September 26, 1973

Almost Right Still Wrong

When there are wars between countries, how can you tell which one is right or wrong?

"The one who wins is right," says a high school student.

"No country is right or wrong," answers another.  "Each country believes it is right or it wouldn't be fighting in the first place.  It depends on your point of view.  No one knows."

The second student has the more realistic understanding of how the real world works according to William Delano, director of the Center for War-Peace Studies in New York City.

"Too many young people are growing up with outdated, unrealistic ideas of the world around them," Delano told educators at a conference this summer of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

"At about age 12, a mind fix - or patriotic filter - sets in that starts screening out anything except notions that one's own country is number one and always right," said Delano.

"It's this sort of thing that has caused the disillusionment among young people.  We must start in preschool giving children a more realistic view of the world in which they live so that when they merge into the real world from school they are not suddenly shocked because the real world is so different from the idealistic way our schools present our nation and its relations to other nations."

Delano contends that in teaching about war, conflict, hostility and peace, schools must help young people develop an international understanding.

"Not the sort of strange-land, friendly-people approach.  Instead, students must be led toward an understanding of the world as a single unit.  Not a static view of the world as separate nation-states, but as a totality like the astronauts see from outer space.

"To teach that if we could just travel, visit foreign people and bring them here, everything is going to be okay is possibly the worst thing we can do.

"The world is always going to have conflict, the problem is how to equip our children to cope with that conflict," said Delano.

If you have difficulty squaring Delano's analysis of patriotism, conflict and reality - as I do - then consider also the words of a psychologist on the same theme.

"There's too much blind patriotism being forced on children," says Sibylle Escalona of New York's Albert Einstein College.

"Any kind of new attitude must be in the frame-work of the one-world technology in which we live," she states.  "The conditions of life for people are so inadequate, so badly fitted to present day needs that unbridled violence within and between countries is a reality."

Miss Escalona asserts that the primary commitment for each adult should be toward social and political action to alter society to "make it a fit habitat for human beings."

"This includes an opposition toward war and policies that lead to war."

"We must teach children that it's the stronger one who is able to control his hostility and the weaker one who lets his hostility lead him to war or violence," said Miss Escalona.

"In order for such teaching to be effective, however, it must be observed in adult living.  Adults must offer children living proof that rational, cooperative, non-violent methods can work and are being implemented in the real world."

Here are two good examples of the "unwarranted assumption" that leads so many educational theorists astray.  It is exasperating because the liberal educator so often is ALMOST right.

Yet, almost right is not good enough when they are tinkering with the minds of our children.

Delano is on firm ground when he avers that children should be taught to cope with the real world.

He slogs in the bog of personal opinion, however, with the contention that patriotism has caused THE disillusion among young people.

His assumption is doubly unwarranted inasmuch as it flows from two faults of reasoning.  First he assumes that young people are disillusioned.  Then, by use of the definitive article "the", he assumes the first assumption is proven and specific.  Hard as he may try, Delano can no more catch one myth with a second than a dog can catch its own tail.

Miss Escalona's criticism of BLIND patriotism and her encouragement of a one-world attitude certainly has merit.

But she succumbs to blind liberalism with three unwarranted assumptions:

1. that living conditions are badly fitted to needs,
2. that violence results from such inadequacy, and
3. that our primary goal should be opposition to policies she sees as short comings of society.

I submit that only a small percentage of young people are disillusioned, and those mainly because some educator told them they should be.

It is the nature of youth to be impatient with fault, and this is great.  But optimism also is the tendency of youth.  They are supremely confident they can speedily fix whatever is wrong.

Our society is not as good as it can be, but it is better than it ever has been and can be improved with patience.

It is this kind of perspective that educators should be drilling into the heads of children.

Our youngsters should be prepared to face the real world, but teachers also should instill a deep sense of idealism.

Without idealism there would be no motivation to grapple with the hard realities of the world.

Reality is no excuse for violence.  Idealism is no excuse for apathy.

The purpose of education is to teach youngsters to respect both, use both and distinguish between the two.

Author: Lindsey Williams