A “real” community?
Upon Crystal’s suggestion, I decided to check out one of John Taylor Gatto’s books from the library. I did no research, and simply picked what was in stock, so I have been reading Dumbing Us Down. I’m only in the second chapter, so I can’t really make a huge statement yet, but I wanted to blog about this quote
This great crisis that we witness in our schools is interlinked with a greater social crisis in the community. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent: nobody talks to them anymore, and without children and old people mixing in daily life, a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present.
This is such an interesting idea to ponder. I have long been annoyed with our country’s obsession with a very narrow age range: usually around 16-25. It sometimes seems like anyone younger than that age is trying to act older, while those that are older try to act younger.
I had never considered the fact that it does give us a “continuous present” though. What does this do to our country? I think the obvious problem that would arise is that we won’t properly equip the future generation and we won’t learn from the mistakes of past ones. That’s a sad thought.
Children are not valued. Children are not listened to. Children are not treated as they should be - as persons. They are penned up, pushed away, and supposed to fade into the background, and suppress their feelings.
At the same time, the elderly are shipped off and ignored. They are not revered in our culture. Few want to be old. Millions (billions?) are spent each year to make people look younger so that they can run away from the fear of feeling “old”.
This attitude will impact my children. It has already impacted me. I do not want my kids to feel that they need to grow up too soon and I don’t want to act like I am younger because the culture values that (even though I am only 25, so I realize that shouldn’t be much of an issue right now).
This has given me much to meditate upon tonight 