RE: School Shootings are a Tragedy. It's Time to Ban Schools.
Hmm . . . in order for this proposal to be effective in establishing a stable society, several social factors must also be adjusted. First would be repudiation of child labor laws, which gave rise to the conceptualization of "adolescence." Once a person can be integrated into a work-setting, then he is saddled with responsibilities, which essentially ends childhood. The modern society, having created an entire class of humanoids without responsibilities but with all the previleges, is experiencing inevitable disintegration.
Second, establishment of public transportation and internal travel limits (as a secondary benefit to subjests' increasing reliance upon government transports) that serve to decrease the psychological horizons of the common classes and facilitates regional loyalties. Those who can not conceptualize life beyond their regional and class boundaries will lead a more content life, living within the means of their aptitude and resources.
Third, central regulation of information media to propagate adherence to a monoculture, occupational stratification, and class distinctions. Current sensational media that spews forth fear, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, and egotism serves only to destabilize social unity.
Once these changes can also accompany closure of public schools, then the vision of social stability will be closer to reality.
Adolescence is wicked over-rated. Why doesn't anyone ever remember how eager they were to grow up, have both responsibilities and freedoms, and do meaningful work?
I'm confused, though. Are you saying that ending public education would de-stabilize society if it's not accompanied by central regulation of media and reduced expectations for travel and experience? I would think a self-educated populace would be apt to go further in their pursuits, as their world would not have been circumscribed by 13 years of indoctrination (followed by 4-8 more of higher education and the crippling loans to pay for it).
The difference between a child and an adult is transitioning from life of imagination and fantasy to acceptance of reality and responsibility. Modern media is extremely proficient at producing and propagating fantasy to extend "adolescence," since adolescents tend to waste most resources acquiring baubles of little to no value because they are lost in their virtual worlds.
At least with public education, these humanoids can be imprisoned for much of productive hours, so that adults can perform their jobs. Set these entitled, self-absorbed drones free, and there are no limits to the evils these humanoids can inflict upon civil society. When the only source of information these drones passively receive is the current, unregulated media, then society will quickly crumble.
There will be a small (very small) percentage of self-motivated and responsible adults, such as yourself, who will further their life through self-education. Most, however, are drones that require external structure and force to become semi-functional members of a community. Without controlling information input and physically limiting their scope of actions, the drones will be eating each other with a week of freedom. Slavery is a step-up for these drones compared with the kind of chaos they will inflict upon themselves and upon their community.
But that's a very top-heavy, centralized version of power you're calling for. Who gets to be the regulators? And how are they going to be able to avoid abusing their power when vested interests come offering money to promote an agenda? If there ever was a directive to limit access to information, I think the ones to do it would be the same ones who disseminate it today.
It sounds like you have a dark view of the majority of humanity. I suppose it's well-founded. In the past we had churches, town meetings, and extended families to help a community pull together. Without those, it's going to be hard to wrest back control of something as unwieldy as our education system.
In the mean time, at least it should be easier for those with the desire to opt-out and follow their own path.
Regional autonomy sharing delegated power with a distant central authority seems to be what you would consider to be ideal for a society. Indeed, such regional/local organization was effective cohesive social force, when access to information and degree of geographic mobility were limited. Consider the era in which you recall society being more cohesive. It was made possible by authoritarian FCC regulating social mores on 3-information dissemination media with individuals essentially remaining in the geographical area of their birth. Central authority, properly exercised, allowed for regional loyalty and civic responsibility in communities across the polity.
Men have always been ruled by other men throughout their brief blink of an existence on this planet. Hopefully, as information access improves and power dynamics shift towards the masses, men will be able to govern themselves to obviate the need for lords and masters. Yet, what has technical advancement wrought in modern Western civilization other than breeding of mentally feeble, emotionally unstable humanoids that demand ever-increasing entitlements, while refusing to use their fundamental God-given abilities? In Kierkegaard's time, the fools demanded freedom of speech without ever bothering to exercise their God-given freedom of thought. In this degenerate era of victimhood, the drones rattle their mental cages demanding freedom from failure, never exercising their freedom to succeed.
The only frame of reference any man can reasonably use to foresee the future is that of central authoritarian state apparatus as being a more viable than the decentralized future where these drones roam free, like the zombies from Walking Dead. It seems though, that even were these drones free, they would willingly place their necks on the collars of their new masters.
i think he's being sarcastic..and descriptive. He's not calling for it...he saying we've had it for years.
Hah! My wife always says I don't know how to take a joke!