INTRODUCTION
The Faults of Becoming Clever
Desmond Morris depicted man as The Naked Ape. When our race had become exactly that - that was it! We stopped our evolutionary process. Therefore we are a species that has not changed. A sweeping statement I think you would agree, but I doubt you would agree with it being true. Some of us believe that some or all of us, are still changing. However there’s little evidence for this conclusion. In essence, in this article, I think everyone will eventually see that even if evolution is altering our bodies, it will have to deal with some bigger problems than it has faced with our race so far. For the simple reason that we our currently fighting our previous evolutionary developments and losing the battle, in a war we don’t even to comprehend, let alone know we are fighting. Advantages that could be used to profit our race are being fought against. The main one is the need to become mature person. Instead we are trying to protect those who should mature and keep them childlike for long periods. Yet what was our line’s last growth cycle that gave us these advantages? Officially we have all descended from tribes of people that have been called hunter/gatherers by anthropologists. You know me by now and are probably thinking you know what he will call the experts next. Only here I’m not concerned if they are right or wrong, just in the implication if they are right, for I have become convinced that might have a direct bearing on the human race’s teenage phase. Even if they are wrong, it shouldn’t change the understanding of our formative years and the effects on the human race. Though many of us now have little conception of the importance of the less than ten years each one of us has faced, or will face, or who are currently going through. Yet why should this hunter/gatherer lifestyle be of any significance to us all in the area of growing up and why only the teenage years? This happens to be the basis of what I am going to impart to you in this book. I believe it is that- becoming an adult -which the human race has taken too much for granted. It was also meant to be as it clearly put a halt to many needed changes, a great bonus for our species. Yet we are now fighting it like it was wrong. Worse still we just ignore it passing it as a bad time in our lives. I’m not however convinced our species has taken the very young for granted. Far from it! We seem to have gone over the top in some ways to protect some by no means all children. Indeed you might say some older children have become overprotected in some ways. Nevertheless when we have matured, human beings are still like those people the experts have named. Over the thousands of years when we were those tribes (whatever they were doing) each one of them was born, cared for, fed (till they could feed themselves), grew, developed sexually, mated, began looking after a child or more, grew old and died. Put like that you see we are no different and the original statement I started with is correct. The rest is all to do with culture and the societies we choose to live in - right? Try telling that to your body! The problem, that every single person on Earth has had to deal with since humans started to change how we live in these new cultures, is that our bodies don’t want, or are slow, to adjust. It’s as simple as that. If we eat the wrong diets we become fat. We have problems with sleep, as we adjust when to get up and so on... Whatever these ancient people did for so long our bodies still react as if we are still dealing with it.
Not all animals paid a price for meeting our predecessors. Our Hunter Men were so successful, that even wolves followed us around to get food. Man saw this and fed them to keep them away. They still hung around and stopped attacking us and became our best friend - the Dog! As Hunter Man got better they reduced the game and sent species into oblivion. It was the huge numbers of Hunter Men that did this. Not individuals as they did not work in harmony with nature and no balancing act occurred. A small number of our ancestors would have balanced the food chain. This is because the body had developed a control mechanism, which detected high level of protein, switching off the “I’m hungry” effect till the level fell. And we know that because it’s still with us today. Of course when the climate sent massive ice sheets all over the place we nearly went the way of the Dodo. Then the dam burst and flooded our hunting grounds, turning it into the North Sea. And who wants fish for dinner every day! The shortage of meat wasn’t going to beat the brain! Our smart man worked out that food could be grown. And about 70,000 years ago we did. The Daily Bread saved the human population, but left us with problems too. The first thing that bread did was to make us live longer. Having said that disease help to keep the numbers down of us living extended lives and only in recent times have we got round that problem. Yet even the high level of sickness that led to death was most likely caused by the first agriculture. Humans are not very good at pulling ploughs and so cattle were employed to do the job. These cattle came from the wild and formally hunted. Sick wild beast didn’t hang around Hunter Man. Sick tame beasts of burden however did hang around Farmer Man. As we know today, viruses easily transfer to Man from farm animals, so know wonder the early farmers died. Even so farming gave them an advantage. Bread being full of carbohydrates and less protein it reduced kidney failure. This was likely the biggest cause of death in Hunter Man, as it is most meat-eating animals. So perhaps we should call them Protein Man and ourselves Carbohydrate Man. For the final effect of this food is trade. The trouble with growing food is it’s very hard to grow exactly what you need. What stops you is either the weather or some sort of pest, eating it instead, hence the need for our other animal friend the cat - eating the mouse that ate our stored grain. Trade thus grew out of people’s surpluses, giving it or selling it to those hit by the above. Conversely we are still based on Protein Man, for they were like that for near on two million years. Evolution or the brain hasn’t caught up and there is no mechanism that tells us that we have eaten too much carbohydrate. Thousands of years are not enough. So no wonder the western world is getting fatter. The Protein Man also went through changes has they grew up. One of these stages (that control how we become) might well be affected by something not of this world.
