The Procrustean Bed of Education

I’ve already commented on the growing trends in education and how they are destroying the minds of youth today. But, I’d like to continue this discussion with more earnest as the problem grows deeper and deeper. To illustrate my point this time, I propose to argue on the subject of school shootings, as they are the prime manifestation of the psychological damage our schools inflict on children and young adults across the United States. These shootings are not the result of movies, television, games, or violent music. Rather, they are the result of the schools themselves victimizing students’ minds and sense of self. Schools today, under the (mis)guidance of “socialization” and the mythical “normal person,” have constructed a Procrustean bed which bends, shapes, and breaks the minds of students.

To make my argument, I will first analyze and debunk the popular arguments for explaining school shootings. Then, I will explain the origin of the problem and why education is driving some teens to violence. Finally, I will comment in two sections on the negative effects of proposed solutions and explanations, which are predicated on fear and misunderstanding.

The Arguments of Pop Culture

It is standard fare for the media to blame school shootings, gang violence, and other anti-social behavior displayed by teens on America’s pop culture. Violent video games, satanic rock music, and the like have supposedly created a sub-culture of violence that breeds anti-social behavior in the youth today. Some even argue that the prevalence of guns in our country is also a contributing factor in teen violence. Such are the explanations given, and so measures have been taken to restrict and control music and entertainment, control guns, and even control the youth. Yet, the problem worsens. This section will counter the superficial arguments from pop culture.

First, let us analyze what kind of behavior and values teens learn through music. To be certain, many rock bands and rap bands have violent lyrics, and many teens try to emulate their favorite stars in dress and manner. But does this mean they try to emulate the lyrics? Note that even the musicians themselves, in most cases, do not practice the violent behavior referenced in their songs, so violent behavior can hardly be said to come from having them as role models. Instead of a surface analysis, to get at the values teens learn from their music we must examine where the music is displayed: the concert. What occurs at a typical rock concert? The concert is fundamentally a social experience. Teens and adults gather together based on a common interest, that being the music of the band. They talk with each other, share opinions on music and albums, and converse about topics related to the music they love. When the show begins, they join in collective cheer for the band on stage. They raise their hands together, jump up and down together, and even dance together. Sometimes, what is known as a “mosh pit” forms. It is not random brawl. Rather, many mosh pits have an implicit code of ethics. For instance, if a person falls to the ground in a mosh pit, he runs the risk of being trampled. Thus, as can be seen in practice, moshers will typically help a person back to his feet it he begins to fall. The mosh pit can be a dangerous place for everyone, thus everyone tends to take on the responsibility of keeping it as safe as possible by looking out for one another. Taken together, all of this engenders a kind of social mentality and group dynamic in which people cooperate with one another and have fun together. The concert is a place for individuals to gather and share their experience with one another, and to feel a sense of belonging to something larger. They feel they are not alone, and they feel good about the benefits and responsibilities entailed in belonging to that group, if only for as long as the concert lasts. Far from being anti-social, concerts can, for the most part, teach good social values and behavior. The concert is, in effect, the “socialization” that society values most highly. And, it is the music that brings these fans together to socialize.

Now, let us look at video games. When I was younger, the most popular edifices of video games were arcades. At the arcade, youths would gather to play games with one another. Some games pitted players against one another, sometimes the players cooperated against a computer controlled enemy. In either case, players would have to interact with one another, either to organize their collective strategy to defeat a game, or to organize a competition between themselves. Players would also share tips or tricks for certain games, or have conversations related to gaming. Ultimately, even those players competing against one another had to cooperate in some sense, and like the concert, they would have fun collectively. This, again, is not the violence or anti-social element supposed by the detractors of video games, but rather an experience of socialization. This occurs even outside of the arcade. Many home gaming consoles design their games for multiple players. Friends get together to compete or to join forces against the computer controlled foe. These games are also a way to meet new people, as a general interest in video games is enough to start a conversation, or to invite someone new to play along. University residence halls, churches, and several other gathering places often feature “game nights” for people to get together, play video games, and make new friends. This, again, is not anti-social, but socialization. It may be true that players are “killing” a fictional person on the screen, but they are cooperating and socializing with the actual people with whom they are playing.

The list continues for other facets of entertainment, such as movies, television, and so forth. The point is that, even though these forms of entertainment may depict pretend violence, they tend to result in real socializing with real people. This is not what is driving the youth to “anti-social” behavior, and it is not what is damaging their minds. Simply put, fun is not a psychological illness.

Origin of the Problem

It is telling that school shootings happen, by definition, at schools. These shooters do not go out and shoot up concerts, arcades, movie theatres, or television stations. They take their anger out on the schools. This is because, simply put, the schools are the problem. Look no further than the object of their hatred and revenge for the cause. What follows is a short history and explanation of how our school system attacks the psyche of young adults in America.

