Monday, April 28, 2008
Culture Shock
I think it is probably fair to say that I don’t get out much. Mostly that is by choice. I’m happy on the farm. Some people are infected with wanderlust, but when I sit around and try to plan a vacation, there aren’t too many places that I have a real need to go see. Most of the places I would like to see are interesting because of the history and culture of a place, but honestly, the places that are sufficiently interesting to make me want to get up and go are rare. I like being home more than being just about anywhere else in the world.
I’ve often wondered how that is going to translate into an inherent disconnect with society in the long run. We don’t really go to movies, watch TV, or pay attention to popular culture much at all. Every once in awhile something strikes me as really strange, like the culture moved on and left me behind. I’m mostly fine with that, in fact, I see that as a significant benefit when it comes to raising kids. I don’t want them exposed to popular culture.
However, there is a downside to this isolation too. No man is an island, and no one should raise children on an island, expecting to shove them out into the world at 18 or 21, with the expectation that they will be able to cope with the world before them in a healthy and responsible manner. I’m perfectly fine with society leaving me behind, and I want it to leave my kids behind as well, but not to the point that they are crippled in their future social interactions and opportunities. My intent is to teach them some maturity first, then to expose them to the world in a controlled fashion, with my supervision and guidance. Exactly how this is going to happen I’m not sure yet, but it sounds good in theory anyway.
Sometimes I am reminded exactly why we live the lives we do, homeschooling, living out in the middle of nowhere, mostly keeping to ourselves. My son is advancing in his reading skills, and he’s becoming bored with the books we have in the house. The obvious answer is to find something new, so we head off to the library. We’ve got a little country library a couple miles from home, mostly full of junk. I use it regularly as a drop point for books shipped in from other libraries, but browsing the few shelves they’ve got there is mostly pointless, even for children’s books.
So I got my son all excited about going into town to go to the big fancy suburban library. I’d been there a few times - it’s in a wealthy community, a fairly new suburb with lots of people out and about.
We get there, and he thinks it’s a pretty neat place. They had a TON of books, compared to the little country library. They even had helpful librarians set out books on the tops of the shelves that they think kids might like. Being five, my son of course gravitates toward the flashy books on the tops of the shelves. “How about that one, Dad?” “That one looks nice!”
I pick them up to make sure they are appropriate for his reading level, and I start to notice a trend.
Multiculturalism theme. Uh, no. Back on the shelf.
Environmentalism theme. Huh? No way. Back on the shelf.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears! Ah, that sounds better!
Um, wait a minute. Why is the little bear in a wheelchair?
*flip flip flip*
Oh, because the story has been changed so that Goldilocks learns to be sensitive to those with disabilities, and they all live happily ever after.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
At this point I change tactics. No more books from the top shelf. I hand my son a couple books and tell him to go sit in a chair, look through them, and tell me if he likes them. In the meantime, I start hunting for books that look old. You know, old nasty binding, with printing on the spine that is worn. I pull a few off, hand them to my son, he picks a few, and we go on our merry way. I notice a trend in these books too – all originally published before 1980. Not a single liberal moral to be found in any of them.
Before we leave, we get sidetracked into the kids play room, fully set up to entertain and educate kids for hours. There are about ten play stations in the room, each with a different toy or activity. And each with an 8.5” by 11” sheet of paper, detailing how the kid should play with the toys, what they should learn, and the value of this particular activity to your child in the long run.
I very nearly laughed out loud. Earlier in the day, my son and daughter had gone down to the forest at the edge of the pasture by our house, and began constructing Eeyore’s house out of a tree and some sticks they found lying around.
Teach them how to play? What kind of genius does it take to think that is even necessary?
After I got over the irritation of the whole experience, I started to think about why it bothered me. I realized – I had stepped back into modern culture and had experienced culture shock on a scale that I hadn’t seen in a long time.
Every once in awhile I am reminded why I choose to be out of step with modern culture. I don’t need my kid’s lessons infused with lessons of misplaced moral judgments. He doesn’t need to learn to treat people with darker skin with extra respect, because he’s taught in daily life to respect everyone. He doesn’t need to be taught to look at the environment through the eyes of green-minded suburbanites, he already interacts on a daily basis with the plants and animals that provide his sustenance. He respects the environment in a very real and tangible way because he knows that his own good stewardship is vital to our family’s food supply.
Where did we go wrong? When did reading, writing, and arithmetic get turned into an opportunity for molding the morality of our children from the very first moments? I know much of this was actually intended by those in the compulsory education movement, and that much of what I saw simply reflects the sentiments of the community that supports that library. People want their kids taught that sort of thing. In thinking about it, the books I choose frequently have a moral theme too. Aesop’s fables, for example. But then, those morals tend to be along the lines of don’t be greedy, don’t be a jerk, etc, as opposed to slashing and burning the rainforests is baaaaaad! I guess societal morality left me behind too.
Sometimes I wonder how my kids are going to fare in the world, when they grow up and find themselves completely out of step with the dominant culture. The argument largely boils down to the same argument in Nock’s sarcastic essay The Disadvantages of Being Educated. If we know in advance that by properly educating our kids we will be making them social misfits, are we really doing them any favors? I believe, and Nock agrees, that a real, thoughtful education has its own immense value, value that cannot be measured in wealth or popularity. I can only hope that when my kids grow up and experience culture shock of their own, they can understand why I have educated them the way I have, and that they feel that I have done the right thing for them. Only time will tell.
Comments
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The library was my very favorite place in the whole world during my first 6-7 years in school. I was an avid reader and always took home the maximum allowed. And on top of that I was reading the novels my mother and father were reading, since the walk to the library was about 3 to 4 miles.
