My friend Bob Roth recently wrote about the fear that the teabaggers, et. al represent the beginnings of a nascent fascist movement, while Austin Cline over at Jesus General points out that the very people who are hurling this epithet at others are using the tactics that fascist movements historically use. It’s not an unreasonable fear, and we should certainly be alive to the possibility that these people are fertile soil in which to grow a fascist state. Luckily, at the moment, they don’t appear to have a leader around whom they can coalesce, though that could change fast. Without someone to tell them what to do, these kinds of folks can’t accomplish much.
But this issue, along with the associated issue of the mindless health care “debate”, got me thinking about our educational system.
When I was in high school, I took typing. The class consisted of future secretaries and a smattering of Honor Society types. I flunked the course, as did the only other male in the class (the teacher took off one letter grade for every error) but it was arguably the most useful course I ever took. If not for that course, for instance, I would be unable to inflict my opinions on a defenseless world. Typing is a practical skill (particularly for someone whose handwriting is totally illegible) and, as it turned out, extremely important in the computer age.
There is another practical skill, far more important, that we should teach in a systematic way: critical thinking. Without it, we can’t hope to survive as a representative democracy. The fact is that we increase the number of potential sheep in this country if we fail to clearly and directly teach our kids how to protect themselves individually, and all of us collectively, from the barrage of bullshit to which they are subjected from the time they are infants.
Think about it. We are bombarded with commercials inviting us to make irrational decisions. Talking heads scream at us from televisions making assertions that make no sense either factually or logically. Religious leaders ask us to believe the impossible. Almost as many people believe in astrology as in natural evolution and almost everyone believes in miracles.
Now I count myself among those who have a natural tendency to disbelieve anyone in authority. I did verbal combat (always respectfully, of course) with the nuns back at good old OLS (Our Lady of Sorrows to the uninitiated) and I do mental combat with most of the commercials and all of the idiots I see on television. But I firmly believe most people don’t. As Marshall McLuhan pointed out, most people don’t engage with their televisions, they are merely passive receptacles, into which both advertisers and corporate broadcasters dump misleading garbage.
Every kid should be trained early on to ask him or herself: what is it that these people are trying to get me to do, think or say? What are the premises, and do they make sense? Do the facts check out? Do the conclusions I am being asked to draw flow from the facts and premises? Most important of all, they should be taught that they should start with the presumption that people out to make a buck, or protect their ability to make a buck, are not to be trusted. Sure, these issues are glancingly covered in some courses, but not in the concentrated way that they deserve.
Of course, there is no hope that any such course will ever be taught in our schools, because the primary lesson it would teach is that those who control our world are pretty much always lying to us. That is not something the corporations, the government (most of the time), or the churches want them to know. What would those entities do without the easily manipulable consumers upon which they’ve come to depend? What if they couldn’t get us to buy things we don’t need, vote against our interests, and believe things that make no sense? Imagine the consequences.
If we were taught to think, we might have a chance to fix this democracy, instead of having to worry about the possibility of fascism. I would submit that fascism is impossible in a country where people are taught to think, because it depends for its success on the willingness of a substantial number of people to let other people do their thinking for them.
By the way, don’t believe a word of the foregoing until you’ve examined my premises and checked my facts. Then decide for yourself about the conclusions I’ve drawn.
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