Over at my old stomping ground, The Wanderer, there is a good piece by Chris Montesano which uses as its springboard the shooting at the school in Florida. Along the way he quoted Book IX of Plato’s Republic:
“The teacher fears and panders to his pupils, who in turn despise their teachers and attendants; and the young as a whole imitate their elders, argue with them and set themselves up against them, while their elders try to avoid the reputation of being disagreeable or strict by aping the young and mixing with them on terms of easy good fellowship.”
Doesn’t that sound like the modern and modernist church these days? Substitute some terms.
The fruits of dumbing everything down, down, ever down.
Loading ...
Inside and outside the church everything is dumbed down lest we offend someone. This holds true whether it’s a moral principle or simply a preference. It affects all ages too.
I find even traditional minded people are infected by this disease. How often I hear conversations replete with acknowledgements designed to make sure the listeners will understand no offense is intended. But I understand why it’s done. How you ever said anything and immediately someone jumps in to let you know they’re the exception? Everyone thinks they’re the special exception. Maybe that’s why a universal church has so little appeal nowadays. The concept of universal truths is of little interest to those who based their identities on being the exception.
Speaking of schools, Stella Morabito at The Federalist recently wrote an article:
“13 Ways Public Schools Incubate Mental Instability In Kids” subtitled: “The correlation between public school environments and the deteriorating mental health of children has been intensifying for decades.”
http://www.thefederalist.com/2018/02/21/13-ways-public-schools-incubate-mental-instability-kids/
This is Stella Morabito’s bio at the Federalist:
“In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, she focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. She has also raised three children, served as a public school substitute teacher, and homeschooled for several years as well.”
She also wrote an insightful essay in 2015:
“How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion” subtitled: “Mass delusion is an important tool of oppressors because they can’t survive free expression. That’s why the First Amendment is a target.”
http://www.thefederalist.com/2015/06/08/how-to-escape-the-age-of-mass-delusion/
From that essay: “American conservatives are by and large clueless about propaganda methods and tactics. And it shows. There are virtually no conservative social psychologists around…Meanwhile, the Left has been employing social psychology and depth psychology on the masses for decades.” Morabito links in her essay to, among other useful items, a brief article in Psychology Today.
And speaking of dumbing down, there are those teachers, administrators, and parents who enthusiastically exploit young children for political purposes by dumbing down history and current events, and by encouraging an emotional “feel good” and/or “protest” response rather than critical thinking.
One more item. Here’s a link to Morabito’s talk at the Family Research Council about “Social and Emotional Learning”:
http://www.stellamorabito.net/2018/02/23/my-frc-talk-about-social-and-emotional-programming-the-latest-fad-in-education/
I haven’t had the opportunity to view this video, but here is Morabito’s description of this video: “In this talk I give my perspective on SEL. While good teachers are always a godsend, bureaucrats can never achieve what they promise in such programs. Especially since their framework is mass schooling. Such values and attitudes need to be taught in intimate settings of trust, such as families. Not in hyper-bureaucratized mega-schools. I see the SEL program as a bait-and-switch operation, because it demands universal compliance with its methods, with its content, and with its monopoly. By its very monolithic nature as program driven by a government monopoly, it is coercive. In the video, you’ll see a clip in which a representative for SEL tells us that they “need the WHOLE child.” And if you delve into this more, you can see that the SEL program is really all about enforcing conformity: Conformity of feelings, attitudes, emotions, speech, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. When such things are directed by a centralized State mandate, rather than by de-centralized mediating institutions — institutions of family, faith, and voluntary associations — there can be no freedom, nor can there be real diversity.”