Taught, Not Learned

In schools the subculture which controls the minds of the young people is a subversive one which is taken from the world of entertainment, of children’s magazines and the wider subculture of subversion in the adult world. Those celebrities are admired who flout the rules of the society and who act in an anarchic way which the young would like to copy if they could. Drug abusing actors or sports personalities, criminals and the rich and famous who flout current morality are admired and their attitudes copied. It may be argued that this is just teenage rebellion. But one might also argue that “teenage” itself is but a state of mind manufactured by the media, the consumer culture and the need to keep the young out of paid employment and to extend the age of childhood. Music and fashion all play their part and engenders an “us and them” attitude among the young to their mentors and to the schools.

There is a reaction to this which distracts teachers from the proper pursuit of the tasks they really ought to be doing, that of teaching the young. Teachers instead act like petty officials who concern themselves with the dress and the deportment of the young. They are busy seeing that girls do not wear high heels or too many rings on their fingers or in their ears and other parts of their anatomy. When teenage boys are forced to take studs out of their ears they then have them put in their tongues much to the delight of their fellows. Why bother? Why not leave this to the parents and make them responsible for the dress of their children. Health and safety is often the justification for these trivial pursuits but it would not be beyond the powers of government to make parents responsible for injuries sustained by their offspring wearing inappropriate clothing or footwear, instead of long suffering teachers.

As for discipline, it is much talked about but little understood. All too often seen as imposed from above when the only people entitled to impose in this way are parents and all too often they do not do it. Democracy requires that pupils learn self-discipline. This is not learned in a tyrannical regime where teachers lord it over their young charges. A pleasant and friendly atmosphere where pupils want to learn and where they are inculcated with the skills of democracy, is what is required. The authoritarian school has no place in a truly democratic society where people obey those they give the responsibility of government to with pleasure, knowing that those governors are fully accountable to them, the people.