In the classic dystopian novels, 1984 and Brave New World, societies encourage conformity by discouraging strong personal relationships. For example, in Brave New World: The maxim “everyone belongs to everyone else” is repeated often, and the idea of a “family” is considered pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed.
"bullying IMO depends mostly on children being unwilling to call for adult assistance when bullied."
Bullying, IMNSHO, depends mostly on children being taught to run to "the Authorities," rather than being capable to deal with the problem themselves - which severely stunts their long-term emotional growth and reduces their ability to handle adversity, by making them unnaturally, unhealthily dependent. Ratting on a bully generally incites retaliation - blacking his eye is much more off-putting.
I'm in my 40s and, compared to when I was young, it does seem like there's "some bizarre cult" running things. . .
Appears they want to excelerate the rate of sociopath creation in this country even fast than it currently it. Hell let's raise all our kids in veal shacks!
"Since the New York Times is writing about it in a serious and respectful way," yes because they were so right on the Iraq war. The fact that the mainstream media suggests it's a trend indicates it's either not one or will soon be over.
Its curious... in my head I always include Ayn Rand (also Borges for basically the same reason) as an honorary producer of science fiction because the writing was primarily about intellectual ideas considered via a medium of deeply visualized counter-factual worlds that served to illustrate basically philosophical arguments.
It is precisely the "thought experiment" aspect of the content (in a manner that reminds me of science fiction) that made me think it was good content.
Personally I think Rand's actual claims were weak because so much of her argumentation flowed through ad hominem arguments based on "ugly people who said bad things and lose" versus "attractive people who said good things and win"... but in point of fact I do think she was trying to point to the moral failure of human beings rather than to the problems that come from government institutions.
In Atlas Shrugged, for example, some of the formative experiences of one of the "heroes" grew out of a manufacturing company that stopped demanding honest work in exchange for honest pay and collectivized the benefits and work requirements because that course of action "sounded good" to the new owners and the bulk of the existing employees.
My understanding was that Rand's objective as a creator of propaganda (and later as a cult leader?) was to make "economic rationality as she understood it" into something sexy enough that people wouldn't buy into their own eventual enslavement.
I don't agree with her about the shape and nature of rationality, nor about what human virtue really looks like, but I still found the content and the aims interesting, in part because "rational self interest" is a really hard sell as far as signaling goes, and she made one form of it work for percentage of the population that wasn't completely negligible.
This makes me think of the discussion around introversion and extroversion, introverts preferring closer relationships with fewer friends, extroverts preferring to have lots of friends and not focusing as much on the closeness. I don't know if young kids figure out introversion/extroversion tendencies out yet, or if that is considered something learned rather than innate, but this idea seems likely to inadvertently punishing those with an introverted preference. That doesn't seem a desirable result.
Of course, having worked for an afterschool program where we were advised to discourage exclusive relationships, I seriously doubt all but the most draconian attempts would actually succeed at discouraging them.
Now there are two of us, instead of only one,two times as many things get left half undone.We're twice as half-asleep when the new day has begunand maybe twice as on the run,'cause some of them will still be making fun of us.They'll say "the two of you will never be one of us."But even if that's true,they'll have twice as much to dowhen there are two of us,and one of them is you.
They'll find the two of us much harder to restrain,outsmarted by our impressive double brainIf one of us runs dry, still another will remain,and it's twice as hard to pull the chainof two of us, against a ton of them:but two of us outnumber every single one of them.Two lives are semi-roughwith half the rent and twice the stuff.There are two of us, and that should be enough.Look at everybody.Everybody's alwaysfalling apart or breaking up.But the two of us never will be one of those,and I should know-- I have had a run of thoseOur love's not guaranteed,but it's growing like a weed.There are two of us,I think that's all we need
This is the first hypothesis I consider whenever school administrators do anything that doesn't seem to make sense for the reasons they state: it's for their own convenience. It usually explains things a lot better than the official justification.
MICDS in St Louis is one of the upper class schools. 16k in Kindergarten and 20k in high school. I guess they want to promote the broad social capital for which the parents are paying.
On top of that, didn't Mark Granovetter identify weak ties as being more beneficial than strong ties? While we all like the best friend idea, it really isn't the best way to take home a jackpot or circulate in elite social circles. Shallow is good.
