since I seem to agree with some of the major parties about something, but I never seem to agree about everything. I agree with the liberals and Libertarians about personal liberties. There is no way that I’d EVER oppose equal rights for anyone. However, I disagree with the liberals about their universal healthcare plan. I think that medical vouchers, or some sort of individually chosen plan, would do better than having the State choose your doctors. Same goes for school vouchers, something with which I agree with the Republicans about. You should be able to choose where you want to go to school, BUT (here’s the caveat) public schools should still be supported and reformed, as I outlined earlier in the Education post. I agree with the right to bear arms as well; guns don’t kill people, people do. I just ask that people use locks on their guns so that no one inadvertently shoots himself. Government should not have to coerce people to be responsible.

I can’t be a Democrat because of my affinity for smaller government.
I can’t be a Republican beause of the social conservatism, the emphasis on profits over people, and the far too small government.
I can’t be a communist because of my support for capitalism, individual liberties, and individualism. Collectivism is not for me.
I can’t be a libertarian because there are no safety nets in such a government.
I can’t be a populist because of their emphasis on larger government WITHOUT the corresponding concern with social issues.
I can’t be a Green because I don’t agree with their type of environmentalism.

I’m an independent.
In short my politics are: Fair trade, capitalism, and individual rights. Why can’t one party have all those things?

Yesterday, my family and I decided to visit the German city of Worms (It is in the western part of Germany, and it is not far from the French border) to see some of the historical sites relating to Martin Luther. The town itself looked like most German towns, with the pastel buildings and copious bakeries. It wasn’t really that busy though, and it was a Saturday. I was surprised. Anyway, we went to go see St. Peter’s Cathedral, which was really beautiful. (We asked where Martin Luther’s church was, but it was in another area, described by the postcard salesman as “Klausen.) I spent quite some time admiring the art at the cathedral, especially the sculpture and the Latin inscriptions. We also looked at some other interesting sites, but did not walk into any more buildings. Near the end of our day trip we went to go for ice-cream. The first place we went into had ice cream that was so-so. I had some, but the consistency was way too much like sherbet or something. The next place we went into…oh god, it was the scariest ice-cream parlour I’ve ever been into. The only salesperson was this old guy, and there was scary pipe organ music that sounded like something out of a vampire movie or something…My parents also kept on having me read the German and Latin inscriptions on the signs at the historical sites….

Also, when I went into the cathedral, I picked up a pamphlet that was about some festivities in town that celebrated a famous Jewish rabbi (in that area) named Solomon ben Isaac, or Raschi for short. All year long they are going to have things such as symposia, Israeli dancing, concerts, and other events to honor Raschi. I thought that was amazing, especially in Germany. Apparently Worms was a traditional Jewish learning area in Germany during the Middle Ages. I know that they actually still have the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery there. I’m seriously surprised that it didn’t get bombed or razed by the German government during the WWII era. I thoguht that that was an amazing contrast, compared to some sixty or seventy years ago, when Hitler ruled Germany, packing off innocent Jews to the concentration camps.

I’m transferring a lot of the Indusztri Report classics here. For your delectation and delight (old IR readers can skip this) it’s the Education Treatise.

Education::Thoughts

Education, Parenting, and Change for Tomorrow.

(another disjointed polemical posting)

Thoughts on the current system

As you all know, I am a supporter of public schooling, and I have a lot of strong views regarding education. Even though some of you may consider this view somewhat controversial, I find that it needs to be addressed, as there is quite a lot of disagreement as regards this topic. First, I support public schooling because it is of no direct cost to the parent. Indeed, public school funding does come from taxes. But still, it is not the same as paying for home-school curricula or private-school tuition. Home-schooling and private schooling are not necessarily options for poorer families. If someone lives in abject poverty, she is sure not going to be able to afford a home-school curriculum (some cost about $500 a year!) or be able to send her children to private school. Unschooling and home-schooling may work for those who have enough money and access to quality books, but what about those who cannot? There is already a large gap between the haves and the have-nots. Why make it larger by abolishing public education rather than merely repairing it? Also, there is the question of ideology and discrimination in private schooling. Private schools reserve the right to admit whomever they choose. They can refuse to admit a poor black child, or a young gay boy, or an atheist, and that students’ parents would not be able to sue. (If that is wrong, please tell me so.) Home school curricula also tend to have a conservative Protestant bias. Even the group of lawyers who defend home-schooling, the HSLDA, appear to be rather conservative in their views. They have lobbied against abortion, gay marriage, ad infinitum. (By the way the conservatism I refer to is social conservatism, not economic conservatism.) There needs to be some balance to all this home-schooling bias. Some homeschoolers’ books seem to inculcate bias and prejudice into them. Parents can use these to perpetuate ignorance into their children and inhibit curiosity and free inquiry, which is what a lot of the home-schooling advocates here try to promote. They learn not to ask intelligent questions, since all they get is pat answers. Example: “Mom, why do giraffes have long necks?” “Because God made it so.” I am not insulting God at all. But if you really want to teach your child science, not pseudoscientific creationism, then you can tell your child, “God made giraffes with long necks because …”. Eeep…The purpose of this mini-essay is not to teach pedagogical techniques, so I will stop right there and get back to my original topic. Home-schooling can be good if done properly, but it can be abused. Public schooling is a shambles right now. I know that from experience, and I know that from stories that others have told. Students are taught to obey school faculty unquestioningly, even when those people are wrong. They are punished for the most ridiculous things, such as having a pair of scissors, or wearing armbands or t-shirts in protest of a government action. The lessons learned in class are sanitised, and students grow bored easily. (I know I did.) Students are paddled by school administrators simply because they dared to speak out or act out against teachers’ abuses. Minority students (usually black or Hispanic) are singled out and mistreated. Students who would succeed under better circumstances are thrown into “special needs” classes or put on psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin, Wellbutrin, Prozac, and Zoloft because they disrupt the classroom’s social order (in which everyone must basically march in lockstep). I was drugged myself and put in those kinds of classes; I know about this. Believe me, it is hell. I am in no way supporting the actions of public schools now. The prevailing attitude seems to be, “If you cannot make them sit down, shut up, and regurgitate our drivel, then either drug them up or beat the devil out of them.”) This whole idea that is prevalent in public schools is antithetical to the true pursuit of knowledge. The problem is not the IDEA of state-sponsored education. The problem is its execution. If public schools were conducted differently, I would be a wholehearted supporter of them. First off, the purpose of public education must be made clear. It is not there to “socialise” students. It is there to educate. Second, the idea of a one-size-fits-all education must be abolished. I am not an ‘educational communist’ and do not believe that everyone should be kept on the same level. I do believe in a bit of healthy competition. It is preposterous to make a brilliant student do work that is far too easy for her, and ridiculous to make a severely mentally impaired student try to pass a state test that is written for students many times more intelligent than she. Is everyone as intelligent as everyone else? Of course not. Since there are varying levels of intelligence, motivation, energy, and other personal characteristics, there must be varying methods of education for each student. Even if education is touted to be the “great equaliser”, unequal levels of intelligence and capability will manifest themselves and negate this notion.

