|
|
A therapeutic education? by Policy Analyst, George Wuerthele Polish novelist Jerzy Kosinski was educated in Moscow, during the first bitter years of the Cold War. His teachers sought to make him a model citizen of the Soviet Empire, which is to say they tried to turn him into a creature of their own invention, the New Soviet Man. Before taking his own life, Kosinski recalled the horrors he endured while becoming a cog in the Soviet machine. One of the most subtle was learning that privacy is not a thing naturally sought out by human beings, but a decadent impulse enjoyed by the self-indulgent and politically unreliable. It was also held to be a symptom of insanity. Young people who hoped to attend a university, or to enjoy the material benefits available only to members of the Communist Party, kept a close eye on those around them, and reported anything suspicious to the authorities, including aspiring writers who longed for a quiet time in which to work. Kosinski is gone now, as are those who taught him that up is down, and the New Soviet Man has become one of history's nasty little jokes. But the world is still full of people who believe they can change human nature by thumping their chests and dancing around in a circle. If you doubt it, consider the new "model" health curriculum presently being assembled by the Ohio Department of Education. It appears to be the work of people who miss the 1960s, and hope to recapture them by mass producing the New Age Person. The plan is ambitious. It is bold. Compassion drips from every one of its 300andsomeoddpages, with more pages on the way. It is the definitive compendium of politically correct objective and cliche. Presented in a manner which recalls the semiliterate diatribes of adolescents who long to make education relevant (i.e. entertaining), it takes upon itself the mission of eradicating all the "behaviors" and "unhealthy actions" which are the scourge of America's children, indeed of America itself. Henceforth, Ohio children will be schooled to "describe and/or demonstrate ways to communicate care, consideration and respect for self and others." They will "explore causes of mental illness and depression, and propose or suggest effective interventions." They will "demonstrate and advocate for nonviolent strategies to resolve conflict," and "choose positive expressions of anger, frustration and fear." They will to learn to "accept a variety of team rules as a group member, regardless of race, gender, or disability." That stuff, and lots more nonsense just like it, will happen in elementary school. But it will be no more than foreplay for the big league "wellness" skills that come along later. By the close of the 11th grade, for example, children will be "able to evaluate how to chose a life partner." (There's an end to all our sorrows. Why has no one thought of this before?) The kids will also be able to "demonstrate and advocate for ways to correct dysfunctional, worrisome thoughts ..." No Joke And there you have the matter, distilled to its simplest form. For while much of what is presented in this allegedly ideal curriculum is too ridiculous to be read without laughing, it would be a mistake to dismiss it as no more than a joke, or another bucket of quicksand drawn by bureaucrats with too much time on their hands. Because the sum total of the plan, and of what it implies, is deadly grim. To understand exactly how grim, remember that the goal of this piece of work is to correct "behaviors" and eliminate "unhealthy actions." To achieve that end, adolescents will be schooled not to overtax themselves with the awful burden of "dysfunctional thoughts." Exactly what constitutes a "dysfunctional" thought will be determined by agents of the state, not trained and licensed physicians, but school teachers empowered to dabble in psychology. In order to succeed in school, and in life, children will have to "demonstrate" their ability to avoid thinking that which the state deems to be dysfunctional, i.e. unhealthy. But unhealthy for whom? To the English King George III, Thomas Jefferson's pronouncement that governments rule only with the consent of the governed was evidence of some seriously dysfunctional thinking. To Adolph Hitler and his elves, the thought that nonwhite, nonChristian people are human beings was dysfunctional enough to merit a quick trip to the gas chamber. Therapy and Health If you dismiss these bits of history as matters irrelevant to the American experience, or are amused by the notion that a document so innocent and sweetly motivated as a lesson plan full of '60s counterculture idealism can be likened to the mischief worked by tyrants,ponder this fact: The curriculum is a companion piece to the new academic standards for public schools, currently being rammed through the state Legislature. Ponder that within those standards there is provision for creation of a little something called "Pupil Services," a term defined as a "program that includes intervention, assessment, diagnosis, counseling, guidance, therapy and health services designed to facilitate learner achievement." Now, could therapy, say psycho therapy, be used to facilitate, which is to say make easy, the process of learning, or at least memorizing, how to avoid dysfunctional, or just politically incorrect, thoughts? Why not? What could prevent it, save the good will of those defining the terms? Now, meditate upon the fact that Joseph Stalin, first potentate of the Soviet Empire, believed anyone who wanted to be alone for five minutes was dysfunctional enough to merit exclusion from anything better than 30 years of therapy in some wretched asylum or prison camp, or that it was useful to him to pretend he believed it. Meditate, also, upon the fact that his successors made dumping dissidents in loony bins into something of an art form. Remember that one of the techniques the Soviets employed to spot budding dysfunctionalists was a squad of young stool pigeons willing to explore causes of mental illness and depression, and propose or suggest effective interventions by the secret police. Finally, imagine how secure you'd feel knowing that your children were being taught what to think and what thoughts to avoid by teachers devoted to the philosophical speculations of, say, Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, Pat Buchanan or George Wallace, Ross Perot or the jughead who led the Heaven's Gate crew in their final effort to accept a variety of team rules as a group member, regardless of race, gender, or disability. Got the picture? (George Wuerthele is a staff writer and public policy analyst for the Coshocton
Tribune. He writes this column as an occasional Opinion Page feature.) REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION |
|