If you simplify that world our ancestors lived in, it all comes down to natural forces at work on their bodies. We therefore can’t ignore the planets, which go around our Sun and that fireball itself. They all MUST have some effect on human flesh and blood. Indeed we already have worked that the Sun and the Moon affect everything on the planet. The force that is responsible has been understood for a long time. Yet what if gravity is not alone in controlling our planet?
As we changed over time, we developed theories to explain this other action. These explanations are often ancient and not widely believed. Perhaps because some of the principals they were based on were wrong, or proved to be. Be that as it may, some of our more recent ideas have had complications and so far evolution and relativity have not been treated in the same way. Some of us dislike the idea that Astrology tells us what we might become. This may be another false idea. All the same the Sun told those ancient people when to wake up and when to go to sleep. It affects the way we are, what we do and eat. Time is regulated by Sun’s movements across the sky. Summer and winter are important to us all even if they are caused by 23½ tilt of the Earth. Past people may have seen it as a god, while we now see it as a massive nuclear reactor turning hydrogen into helium! The Moon, the nearest to us, affected the female menstrual cycle, so what might the further out planets do to us. Yet why are those among us who are most knowledgeable pour scorn on the practice of astrological interpretation? At one time Astrology and Astronomy was practically the same thing. What forced them apart wasn’t science, but the Christian religion. Nevertheless even our modern scientific views on Astronomy come from Christian scientists (long ago) who had a hidden agenda. They wanted to divorce the links between God’s actions and the power of the planets. Christians had been quite happy to go along with the concept, seeing that God had created all the planets anyway. That someone might question God’s reliance on planets to enforce his will, could have led to debates that the church was not happy discussing. Many centuries later, when men of science were questioning God’s powers, they same community did not look to the planets to explain human behaviour patterns. So the church still had an advantage, even though some of these scientists were or became atheists, because they were heavily influenced by the Christian view that planets don’t affect humans on Earth. Yet religious teaching has not disappeared and is on the increase. Science is on the defensive, yet it has no leader, does it need one?
On the other hand, simple experience can point to the real causes of bodily change in humans. Logic dictates that if you eliminate or can not find any other mechanism that explains why one person’s body might change or alter when another person’s doesn’t. Then however unlikely, it must be that which is left that does the deed, as far as I am aware no scientist as found anything that triggers the human body to pass through puberty. One man James Randi has challenged the occult world to prove that Astrology does work. Thus far he has not challenged the scientific establishment to prove that Astrology doesn’t work. When a sceptical scientist looks at Astrology they see chance as the big factor in proving it doesn’t work, trying to prove their point by giving a general statement about a person and making it out as unique. This is how the newspaper type thing works, they say. However experiments such as this do not prove anything. You could prove that the 12:25 London to Manchester Train Service was a random factor, as the trains don’t always set off at 12:25, in this fashion! Most astrologists don’t know how it works, but astronomy’s don’t know how (for certain) the universe works, or how big it is! They have not been classed as charlatans or said it was rubbish. Imagine if Astrology did work! For instance as Jupiter takes round about 12 years to cycle around the Earth as apposed to the Sun’s one year, we would expect something to happen to us all when we reach twelve years of age. And curiously something certainly does! That process that changes our bodies to make us into adults starts, or will come into effect shortly. We’ve called it PUBERTY.