"I tweeted that this reminds me why Ayn Rand is still relevant"
Not here, since it isn't the state that's doing this. Of the four administrator types quoted in the article, only 1 is or sounds like a public-sector official. The other three are from a private prep school, another private prep school, and a summer camp that costs $10,000 to attend.
Ayn Rand is too much of a sci-fi writer to be correct in her vision -- believing that space aliens called the government would parasitize and ruin human society. In reality, humankind is its own worst enemy. We see that in this news article by the fact that its the kids' parents themselves who are bankrolling the war against best friends; it's not some government policy being foisted on unwilling families.
When I was in second grade, 30 years ago, my teacher implemented a policy that none of us was allowed to say "no" when a classmate asked to play with us. One of the fat and unpopular students used this to his advantage, to compel us to play with him. Children who don't want to be compelled are very creative, and the students eventually learned to manage. The fat kid went downhill from there, and ended up murdering another student in the parking lot during 11th grade, and going to prison. I don't think that the teacher's policy helped very much.
Huh. Treating other people in favored fashions is insufficiently Utilitarian, I would assume. After all, who are children to make arbitrary distinctions between who is deserving of their attention. Sounds like some kind of discriminative process is involved.
More on topic, friendships and cliques are how children form their own social orders in school. If they can't do that, they may not really understand the concept that they can (or how they can) as adults as well. So this supports the idea that schools are about forming children who accept the social order as it stands.
John Maxwell IV, I think Robin makes these kind of arguments based on something more emergent, like group evolution, rather than deliberate, large-scale coordination.
I tweeted that this reminds me why Ayn Rand is still relevant, but I would also caution against overreacting. There really are a lot of kids who suffer because of social exclusion. This is certainly not the right way to address this problem, but I do think it's a legitimate thing for school administrators to worry about.
Educators are doing whatever purely practical stuff will make kids easier to manage. They don't have any grand designs on getting kids to conform to social pressure.
In general, Robin, I think you tend to overestimate how well-coordinated society is.
"bullying IMO depends mostly on children being unwilling to call for adult assistance when bullied."
Bullying, IMNSHO, depends mostly on children being taught to run to "the Authorities," rather than being capable to deal with the problem themselves - which severely stunts their long-term emotional growth and reduces their ability to handle adversity, by making them unnaturally, unhealthily dependent. Ratting on a bully generally incites retaliation - blacking his eye is much more off-putting.
I'm in my 40s and, compared to when I was young, it does seem like there's "some bizarre cult" running things. . .
Appears they want to excelerate the rate of sociopath creation in this country even fast than it currently it. Hell let's raise all our kids in veal shacks!
"Since the New York Times is writing about it in a serious and respectful way," yes because they were so right on the Iraq war. The fact that the mainstream media suggests it's a trend indicates it's either not one or will soon be over.
But that would be a reporter exaggerating the significance of facts for the purpose of selling a story, which could never happen.
Its curious... in my head I always include Ayn Rand (also Borges for basically the same reason) as an honorary producer of science fiction because the writing was primarily about intellectual ideas considered via a medium of deeply visualized counter-factual worlds that served to illustrate basically philosophical arguments.
It is precisely the "thought experiment" aspect of the content (in a manner that reminds me of science fiction) that made me think it was good content.
Personally I think Rand's actual claims were weak because so much of her argumentation flowed through ad hominem arguments based on "ugly people who said bad things and lose" versus "attractive people who said good things and win"... but in point of fact I do think she was trying to point to the moral failure of human beings rather than to the problems that come from government institutions.
In Atlas Shrugged, for example, some of the formative experiences of one of the "heroes" grew out of a manufacturing company that stopped demanding honest work in exchange for honest pay and collectivized the benefits and work requirements because that course of action "sounded good" to the new owners and the bulk of the existing employees.
My understanding was that Rand's objective as a creator of propaganda (and later as a cult leader?) was to make "economic rationality as she understood it" into something sexy enough that people wouldn't buy into their own eventual enslavement.
I don't agree with her about the shape and nature of rationality, nor about what human virtue really looks like, but I still found the content and the aims interesting, in part because "rational self interest" is a really hard sell as far as signaling goes, and she made one form of it work for percentage of the population that wasn't completely negligible.
