I recently met a few pupils who had extraordinary characters. And they can't go to school. Chatting with them, looking at their faces, they appear quite normal, lively, and thoughtful. And yet they cannot go to school. Something within them apparently tells them that going to school is not such a good idea. And I must say that, as far as I could trust my intuition facing them, that it was a sensible choice.
In a country where "home schooling" is an exotic idea, if a boy or a girl boycotts school attendance, parents panic and teachers reproach. Because there is such a narrow range of what could be considered to be "normal behavior", once a pupil steps out of the fairway there's a tremendous pressure to go back.
Talking with headmasters and chairman of the educational board, I sometimes feel that the disease is in the system, rather than in the pupils who boycott it. The air of conformity is so thick that it is suffocating, rather than life saving. If you can go to school, that's fine. Myself, I could go to school everyday and rather liked the experience. But if a child finds it difficult to go to school, that's fine and normal, too. The disease is not in the child. The disease is in the society that enforces conformity, where "home schooling" is still an exotic and "illegal" idea, after all these years.
4 comments:
Long time no see.(I'm Wander14)
You have been cutting into many of Japanese diseases. Like the entrance exams of Japanese universities, for example, today's topic also reflects Japanese abnormality. Most of Japanese schools' teachers or students hate his or her brilliant personality. Their hearts are so fragile that this pain lasts for ever. I think this is the biggest problem in Japan, and I will change it someday.
To be honest, I didn't like going to school at all, especially junior high school.
School, teachers, senior students, and even classmates often seemed enemies.
That's because as you have mentioned, the atmosphere there was no tolerant of children with various characteristics.
I feel the Japanese way of behaving represented as " the nail that sticks out gets hammmered in", is still deeply rooted in this country.
I'm a uni student now, but I really feel that way, experiencing the job-hunting here.
I went to a senior high school in Australia for a year as an exchange student, and I found teachers and students are more tolerant of the differences that exist among people's ways of thinking, feeling, and fashion, hair style, way of life...etc
I don't mean Australia is better than Japan, there are bullyings and other problems( such as, children are too noisy during classes...) in Australia, too.
However, I think Japanese education should improve more. I beleive true education is not pursing the conformity but being able to accept the differences.
In view of the illegality of homeschooling, I must remember you, Mogi-san, that even in Leviathan, the absolute tyranny created by Thomas Hobbes, the citizens retained the right to buy, sell or relate differently; to choose their own home, their own diet, their profession and to educate their children as they wish.
However, most "democratic" nations do not conform to such liberal concessions to the autonomy of their citizens: for them, the State has the right to impose to all children the form and content of education, bypassing the authority of parents even when they have proven their ability to educate their children better than the State could ever do.
And why? Well, because the so-called "democratic governments" desperately need to get hold of children's mind to use them as tools in the creation of the "future society", shaped in the canons dictated by the UN, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and many other billionaire organizations firmly decided to implement a new world tyrannical order where the State control of economy (given the failed Soviet experiment of direct intervention) will be set through indirect and subtle control of behavior, through the modeling of consciences and through the omnipresent and omnipotent social engineering.
Neither the tyrants of past nor the absolute monarchs of the Classical Age, or Thomas Hobbes, or Robespierre, or perhaps Karl Marx himself never imagined to extend the power of the State to the most intimate intricacies of children's soul, to make them the slaves of the plans of insane rulers.
But for the governments of the so-called "democratic nations", to get hold of children's mind is indispensable. Otherwise, how to carry on with the world's cultural revolution if children are not trained from an early age in the sublime beauty of the irrelevant, in the hatred of old religious feelings, in the cult of the politically correct stereotypes and in the devout practice of ignorance?
I was very stressful to go to schools. Because, I was ignored other students and teachers also.But my parents and teachers didn't allow not going there. To protect my mind, I stayed almost time at a school library. Nowadays, in Japan, most people got high educations, or people can learn using internet. So, I guess it is no problem to study at home. Just we have better to pay attention that we should give chance to brush up communications. Luck of ability of communication is a serious problem, I think.
If schools have some roles, it is for brush up communication, and make good connections between person to person, and make societies.
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