My Crisis

"Schools should not reflect how societ is, but what it sould be"-Lorriane Monroe

Lately I've been playing games and indulging in mental masterbation with my self to distract myself from an ethical crises I'm uncovering in my coursework. Perhaps education is based to heavily on Behaviorism. After graduating form FLC, the ideas and hegemony that seem consistent with ideas of core knowlege and cultural assimilation looming heavily over my head it bother me that I'm essential learning how to brainwash young minds to be compliant. The history of education in America (and probably most other nations) is based of the idea of producing a compliant, culturally and linguistically cohesive citizenry that will be economically productive.

While nice in theory, I highly value egalitarianism. However I question if it best to teach every child the same material, the same way, in the attempts to develop identical logical thinking systems in everychild's mind. Are we limiting human potential by disallowing, or at the very least privilege and rewarding some systems of thoughts, modes of inquiry over others that come more easily to different types of learners? Are there great thoughts and paradigms that will never come to fruition because we never allowed the seed to touch soil? The psychological systems I'm studying are the same system used to keep workers in line at a factory, to keep compters operating uniformly, by governments during wartime to create autocracies.

Tonight, err, this morning while doing a web search of the the applications of the theory I'm researching and presenting on, I found an equal number of sites devoted to using it in schools, and correctional institutes. No wonder students liken school to prison. I don't want to be a warden, but moreso I don't want to be the thought police.

Did we not learn anything from Stanley Milgrim?

I think i'm facing the inevitable dilemma of idealism - reality

A year ago I applied to Teach for America, a sort of teaching Americore. They took high qualified volunteers from college (and usally the best college, a disprpotinate number of their volunteers come from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and small New England liberal arts colleges) to teach in poor inner city and rural area across the country. To my surprise I was addmitted to the program, but they wanted to place me in either rural Mississippi or the Red Cloud reservation in North or South Dakota. I wanted to go to inner city LA or New York public school. I didn't take the position because I didn't want to like in either locations offered to me, espeically being gay. I thought I wanted to stay in colorado because of family, and have more oppertunities. I wonder if I really just wimped out.