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They're Conditioning Our Children
28/03/2003
Recently I’ve been considering a couple of incidents that happened to me in primary school. I was too young to really consider the implications of them when I was a kid but in hindsight I find they concern me a great deal.
I think it was during my last year in primary school – I was probably eleven or twelve and the class was talking about drugs and possibly drugs legislation. As most of you probably remember, in primary school it’s like “Drugs Are Evil! They are the cause of pain and suffering in society and there is never anything that can be gained by experimenting with them. If you do you are EVIL – EVIL EVIL EVIL!” – now this might be an exaggeration, but then again it might not be. I do remember that up until about primary five or six the idea of a drug user, whatever the substance may have been, was of some very bad person with no regard for the law who probably did other bad things like stealing and killing. In any case, I had the audacity (at the age of 11 or 12) to say “I think some of the less harmful drugs should be made legal and have tax on them so that the government can make money from the stupid people that take them.”
Well… all hell broke loose. The teacher, although she did not shout at me, became very aggressive towards me and totally disgraced me in front of the whole class. You see, when you’re that age the teacher is right – the teacher is certainly right if she contradicts a pupil, even if she is shoving her own views down his, and the rest of the class’s throats.
Free thought is particularly dangerous in a class of young kids whose minds are still very malleable, and therefore must be crushed into non-existence. Ok, I admit these weren’t the thoughts of the teacher when this happened but that’s because it was unconscious – she was just as conditioned as the rest of us.
In my opinion, a good teacher’s response would have been something along the lines of, “Well, that is a point of view that many people share with you and it’s your decision, but in my opinion that a bad idea because…<insert opinion here>,” or at least “Well that’s your opinion and you are entitled to it.”
My objection is not that she refused to promote the legalisation of ‘substances,’ but that she would not even acknowledge the validity of my opinion. It was not her place to tell me what to think, but it certainly may have been her place to inform me, and the class, that I was not alone in my point of view even though I was just a kid. Specifically, she acted like it was a fact that I was wrong and she was right. I see this as conditioning because the subconscious implications to the class are that those with unorthodox views will be ridiculed, as I was when all the other kids, of course, sided with the teacher in disgracing me.
The other example occurred during the same year. The class was discussing the holocaust and again I had the audacity to say something unorthodox. I said that in a lot of cases the population and much of the (conscripted) military of the fascist countries (particularly in reference to Italy) could not be held entirely accountable for their actions and those of their state because, in many cases, they were brainwashed.
The teacher, as in the previously stated incident, did not shout but was very aggressive in dismissing me without actually addressing my point. Again I was disgraced and became the laughing stock of the class with comments from other students such as, “Oooh Brainwashed… The Demon Headmaster,” rising above the taunting laughs.
In hindsight the teacher was the foolish one. I’d like to have it explained to me why anyone who wasn’t either insane or brainwashed*, would not mind gassing, shooting, beating or otherwise killing completely innocent people who were in no way threatening their lives. Generally humans don’t want to kill other humans who don’t pose any harm to them – funny how it works that way.
May I make clear at this point that this is not to absolve those who committed atrocities during the second world war of all responsibility. I do believe that there are such things as crimes against humanity that transcend state laws, however, I believe those who did commit such atrocities without remorse were disconnected not only from the humanity of their victims but also from their own.
I attend Aikido training and the club I am at also offers classes to under-16s. Once before the “juniors” class prior to a Christmas break I observed one of the children, about 7 or 8 years old, who I’d spoken to and coached a couple of times, being asked by his father to give his Sensei a Christmas gift of a bag containing some beers. The child’s response was, “No, that’s beer,” and no matter how much he was coerced he would not hand his Sensei the gift. He complained that it was bad and was insistent that would not hand over the present and so finally his father handed the bag to his son’s tutor. I would say this incident is due to the unconditional “Alcohol is bad, Alcohol is Satan,” bullshit they spoon-feed to our kids in primary school until they are considered old enough to reason to the extent that they may question such authority and are re-informed that it’s “ok in moderation.”
If you’ve read 1984 (or researched communist Russia) you see children encouraged to value the state and their educators more then their own parents. Similarly I remember a teacher in primary school speaking about road safety and encouraging us not to leave the car if our parents illegally parked or stopped. She said that we could say, “No mum, I’m not getting out the car.” I think I even tried it once when my mother stopped just outside the school, but she got me to exit by telling me not to be silly or something like that. I’m sure that teacher never once received a parking ticked, cut someone off or broke the speed limit by even 2 miles.
Be careful of what they teach your children. It might not just be education.
Antony
* Due to criticism in relation to my use of the word brainwashed, may I state that I use the term loosely to not only mean literal brainwashing but also any form of persuasion that disconnects people from their true humanity, including (but not limited to) the influence of propaganda.