Most people don’t like talking about the subject, because they been misled into thinking it’s all about becoming sexual beings. The trouble however with that line of thought is that it’s only a small part of the process of sexual change. The result of this has allowed ignorance over the biggest part of the puberty change. It’s really essential to know that puberty is all about turning the child into a well personalized human being.
What the ancestors of the Christian scientists have done is removed the primitive nature from all our lives. But here’s the rub! They failed! And it came back to hunt Christianity and nearly destroy it, having said that if those men of science had been more neutral, then they could have revealed, like some archaeologists are now doing, that the Christian God was the Egyptian Aten. So what difference would that have made, if the Egyptians were worshiping the one true god before those who did eventually? A lot, for there one true god was the SUN! The real truth that Christian scientists were hiding is that God was the Sun. That meant for them that Astrology worked. Whether God is the Sun or the higher being, two planets nine or eleven times the size of our Earth, simple logic would tell us that they MUST do something to our world. You can argue what they do or what the rest do to us, till your blue in the face! This happens a lot in the scientific world. The scientist has knowledge of something, but it has to be interpreted.
Perhaps even the experts on our past are not looking at the whole picture? We therefore can’t tell even for certain what the culture of hunter/gatherers was. However the human body behaves in ways that only fit certain patterns of a lifestyle. Most of us wouldn’t want and don’t want to change back to that existence, which undoubtedly still controls our bodies. Some now see hunting as barbaric, even for food. Opting out of eating flesh of another creature altogether. Yet we pay and have paid an enormous cost for changing our daily life away from it. We try and use technology to solve most of the problems we are experiencing. So far we haven’t got a clue as to why some of the problems, despite: wealth, better food and newer technologies are still with us. Even in the wealthiest countries problems have got worse. Old people recall that it wasn’t like that when they were young. Each newer generation of elderly repeat this. It’s so rapid that even much younger people are now saying it. Still it’s put down to rapid technological change and the society it creates. Who thought that one up? Having a mobile phone doesn’t cause people to neglect their children. If you look into any products origins, it seems a lot of this technology seems to be in response to this change rather than driving it. Take television. If you put the box into a culture that’s not seen one before it changes the daily life of these people. But you could say that about any invention. It doesn’t have to an invention! Go back to the Wild West of America, the Indian on his horse. A common image, but the Europeans gave them horses, which changed the American Indian’s existence. American horses are just as much immigrants along with the white man who killed and gave the native population diseases. Anyway back to television, those who wanted to set up the service saw it as an educational tool. Society wanted something different and got rid of those who set it up; replacing it with those who wanted it different. Now they are under threat, from those who want something else. Presumably the process will repeat, rather like the TV programmes. What then does drive this change - greed? We see things and we want them? A thing that TV is said to promote. If that were the case, we would be all stealing from one another by now! The Victorians were greedier than modern people in Britain. They let young children work down pits so they could make massive profits. Just look at the Empire they built, they didn‘t care if it destroyed old cultures. Only how much richer it made them, a monument to plain greediness. Their 15-year-old children did not behave in the same way as 21st Century kids. You might find isolated examples, as in we are all human. But when the vast majority have those isolated behavioural pockets, it tells you things have changed. So much so, the Conservative Party (in the UK) tried to reintroduce Victorian Values to eighties Britain, did they succeed? We all know they didn’t. Also few Conservatives would agree they had, never mind everyone else. But Britain hasn’t been alone in wanting to bring back ‘traditional’ ways. Most modern countries have got this hankering back to the past attitude to many things.
