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But here is the calculus of time the children I teach must deal passion for misfortune, they laugh at weakness, they have con- with. Out of the 168 hours in each week, my children must sleep tempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly. 56. That leaves them 112 hours hours a week out of which to 6. The children I teach are uneasy with intimacy or candour. fashion a self. My children watch 55 hours of television a week, They cannot deal with genuine intimacy because of a lifelong according to recent reports. That leaves them 57 hours a week in _ habit of preserving a secret self inside an outer personality made which to grow up. up of artificial bits and pieces of behaviour borrowed from televi- My children attend school 30 hours a week, use about eight sion or acquired to manipulate teachers. Because they are not hours getting ready, going and coming home, and spend an aver- who they represent themselves to be, the disguise wears thin in age of seven hours a week in homework—a total of 45 hours. the presence of intimacy, so intimate relationships have to be During that time they are under constant surveillance, have no pri- avoided. vate time or private space, and are disciplined if they try to assert 7. The children I teach are materialistic, following the lead of individuality in the use of time or space. That leaves 12 hours a schoolteachers who materialistically 'grade' everything, and tele- week out of which to create a unique consciousness. Of course, vision mentors who offer everything in the world for sale. my kids eat, too, and that takes some time—not much, because 8. The children I teach are dependent, passive and timid in the we've lost the tradition of family dining. If we allot three hours a —_ presence of new challenges. This timidity is frequently masked week to evening meals we arrive at a net amount of private time by surface bravado or by anger or aggressiveness, but underneath for each child of nine hours. is a vacuum without fortitude. It's not enough. It's not enough, is it? The richer the kid, of I could name a few other conditions that school reform will course, the less television he watches, but the rich kid's time is have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now just as narrowly proscribed by a broader catalogue of commercial you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. entertainments and his inevitable assignment to a series of private Either schools or television or both have caused these pathologies. lessons in areas seldom of his choice. It's a simple matter of arithmetic. Between schooling and televi- And these things are, oddly enough, just a more cosmetic way sion, all the time children have is eaten up. That's what has to create dependent human beings, unable to fill their own hours, destroyed the American family: it no longer is a factor in the edu- unable to initiate lines of meaning to give substance and pleasure cation of its own children. to their existence. It's a national disease, this dependency and What can be done? First, we need a ferocious national debate aimlessness, and I think schooling and television and lessons—the that doesn't quit, day after day, year after year—the kind of con- entire Chatauqua idea—have a lot to tinuous emphasis that journalism finds do with it. boring. We need to scream and Think of the things that are killing argue about this school thing until it us as a nation: drugs, brainless com- Last month the education press is fixed or broken beyond repair, one petition, recreational sex, the pornog- or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if raphy of violence, gambling, alcohol, reported the amazing news that we cannot, then the success of home and the worst pornography of all: children schooled at home seem schooling shows a different road that lives devoted to buying things—accu- has great promise. Pouring the mulation as a philosophy. All are | tO be five or even ten years ahead § money back into family education addictions of dependent personalities of their formally trained peers in might kill two birds with one stone, and that is what our brand of school- . od . repairing families as it repairs chil- ing must inevitably produce. their ability to think. dren. Genuine reform is possible but it [= to tell you what the effect is shouldn't cost anything. We need to on children of taking all their rethink the fundamental premises of time—time they need to grow up—and forcing them to spend schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and it on abstractions. No reform that doesn't attack these specific why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives pathologies will be anything more than a facade. from a lofty command centre made up of 'experts'—a central elite 1. The children I teach are indifferent to the adult world. This of social engineers. It hasn't worked. It won't work. It is a gross defies the experience of thousands of years. A close study of betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a what big people were up to was always the most exciting occupa- noble experiment. tion of youth, but nobody wants to grow up these days—and who The Russian attempt to control Eastern Europe has exploded can blame them? Toys are us. before our eyes. Our own attempt to impose the same sort of 2. The children I teach have almost no curiosity, and what little social orthodoxy, using the schools as an instrument, is also com- they do have is transitory. They cannot concentrate for very long, ing apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn't even on things they choose to do. Can you see a connection work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti- between the bells ringing again and again to change classes, and human and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by this phenomenon of evanescent attention? machine education, but they will always fight back with weapons 3. The children I teach have a poor sense of the future, of how of social pathology: drugs, violence, self-destruction, indiffer- tomorrow is inextricably linked to today. They live in a continu- ence, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach. ous present: the exact moment they are in is the boundary of their consciousness. t's high time we looked backward to regain an educational phi- 4. The children I teach are anhistorical; they have no sense of [ese that works. One I like particularly well has been a how the past has predestined their own present, limiting their favourite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of choices, shaping their values and lives. years. I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich 5. The children I teach are cruel to each other: they lack com- ones. I use as much of it as I can manage in my own teaching—as losophy that works. One I like particularly well has been a favourite of the ruling classes of Europe for thousands of years. I think it works just as well for poor children as for rich ones. I use as much of it as I can manage in my own teaching—as I: high time we looked backward to regain an educational phi- JUNE - JULY 1997 NEXUS © 15