I loved to cruise the shelves and see what new books had arrived, and learned to enjoy leafing through the card index to see what my favorite authors were doing (that’s how I discovered Isaac Asimov was actually a well known scientists and not just an SF author).So I’ve been watching with some bemusement the current activities of the library board here in Bay City, MI. After conning the voters into a huge millage to remodel and build, they construct a monument to ego, have huge overruns and create disatisfaction by allowing only union labor (which led to the overruns AND bad construction) ... and then they are utterly dismayed when the library operation millage loses 3 times in a row.
In reviewing the whole thing, I was astonished to find what they considered important. Not loaning books. Their major volume is DVD’s (I thought that’s what Netflix was for) and CD’s (did Columbia House fold up shop?). Their major activities is reading sessions for youngsters, and playtime. Hmmm ... sounds like babysitting services to me. About the only thing they don’t seem to offer the public is a book service ... except for the bookmobile they have running around the county.
Because of all that, I continue to do my book browsing online and using services like Abebooks, instead of allowing the socialist twits here to chhose my reading materials.
As far as getting out much ... I guess because I work off the farm I really treasure my time away from society. In fact, we’re just starting the planning for our weekend trips this spring and summer. I’m getting the horses used to being left in the pasture for several days at a time so we can take off early Saturday and return late Sunday. We plan to use these trips to scout out potential retirement “farms” in Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina ... based on reviews in the retirement books listings of tax implications. As I get older, I feel more and more desire to be apart from (im)polite society. And I don’t think I’m missing all that much. The last movie I went to would be Disney’s Fox and Hound back in the mid-80’s. I prefer my own popcorn, my own living room, and the sounds/volumes I choose.
pete in Midland | 4/28/2008 11:02 AM CDT -
I don’t have the opportunity to remove myself from society that you enjoy, but I do it as much as possible. I don’t read the newspaper, I don’t watch network TV, I don’t get out much. But I like it that way.
My wife went to the library recently for some biographies. She couldn’t find anything written before about 2000. She asked a librarian about it, and she was told basically that they’re purging the shelves of politically incorrect (read: attentive to history and the conditions that prevailed at the time) material. Oh, the librarian expressed it in concerned and correct phrases, but it amounts to a purge.
We’ve begun building our own library as a result. Our local, annual homeschool curriculum fair has a booth that sells old books that smell like old books. Many are marked as library discards. It annoys my wife to pay for books that she thinks people picked up for free, but I explain that a) they probably paid something for them, b) we’re not communists, so we must allow them to make a living, and c) we can’t get those books anywhere else conveniently. We buy loads.
And you’re correct about where we went wrong: we’ve allowed the wrong hands to rock the cradle, and they may soon rule the nation. I’ve thought about trying to get on the school board, but I wonder what my chances would be given that I won’t send my children to public school. I wonder if they’d understand that I want the system fixed so we don’t all collapse?
Weetabix | 4/28/2008 01:12 PM CDT -
PURGING THE LIBRARY?!?!?
Somehow, foolish me thought the libraries would be inviolate.
I need to buy more bookcases.
American Farmer | 4/28/2008 01:28 PM CDT -
Yes. Libraries are run by people who come from “liberal arts” programs in major universities. Libraries are funded by governments and run by boards. We have few conservative watchdogs there anymore.
I’m building bookcases and buying books. The exchange I described is what got me actively searching for the Harvard Classics I was so giddy over several weeks ago.
Weetabix | 4/28/2008 02:31 PM CDT -
I think I’ll have to wait for retirement to build bookshelves again, as I am partial to floor-to-celing built-ins ... and we have no room (first time I’ve ever had a house without a basement). Right now all my books, except the current “still to read” pile(s), are boxed and sealed. I think my winter project, after I finish ripping all the vinyl to digital, will be cataloguing the boxes (the books are already catalogued) and adding the box IDs to the database.
I’m sure your “purging” experience is not unusual. Everytime they have a “suuport the library system by buying old books” sale, I’m amazed by the number of pre-liberal-arts books are on the table. Confirms my supposition that it’s not much use going there, since I like my blood pressure low ... LOL.pete in Midland | 4/30/2008 11:48 AM CDT -
My daughter was in a school play, the “Three Little Pigs”, she must have been about 7 years old. The play went ok, and the parents all seemed pleased, but I was astounded. You see, no longer did the lazy little piggy’s who built their house’s of sticks and hay get eaten by the big, bad wolf. Oh, no- Instead, they went to live with their brother pig who had worked his tail off and built a house of brick. A perfect little socialist parable. Made me want to vomit.
I loved the library as a kid- Everything a boy could want- Roger’s Rangers fighting the Indians, John Paul Jones on the high seas, Jim Bridger and Davy Crockett, Jedidiah Smith and Kit Carson opening up the west, Sgt. York and his 1917. The places- Bitterroot Valley, Red River, Belleau Wood, Rourkes Drift. And on and on. I feel we are losing so much, the very soul of our nation is being stripped away, as we are reduced to infants by the swaddling cloth of the nanny state.raven | 4/30/2008 08:10 PM CDT -
Socialists, liberals, democrats, hippies, soccer moms, whatever you call them, they are very driven to DO SOMETHING. Uh, but what, well nevermind lets DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, and NOW! Being quite ignorant, they revert to mothering everyone rather than looking to themselves as sovereign individuals and considering what it takes to lead others to be the same.
The problem is that conservatives have an innate connection with thier independance and seek to move away from the crowd when it has nothing to offer. When the crowd tries to mother people, those who are best able to correct the course simply leave for greener pastures. This is not a good thing, with everyone running for the shelter of a private farm socialism is inevitable.
ILTim | 5/1/2008 11:33 AM CDT -
IL Tim .... depends on where there is to run to .... how do you think the US was populated (outside of the Eastern Seaboard)?
pete in Midland | 5/2/2008 06:28 AM CDT