In a pursuit of what inflicted unwelcome changes on us all, since about 1920, we are led to believe that the First and Second World Wars impacted people’s attitudes. This being true than America would be least affected by these massive changes, in that it never suffered any damage from bombing on its mainland. Of course it’s affected the most and went through many changes before 1939! You would also expect these war changes to have stopped by now. In America you would expect them to have ceased by 1960, since they had no major rebuilding work to do. The changes continue to break apart however long after. It’s worth looking at them in depth.
First various religions do not know if they are coming or going, literally! Divorce figures have shot through the roof, crime has soared, a sex revolution. Single parents are now common; estates have more kids than adults, despite the pill. We have more teenage pregnancies. Marriage is most likely in decline. Abuse cases have increased, violence in relationships increased. Drink and drugs abuse, together with the dealing of drugs. Violent crime has increased, along with sexual crime, rape, of even elderly women. The breakdown of the family unit is all too common, together with massive levels of homeless and another class, the under class developed, in a supposedly class less society. We have poverty in a welfare state system that was to stop mass unemployment. Also we see politeness very much in decline, rudeness very much on the up. Racism and racial intolerance increases. Apathy over crime and the hard won vote, with people that don’t seem to care about others and feelings of being powerless. Women now work more than men do. Vandalism, litter and graffiti are everywhere. Farmers are leaving the Countryside and city dwellers are living in their homes, while decline of most cities sets in, despite attempts to control it. Others have the feeling to escape the modern society or to blow parts of it up.
On the other hand gains have been made such as: massive technological advance, urban sprawl, wealth, sexual liberation for women and children freed from working till at least 16, more broadminded people who tolerate and protect those who are different and many more.
So what has caused these unwanted and welcome changes?
You’re not going to like the answer!
In the words of Tony Blair “Education, Education, Education!”
FORWARD
Classroom Values & Morals
Education is the mechanism that has triggered the blight in the advanced countries of the modern World. The damage it has caused and there seems to be more damaging effects than positive ones, is only too evident. Yet it is NOT what is being taught, or even the methods. Therefore exams, punishments, mean nothing in the great scheme of this rampage, quality very little. Still our whole cultures are under attack from it even at this very moment. In some cases under attack in the form of it’s most violent consequence.
People have not stood idly by, while their worlds fell apart. They turned to education to help people with their future lives. No one thought for one moment that it was causing the crises and would continue to do so in the future. People thought and still think that work was more damaging to children. In 1919 the International Labour Office was set up to abolish child labour. By 1973 it had reduced all the rules down to a single convention (138). Like the United Nations, to comply the members had to pass laws preventing youths working under a certain age. The I.LO made Britain set the age of 15 and a higher level of 18 for jobs that might be dangerous in some way to the young. Yet most countries ratify the convention by trying to get rid of surplus workers by raising the school leaving age. And are not concerned with if children are being exploited, pass 14 anyway. In essence teaching has had to respond to the after effects of the extended education of its former pupils, even saying that, is giving teaching more credit than it’s due. Teachers in this equation don’t enter into it. They might be good or bad, it simply does not matter. For it is the intermixing the pupils have at school, with the other pupils of their sector and the lack of intermixing with the outside world away from school, that’s causing the degeneration to take place. It doesn’t need any scientific formula or complex theory, such as evolution, to understand. Rather like mixing chemicals in a lab, get them right and you produce something good.
Wrong and BANG!
Just like that we have got it wrong! But like the mad scientist we keep going. Education can’t be wrong we tell ourselves. Vast quantities of money flow into it to try and solve the social problems it has created in the first place. It’s not even very good at making clever people and even when it does, people say they are overqualified for jobs. Nevertheless this article isn’t going to be about what we can do to correct education and the problems it has caused; merely the consequences of what it’s done to us, plus how it’s changed us all. If you do think it needs changing then read what it done first, because you certainly will not have been taught it!
