Recently I heard a news report on a nationally broadcast radio program that a group of teachers within a public school system were caught cheating on qualifications examinations required to re-certify their status as instructors. The obvious irony in this is that a primary role for classroom teachers is that they be “role models” for their students. It also reveals a much deeper yet less obvious peril.


“As a man or woman thinks of themselves in their heart then so are they…”


  Somehow, somewhere in the recent past, Americans began to embrace the idea that leaving a child to themselves to “discover” who they really are was the only way to truly love the child. This is completely backwards. In fact a child who is left to themselves without proper guidance and role models will eventually bring a reproach to himself, his father and mother as well as his countrymen. A parent who loves their child will discipline them by first self-disciplining in order to be a worthy role-model and live ethically and morally in front of the child.


“Children watch their parents more than they listen to them…”


  After this the parent can establish respect and therefore authority with the child (notice I did not say “over the child”) and their word then carries the appropriate weight to accomplish acts of love toward the child in the form of guidance, instruction and when necessary, correction. Doing “stuff” for or giving “stuff” to your kid is a diluted way of showing you care. I’m not saying it’s bad but if that’s all you do then it is definitely weak. A child will know this instinctively even though they have difficulty articulating it. Parents usually do not realize this till long after adolescence and often into the child’s adulthood and marriage when they have their own families and the dysfunctions have doubled in size. To love your child is to lay down your life for them in ways outside of giving them “stuff”. The potency is in giving of “yourself” to them and for them. This always begins with you working on you. In short, you must discipline yourself first before turning to the child.

  Without these basic concepts and establishment of role models first in parents next in teachers and other mentor/role models a child has no platform upon which to build an education into their life. It is this platform that is the foundation for learning.

 
  It takes three generations to destroy an idea in a society and about three generations to build one. If a generation is about 40 years then that is a 120 year mega-trend. This is long enough for the curve to extend beyond the purview of most of us as we go about our busy daily lives therefore it remains hidden in plain sight. 

  The industrial revolution in America fundamentally changed our economy and our way of life. We began moving from an agrarian based society to industrialized manufacturing. People slowly migrated from farms to factories and collected wages. More money found its way into the pockets of Americans. This perceptively was a good thing but contained a potentially dangerous poison for the American family. The close interdependence people achieved as a family farming daily alongside parents and biological siblings has been slowly replaced with strangers we meet on factory floors or high rise office buildings where we work in cube farms staring at computer screens all day. The family farm succeeded or failed based much in part on the ability of the parents and children to work the land, crops and animals to have food and shelter for the winter. In short, people were “highly motivated” to succeed. Their relationships were bolstered by this on top of the powerful emotional attachments we have to biological family which is rarely found anywhere else especially on a “cube-farm”.

  The weakening ties to family and the relationships spawned by the previous explanation is just one of the lesions festering on the fabric of the education system. The perpetuated notion that if I have more and more education I become better and better is nothing short of delusion. Facts and information do not make the man. With nothing but knowledge we become top heavy and can (and often do) teeter and fall crashing to the ground. The height of the building cannot exceed the breadth and depth of its foundation. The quality of the education contains (like it or not) a responsibility of the educators and the institution along with the parents to insure the child receives all they need to grow to maturity. It starts with the parents and yes extends to the teachers and administrators.  The current “Nanny State” mentality within society and government is the latest aberrancy assaulting the American Family. It is an egregious substitute for what is missing and never has or ever will succeed in replacing good parenting. One of the big problems is teachers are a second and third generation who have themselves grown up in the midst of this mega-trend leaving them conceptually deficient in understanding themselves. How then can an educator/role-model/mentor teach a student something they themselves do not know and therefore cannot describe?

  If we do the 120 year math on my hypothesis from 2011 it puts us right at 1891 which is right at the beginning of the industrial revolution. If this is true we are at this very moment (give or take a decade or two – remember it’s a “mega-trend”) arriving at the death of an idea or belief. If this idea or belief is a major component of our societal foundation then the very ground upon which we stand is crumbling beneath our feet.