The New Public Education and the new childrearing

In fact, I think that public education should be radically different from the way it is now. I envision a large facility in which there are several centres for experimentation and discovery, and teachers serve as guides and mentors rather than autocratic agents of the State. It would be filled with several resources to broaden students’ knowledge about their chosen subjects. Books, computers hooked up to fast Internet, laboratories, many field trips, you name it. It would be a bit like “autodidactism en masse” but it would be tax-funded. Poorer students could take part in this even if their parents could not afford to buy the books and other impedimenta for autodidactic learning because the State would provide it. Students would profit more from this sort of learning since the majority of them would only attempt to do things within their abilities. Of course, this sort of public education would not be compulsory; it would be voluntary. If a parent wished to teach his or her child differently, then it would be possible to do so. I know that there will still be those parents who will insist on teaching their children bullshit but after a few generations of the New Public Schooling and a change in parenting these problems will be decreased. If intellectual inquiry is encouraged, such things as the creationist movement will die out. I believe that real change must begin with our own individual families, as well with lobbying politicians. It is near impossible to change the views of the less-enlightened members of the older generation. But we, as young people, are able to start our own families and inculcate upon our children the importance of human rights. Existing attitudes towards pedagogy and childrearing are the foundations for the ageist beliefs that exist in the American consciousness. The idea of parental supremacy and infallibility is what later informs such unjust laws regarding youth. It is also related to the way in which current public schools are run, except that parental infallibility is converted to adult infallibility. In fact, most anti-youth ideas rise from the wrong-headed doctrine of parental superiority. Every single one of those laws places complete authority on the parent, rather than the youth herself. This attitude towards childrearing is an old one, and is difficult to expel from our collective consciousness because of the prevalence of fundamentalist religion and the constant influence of tradition. It is an attitude that partly comes from the Bible and other religious books (interpreted in a literalist and fundamentalist fashion), and partly from European and American tradition. Several verses in the Bible regard children as property and make it clear that disobedience to a parent’s will is a dreadful sin, not only against one’s parents, but also against the Almighty God. The authors of the Bible are also apparently ardent supporters of corporal punishment…even to the point of killing a disobedient child. Although there are verses in the Bible that could be used to support Youth Rights, the vast majority appear to favour the parent unfairly. If we, the Youth Rights activists, have children and we raise them in our revolutionary manner, ageism will gradually go away. The New Public Education will also aid in the changing of American opinion on childrearing and education because it emphasises intellectual inquiry and curiosity rather than blind obedience and submission.

Severe mental impairment and education

Those who are so severely mentally impaired (and thus incapable of learning, let alone autodidactism) would be dealt with differently. (Please do not consider me to be elitist. I do not discriminate based on intelligence.) I do not believe that they should be put in ’school’ per se. School is for the truly educable. I am not referring to mere ‘developmental delays’ which rectify themselves after a few years. (Quite often these students turn out to have average or above-average intelligence.) I am talking about severe mental retardation. I think that those people should (if their parents are not home to take care of them) be in a sort of day-care for the younger ones, or a place where they learn the sorts of skills necessary for the line of work they will be involved in, if they can work at all. I DO NOT BELIEVE, in any way, that these people should be drugged to ‘control’ them. Psychiatric drugs are damaging to everyone (as is the entire discipline of psychiatry - perception and mental functions cannot be ‘healed’ in a medical sense), and should be abolished. I have no problem with mind-altering substances that DO NOT affect the body in adverse ways (e.g. marijuana, small amounts of ecstasy or other similar ‘rave’ drugs) but I am opposed to the use of more deleterious drugs (heroin, crack).