The thing that baffles everybody in whatever field or experience is why these changes have struck in the early 20th Century, yet not before. Religious people believe it’s due to the reduction in religious belief. However the worst offender in these changes is America and its religious stance is increasing with God now talking through its leaders. Other faiths have come under attack due to these changes and it looks like many others will, despite remaining strong in the countries that practice them. Religions decline or rise (regardless of faiths) is more likely a side effect. The real cause of change is quite straightforward really. The Developed Countries raised the school leaving age past 12, for the vast majority of their population. As soon as any country did this changes began. In Britain the effects start after 1918, going through leaps and bounds till 1972 when it was raised to 16, with that it went mad, ending up creating or contributing to every shock that the country went through till now and is still doing so.
In the USA they completely raised theirs to 16 by the 1920’s.
Wall Street crashed, but Hollywood grew. These events are connected to that rise. Taking 12 to 16 year-olds out of the market system cost the Stock Market money. Conversely the market responded to the Senior and High school culture and Hollywood benefited. These are just a few examples. Capitalism just about managed to cope. The USSR system did not. Ultimately the culture of the school system (that was developed from the Western model) destroyed the communist system; those pupils were meant to embrace. Other cultures have come under attack from the school system. Like China, where force was used to stop students. So far few systems have collapsed. At the start of the 20th Century, a world of Nation States needed rules to stop fights, the treaties were put in place, but they didn’t stop the fights. They changed the cultures of the countries instead. But don’t blame the United Nations, their General Assembly failed to make compulsory education for anyone over 13. Blame the International Labour Organisation instead!
This book is however solely concerned with the English experience, partly because I am English and mostly because we expanded the age in stages, which makes it even more interesting, to observe. The schoolroom culture also created a special child that documented better than any TV series or book produced in-between 1948-2000 the lives of people of that period. The child’s name is Popular Music! It will make everything much easy to understand in the following pages. After all is said and done you can’t escape it. Pops on TV, in shops, cars, on films (even history films about knights), phones, in the streets. And on the radio, the signals of which pass through each and every one of us. Our old friend pop is also greatly linked with youth culture. Only like the youth culture, it’s not very old.
The Documentary Chart
The only problem is there’s too much pop music to sort. This is where the charts of the top 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 75 and 100 come in. They give the public response to any thing from feelings of love, or anger at something or someone. From Mario Lanzo’s I’ll Walk With God to Eminem and Stan, they all spoke volumes on the people who bought or listened to such records. But precisely what?When I started my research into this article, I noticed that pop music was broken into sections. Most music books are about the stars that make music. Then there’s the music itself chopped into more sections. Then you get statistic and biography books disguised as books about general music: The Story of Pop etc. Lastly exposé types, mostly American, about how ruthless the music industry is. None of them alone showed what I wanted, how people had grown up under the world of popular music. Nobody in these books showed how the music was linked with raised school leaving age, because they don’t understand or know. Considering it was in living memory, so far I have found that the history to be worse than the Tudor material, I have dealt with.
The fact remains that at one time there wasn’t any really popular music and there was not even such a thing as a teenager. That’s nothing to do with the word being of recent origin. You could not even get a person of that age group who would fit that sort of description in any Century prior to the 20th. Well some Don at a University might tell you that youth behaviour can be found in the past. Of course it can. Then again you can find Universities in the past; you won’t find them studying sociology though! Point made I think. Basically all children were expected to be like adults. You can see this in clothing, in that they don’t stand out. Even toys for those that could afford them, were for training purposes. Many things we would think were for children were really adult toys. Things like music boxes that most of us now associate with children. After 1918, in Britain, the talking picture being made to entertain, was jumped on by young people, because they could go together with friends from school with anyone up to 14, for in that year it had been raised, before they could escape school. Things began to change. The market was opened up for chocolate and sweets to get the kids to school and treat them for doing well. Thus many brands we are familiar with are all in place before the war. Kids’ magazines splutter into life. Gramophone sales took off and magazines like the Melody Maker charted its growth. Playing at 78rpm was Jazz music. Nevertheless the best way was to catch it live. The Daily Mail noticed that the young rich were gathering in nightclubs to listen to the
music that had problems too. The police began to raid these clubs. Yet what was really happening was that the young were separating from the older persons. Someone in there fifties and over would never go out of their way to hear the new music on purpose. The house, were a young person was living with their elders, started to divide too. New ideas like the pictures, music and Art Deco, were only found in the young person’s room. Yet still the biggest changes were to come after the war.
