MEET THE BAUMANN SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS
SCHOOLS
040497 THE LARGER SUICIDE
0F all the
responses to the suicides of 39 cult members in California, one of the most
predictable - and most ridiculous - was a suggestion that public schools should
teach about cults, so that students would know to beware of them.
People who say things like this almost never stop to ask what evidence we have that such approaches actually accomplish anything. Much less do they ask whether the school's time and energies can be fragmented still further, without jeopardizing its fundamental mission of conveying intellectual skills that will be needed throughout a lifetime.
None of the many social work functions of our schools has been any great success. The much ballyhooed anti-drug program DAR.E. has no record of reducing drug usage, however much it may succeed in bringing in large amounts of money and in producing a good public relations image. Much the same is true of sex education, "AIDS awareness" and other fashionable propaganda efforts.
It is no wonder that American students rank so low in international tests, when so much of their time is frittered away on the social and political crusades of the day. Worse yet, so much of what is said and done in our schools sets up the students to be gullible and emotion-driven - precisely the kinds of people who are most vulnerable to gurus and
cults.
While many studies show how lacking our students are today in basic factual information that was once. taken for granted, the truly scary thing is how much mushy thinking has replaced togr'c and a sense of evidence. The public schools do not merely fail to develop a sense of systematic reasoning, they actively promote an emphasis on "feelings," lofty rhetoric and ps cho-babble.
Instead of learning the facts of history, students are often put into role-playing situations, where they are to imagine and act out what this or that individual or group went through at some time in the past. Considering how hard it can be for us to imagine what those around us are thinking and feeling toda , you would think it word be obvious how absurd it is for children to be imag-
fining what George Washington or the Pueblo Indians were thinking and feeling in centuries past.
Role-playing is one of many fashionable self-indulgences promoted by "educators" who are eager for "exciting" alternatives to teaching. But it not only fails to convey reality, it puts reality and fantasy on the same plane - which is what is truly dangerous.
This confusion of reality and fantasy is precisely what makes people prey to those who know how to play on their emotions - whether political demagogues or cult leaders.
_Worse yet, many of our public schools themselves promote New Age notions very similar to those of various cults. These schools are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
If we are to learn anything from the recent cult suicides, it should be that people must be trained to examine ideas critically and to subject beliefs to systematic analysis and factual examination. Yet who is to teach them these things, when so roan% of the school teaches thvm,elves
lack any such analytical skills and are themselves apostles of "feelings"?
Fortunately, most people have enough common sense not to become brainwashed cult followers. But this owes nothing to our educational system.
A much more widespread danger comes from political demagoguery that may not be as transparent as some of the more far-out cults, but which is just as illogical and just as much an appeal to emotions and ignorance. In the long run, it is a whole society that can be led toward suicide when political gurus are able to manipulate gullible voters who have been conditioned from childhood to respond emotionally, rather than to think critically.