So taking home the jackpot and circulating in elite social circles is good? Which school did you get socialized in?
This makes me think of the discussion around introversion and extroversion, introverts preferring closer relationships with fewer friends, extroverts preferring to have lots of friends and not focusing as much on the closeness. I don't know if young kids figure out introversion/extroversion tendencies out yet, or if that is considered something learned rather than innate, but this idea seems likely to inadvertently punishing those with an introverted preference. That doesn't seem a desirable result.
Of course, having worked for an afterschool program where we were advised to discourage exclusive relationships, I seriously doubt all but the most draconian attempts would actually succeed at discouraging them.
Now there are two of us, instead of only one,two times as many things get left half undone.We're twice as half-asleep when the new day has begunand maybe twice as on the run,'cause some of them will still be making fun of us.They'll say "the two of you will never be one of us."But even if that's true,they'll have twice as much to dowhen there are two of us,and one of them is you.
They'll find the two of us much harder to restrain,outsmarted by our impressive double brainIf one of us runs dry, still another will remain,and it's twice as hard to pull the chainof two of us, against a ton of them:but two of us outnumber every single one of them.Two lives are semi-roughwith half the rent and twice the stuff.There are two of us, and that should be enough.Look at everybody.Everybody's alwaysfalling apart or breaking up.But the two of us never will be one of those,and I should know-- I have had a run of thoseOur love's not guaranteed,but it's growing like a weed.There are two of us,I think that's all we need
Since schools are a big way we now train “self-control” to conform to social pressure
Are they? What is your evidence that schools do actually train "self-control" to conform to social pressure?
This is the first hypothesis I consider whenever school administrators do anything that doesn't seem to make sense for the reasons they state: it's for their own convenience. It usually explains things a lot better than the official justification.
MICDS in St Louis is one of the upper class schools. 16k in Kindergarten and 20k in high school. I guess they want to promote the broad social capital for which the parents are paying.
On top of that, didn't Mark Granovetter identify weak ties as being more beneficial than strong ties? While we all like the best friend idea, it really isn't the best way to take home a jackpot or circulate in elite social circles. Shallow is good.
"I tweeted that this reminds me why Ayn Rand is still relevant"
Not here, since it isn't the state that's doing this. Of the four administrator types quoted in the article, only 1 is or sounds like a public-sector official. The other three are from a private prep school, another private prep school, and a summer camp that costs $10,000 to attend.
Ayn Rand is too much of a sci-fi writer to be correct in her vision -- believing that space aliens called the government would parasitize and ruin human society. In reality, humankind is its own worst enemy. We see that in this news article by the fact that its the kids' parents themselves who are bankrolling the war against best friends; it's not some government policy being foisted on unwilling families.
When I was in second grade, 30 years ago, my teacher implemented a policy that none of us was allowed to say "no" when a classmate asked to play with us. One of the fat and unpopular students used this to his advantage, to compel us to play with him. Children who don't want to be compelled are very creative, and the students eventually learned to manage. The fat kid went downhill from there, and ended up murdering another student in the parking lot during 11th grade, and going to prison. I don't think that the teacher's policy helped very much.
Huh. Treating other people in favored fashions is insufficiently Utilitarian, I would assume. After all, who are children to make arbitrary distinctions between who is deserving of their attention. Sounds like some kind of discriminative process is involved.
More on topic, friendships and cliques are how children form their own social orders in school. If they can't do that, they may not really understand the concept that they can (or how they can) as adults as well. So this supports the idea that schools are about forming children who accept the social order as it stands.
John Maxwell IV, I think Robin makes these kind of arguments based on something more emergent, like group evolution, rather than deliberate, large-scale coordination.
I tweeted that this reminds me why Ayn Rand is still relevant, but I would also caution against overreacting. There really are a lot of kids who suffer because of social exclusion. This is certainly not the right way to address this problem, but I do think it's a legitimate thing for school administrators to worry about.
Educators are doing whatever purely practical stuff will make kids easier to manage. They don't have any grand designs on getting kids to conform to social pressure.
In general, Robin, I think you tend to overestimate how well-coordinated society is.