Thank you for the great observations. My grandchildren started out in Montessori schools, which have a very open, inquisitive, free-flowing way of presenting the schoolwork. I think it served them well when they made the transition from that environment to the environment we have today, because they were able to experience the best of both worlds: individuality and standardization. I think also it enables children to be who they really are, by whatever standards their personalities direct them, without being overly concerned about whether they’re offending the crowd, or joining the crowd just for the sake of conformity. It’s an individualistic approach to a communal society.
I believe your observation about people being isolated within the home is very real. Whenever I’m traveling around the world, I always see news footage of all these horrendous events of American students going on shooting rampages at their schools. I don’t know what it really says about our society, but it’s got to say something, because although this phenomenon does happen in other countries, it doesn’t occur as repeatedly as it does within the U.S. It may be that it comes from feelings of loneliness, despair, no hope, not being able to associate with family or friends, bullying, intolerance, making fun of kids...
We started a program awhile back, which unfortunately didn’t take off the way I hoped it would, due to lack of personnel. But the essence of it was, “Be good to the fat, cross-eyed dummy; don’t beat the hell out of him; give him a hug and help him any way you possibly can.” I think that isolation within a school is a major problem: the concept of the lonely crowd. We are constantly surrounded by people chatting, laughing, seemingly having a wonderful, communal time, and we don’t feel we’re part of it. It might be the process of “birds of a feather flocking together.” It seems to me that the integration of the flock is much more healthy, because then you avoid the us-versus-them attitude. When an individualistic person, who doesn’t march to the same drummer, becomes an outcast, is shunned, becomes the butt of jokes, they often fall through the cracks. Maybe there’s a breaking point where they feel the only way they can make a statement is to do something violent and irrational. I’m no psychiatrist, but it seems to me we have to encourage everyone to be more open and attuned to what’s going on around them, and leave everybody alone as far as their idiosyncrasies. Invite them to the table! So they eat their peas with a knife instead of a fork? Who gives a shit?
So I think you’re on the right track. How do we implement that, though? If we wait around for someone to come to the rescue and tell us, we may be dead and in our graves before we find the answer. I always think we should get busy making the solution, and then if some aspect of the solution is broken, then fix it. That’s why they put erasers on pencils. Come to think of it, a lot of pencils don’t have erasers anymore. Maybe that’s part of the problem: We’re afraid to do anything to chance that we may make a mistake. Make mistakes and learn from them! Give us back our erasers!
Matt