Large sections of the population believed afterwards that things would be different. Propaganda encouraged people in this belief to keep on fighting for the good and a better world. Though some certainly did think that this war could last for decades, the vast majority assumed it would last only a few years, especially after the D-Day Landings of 1944. Thus the Government had to keep its word and make sure changes would take place. Not too difficult since they seem to have fallen for their own hype. Things would be abolished, planned out of existence. Nobody knew how right they were!Politicians didn’t want any popular music from the States breaking the peace and quite of a typical English Sunday. Unfortunately, for the powers that be, that was going to be abolished as well. Replaced by vandalism, crime, drugs, music blurring out, or for some shopping, watching overpaid actors being nasty, to entertain us on the box.
Let’s get one thing straight, popular music from America did not create our current society. It simply reflects it, as do crime, drink and drugs. Music just happens to be the fastest way, compared with the others.
So how did it come about, credit where it’s due- Government! Naturally they didn’t seek openly to create such a society. They, along with the rest of the country, believed what they were doing was the right thing to do. So the Welfare State, Nationalised bodies, Education for all, came about. The free-for-alls with the first two hardly need mentioning here, plus contrary to popular beliefs, it is not responsible for the modern culture we find ourselves in. The latter however, despite its own peculiar set of problems, is still very highly thought of. Especially the 1944 Education Act.
The World of School life
Education is not a new thing, what has fundamentally changed is that now whole populations of any country have to attend between the magic 12 to at least 16 age range. The way humans develop as people, means that sending children to school before 12 has little behavioural or any impact on their values in adulthood. This is because we all change personally (after age 12) during the puberty process. Has I said in the introduction, puberty is seen by most of us as being the change we go through to become sexual beings. It is really only a small part of the process and since we are a very sexual species, only a continuation of body changes that have already happened before 12-years of age. The real effect of puberty is to do with all those hormones that start rushing about inside us. Rather like animals that shed skin, we replace child traits and pick up new ones. All these new traits are based on who influences us, during puberty. This can last longer than the physical changes that we see. Before education, these were based on a huge range, better known as the ‘outside world’ to most of us. After the leaving age increased, the outside world lost control of teenagers, who in turn thus, as they grew up, lost control of the outside world. For the richer families, the magic number was around longer than the rest of us. Clear signs of the way they messed up their lives are in many history books. Whole movements were created by people whose lives were screwed up by the quality education they had. Poets of the Romantic Movement are good examples such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. Their Oxford teaching made them turn away from established lifestyles, pursuing crazy notions, without using any common sense. Glad to say for them, money solved a lot of the problems. Even this couldn’t cure the relationship catastrophes they had. And so it continued and still does. Take the Royal Family, by the end of 2000 it was seen (by some) as more dysfunctional than any working class family.When the world of college life spread to others and away from the rich, many of these newer students still studied crazy ideas and in the sixties “free love” words that was bounded around by Shelley, were brought back. Within twenty years the anarchy (that Shelley also suffered) was being felt by those who had practiced it.
But even those that did not get a higher education were picking up crazy ideas.
I Want To Believe
Without doubt the Christian faith has struggled most with classroom values. Moderate religious people, who did go to church on Sunday, have been clobbered by these values. Like many they now have given up and go only for special occasions or when in crises. Stronger believers have been broken or had to fight against the classroom values that want them to change. But all faiths have problems. Muslims (for instance) don’t understand why the culture of the West wants them to change their ways and practices. The answer to them is it doesn’t, but classroom values won’t stop putting pressure on. Yet Muslims are not immune from CV. Unlike the Christian church, they have stayed strong because Muslim youths have a strong connection with the wide views of their elders in there religion (or the outside world). Yet I would say cracks have appeared, with Muslim women having the worst of it. Such as teachers being told not to cover up and debates about the rights or wrong of this. But then again not all CV is bad for religion. Faced with less control or understanding of their lives, people have switched from being Christian to being Muslim or other religions and forced some Christians to except things they do not want to, such as gay rights and the role of women in faith.Work No Cure
Some teenagers, whilst still at school, take jobs, this might bring them into contact with older and more life experienced people. Clearly there has to be a great deal of communication and support before anything is gained about existence. So if this does indeed take place there is little evidence for it happening in the past. Girls might have gained from hairdressing gossip and advice. Perhaps it’s the fact that any such job must have decent employers, (not cheap labour) as the young people developed little respect for any views that are aired. Jobs, whilst they were at school, might have the reverse effect leading to classroom morals. The common paper round, due to its poor contact with others, (unless they collect the money, but still limited) provided cash support for school based lifestyle. These have become known as peer groups, but can seem solitary to those in them. ‘Peer’ types are familiar to all. Here are a few common names and types for them: teacher’s pet, cheerleader, the geek, the rebel, bullies, nerds, swots, larking about and the practical joker. Imagine a culture based on that lot! Hello! Welcome to the 21st Century.Life Inside
Going through puberty doesn’t make you feel good or well. So kids played truant. Others get home to find no support from parents. The school discipline system that NO adult would have accepted caused outrage when it was abolished. For example, an adult arrested, would not be defended by their relatives, or would not in general be allowed to defend themselves. So adults operate double standards. A teacher accused of anything or having a problem could go to the union. Nonetheless all that it amounted to was even less communication between teacher and youth. What has happened instead of punishment by cane is that youths are chucked out of school to a life on the street, with the morals they got from being at school and no qualifications. The United Nations has been very critical of the United Kingdom for not teaching Human Rights. The reason it had not been part of the National Curriculum is that it would have give more power to children. The problems of any kind, are there because the parents could not, would not, or are not there to talk to their child and that teacher can’t be a role model to more than a dozen kids. And that’s has to be a GOOD teacher!The schools themselves are divided into classes and by year, plus academic ability. Many establishments, during the period covered, were large and took from different local areas. These areas were territorial and had trouble mixing. Class could come in as well, with better off kids mixing with poor. Chuck in religion, ethnic cultures and race. That’s just what those who ran the schools were concerned with! Inside of it, were divisions even greater than those already listed. Crossing them was undertaken at peril. Being clever could and can be a curse or a blessing, amongst pupils. A smart child helped less able children, who wouldn’t dream of asking teacher. That brainy child thus gained respect. But the same child might be beaten up from the same ones. Resentments built up, these were carried into adult life along with the rest of traits; caused by passing through a minefield of what to do or not, agreements in the school. These experiences did occur away from schools. And schools do not create any behaviour patterns we see in them. They are just amplified by the lack of views and age range that are present in such institutions. Educationalists of the time recognised this and have indeed called them ‘Day Jails’ for kids. However people recognised the problems with prisons and institutions and didn’t like people going to them. Even though many of us think the prison system is to blame for the problems in our current society, in that offenders are being let off sentences that would see them in jail in the past. The reverse is happening to schools, were parents are being fined to send truants to all schools that are worse than prisons in their institutionalisation of their inmates. For example children have been exposed to only their own age range and the teacher for long periods of time. In these circumstances there was no learning, you either changed or failed. Morals thus became taught in hidden ways. Peer group pressure is well known. Having the right clothes, such as we will see with the Mod movement, might have been eliminated by the school uniform, outside school hours the peer group continued to make its presence felt.
What you will get from the school-based culture is the variations in behaviour that we see in Britain today. Since our society doesn’t no or perhaps even wants to recognise the school system is a problem in our culture, society has no option but to except changes it doesn’t like or waste more money in a futile effort to change them. Because current and past thinking doesn’t also except that the massive influence of whom we meet and what worldly knowledge we get at 12 to 21 has any bearing on whom we become. Identification of those who have distorted views has not taken place. Nevertheless the aggravation and nuisance they cause are with us now. So it hasn’t spotted that the sexual relationships that formed after age 12, in past pupils, slowly fall apart when the subjects were no longer connected with the school structure. And that people were thus limited in what behaviour was put out, unless they gained greater strengths of character, they became stuck over life’s challengers. One result being they were unable to bring up children in the ways that society, as a whole, thought they should. One can certainly demonstrate this to be the case in Britain, since the seventies. British culture has either tried to except these changes or tries to change these people.
Person Patterning
Going to school after the age of 12 has changed also how we select our future partners and the types of relationships we have. The processes was probably laid down in mankind’s distant past and for want of a better word and a proper scientific explanation, let’s start the bowl rolling by calling it ‘patterning’. This process involves selecting characteristics of our future partner or partners. In order to select a suitable mate the body must make sure that we are not looking for something that is based on parents or other relations. Sometimes this is not possible of course, but still the system tries! The obvious point that this happens is at puberty, when the adolescent becomes independent from parents or tries to be. This rather explains why teenagers have problems with communication. The next step appears to observation of the opposite sex (same sex in homosexuals) and the characteristics in them that catch our attention. These by the way may be good or bad ones. We store these as patterns and I think we collect them from more than one person. Patterning probably doesn’t start till around a year after puberty starts, while the body chemistry adjusts and by 15 it may have stopped. The procedure complete we carry the information for the rest of our lives. The reason school is damaging to this development, is that pattern configurations are likely to come from only a small age-range. It’s unlikely that nightlife activities by young people have any bearing on this change.
A Bad Place To Be Anyway
Secondary education has not only changing the way our society is and still doing so, it’s also full of children who should not be exposed to one another in such large quantities. The reason is simple enough they are leaking chemicals all over the place. You only have to walk down the school corridors during a lesson change and you can smell them. Teachers put it down to B.O. yet it is in fact sex and aggression linked toxic cloud! Athletes would get struck off if they had
Short Sighted Workers
Lastly it’s worth pointing out the economic problems of the seventies were caused by the short-sightedness of adults who think that keeping kids out of jobs was a good thing. Giving them wages a mistake. Even if some benefited from having them in education, they lost out in the end. For one thing anti trade union legislation was possible largely because trade unions had spoilt the lifestyles of teenagers during the seventies with strikes; even if teachers told young future workers unions were their to help them. Ignorance played into Thatcher’s hand in these attacks.It’s ironic to say the least that the educationalists now are critical of modern ways of bringing up children and are the least flexible in dealing with the problems they have created. Witness the contract style agreements that parents and children have in modern schools. Schools are locked up while the pupils are in them. Those not wanting to learn are locked out, till someone gives them a key to resume life-long learning or a chance to learn again. And the academics tell the leaders that family is also to blame for the social problems of society. Once grown up and able to stand up for themselves, many ex pupils return to learning and start changing their lifestyle. This again is due to them mixing with people who radically different to the people who they would hang around with. Not that you’ve got a degree or a qualification. In the end you may feel different simply because tutors and your comrades respect you or encourage you, building confidence. Becoming a surgeon might be for those who end up doing it, might be having the confidence to treat patients and just that. Like most of us we can learn the basics… Still we can’t always run the race… However without education from 12 to 21, the music industry might still be selling classical music and very little else. So with all the above in mind, we can start to chart the growth of popular music and the creation of our modern culture, from when more of us began to pass puberty (in school) than at any other time in history.
More will be added....
All images are used as illustrative purposes only.