The problem has its early roots in the Third Great Awakening and the Social Gospel movement of the later 19^th century. These reformers sought to end the economic and social inequality in America and bring about a “heaven on Earth,” so to speak. Their radical position had an even more radical solution: not religion, but science and education. They believed that, by utilizing the sciences of statistical analysis and sociology, they could engineer society for the better. Education was especially seen as the primary force behind social betterment. Thinkers such as John Dewey argued that education should “socialize” students to be a part of a democratic society. Psychologists such as John Watson championed behaviorism as a basic model for conditioning people, especially with the use of fear, which had a profound influence on advertising and marketing. And, statistical analysts used the normal curve – originally meant to address discrepancies in astronomical observations - to organize statistical data and get a basic idea of society and its makeup. This last point in particular is of importance. By looking at all culture and society as a series of numbers plotted on the normal curve, scientists concocted an image of a “normal person,” the kind of person that represents the largest bulk of society. Of course, there was no such thing as a “normal person,” as most people had different reasons for falling along the chart in different areas. But, such was the superficiality of this “science” of society. The normal curve and its “normal person” dictated the course of policy in the United States throughout the bulk of the 20^th century, especially in education. Products were marketed to the “normal consumer,” social policies were designed to help the “normal citizen,” and education reforms were made to best educate (now, “socialize”) the “normal student,” including standardized tests and curriculums.

But, there is no such thing as the “normal consumer,” or the “normal citizen,” or the “normal student.” People buy certain things for their own particular reasons, people support policies for their own particular beliefs, and people seek education with their own particular skills and personalities. The result of the normalizing process, then, was to create what amounts to a Procrustean bed on which every buyer, every citizen, and every student must be made to fit. Of course, by definition, most people will fit on the bed with little or no strain. But, what happens to the outliers? What happens to the people who fall too many standard deviations, plus or minus, away from the norm? The Procrustean bed snaps them in half. This is what we are witnessing in our schools: the breaking of our youth on the rack of modern education.

Let us describe in further detail how this is done, drawing on elements of “normalcy” as well as “socialization.” Schools today are designed for the average student, the one of mediocre intelligence and ability. More and more, schools are dumping advanced placement and gifted learning programs in an effort to integrate the more intelligent students with the less intelligent. On the flip side, schools are also screwing with special education, which is intended to meet the specific needs of those who are below average in intelligence and ability. Instead, they want to “streamline” those students and integrate them into the standard, “normal” program. Administrators think that this will benefit everyone. Instead, it is a detriment to all. Struggling students cannot get the help they need without monopolizing the instructor’s time and efforts. If the instructor does not meet their specific needs, they do not learn. If the instructor does try to gear the basic curriculum towards the less gifted, the more gifted suffer, in an effect of bringing everyone down to the same level. This in particular can frustrate the most gifted and talented students, who will not be challenged in any way, and who will not learn the fundamental skills needed for them to allow their inventiveness to take flight. In either case, many of the gifted will still feel bored with an education system designed for the average, the “normal,” and their talents will go undeveloped.

Coinciding with this is an attempt at “socializing” students. Teachers are increasingly assigning group projects and group learning, rather than relying on lecture or individual work. Even grades are often given out to the group as a whole. Those who are most gifted, then, find themselves in a catch-22. First, they could let less gifted people in their group do a share of the work. But, since their work is of lower quality, it has the effect of bringing down the grade of the more gifted student. The second option is to take over, as the gifted student volunteers to carry the entire weight of the group. While this might be a noble gesture, the effect is that the less gifted students come to rely, even expect, the gifted students to do their work. This is to their detriment. Further, the gifted student does not receive the individual praise or congratulations for his hard work and social spirit. Instead, the praise goes to the group: the people who did absolutely nothing. So, no matter what he does, a gifted student must watch as others reap the rewards of his work while he suffers the punishments for the short-comings of others. This is the “group” mentality facilitated by our education system. For those in the middle, the average, group work is a good thing because it means they don’t have to take responsibility for poor performance, nor do they have to make an attempt at performing to par. Instead, they can exploit the gifted. And for the outliers, this “group” activity leaves them befuddled or totally disenchanted. Again, the normal will fit comfortably on the same bed that breaks the exceptional.

And what are the results of this “socialization?” Let’s take a look into how students interact in a typical high school. Immediately, students can be seen fracturing off into “cliques.” The normal, the average group comprises the bulk. They present themselves as part of the “normal” group by wearing popular, “average” clothes, by listening to popular, “average” music, and by in all other ways consuming products targeted towards the “average” American (as marketing demographics understands the term). Whether they are average or not, this is the kind of look and identity they feel they have to portray in order to fit in with the normal, to “be normal.” Then, we have the outliers. Many of them shun popular brands, popular music, and even popular conventions of style. Some wear make-up (even boys), some wear black clothes, some wear trench coats, and so forth. They listen to “anti-social” bands, they play violent video games, or they watch violent TV. They seek an outlet, within their group and within their interests, for the anger they feel towards the “normal” kids, the average ones. It is important here to note that their behavior, in general, is not an expression of the individual identity, but a conscious or unconscious lashing out against the normal, against that which has imprisoned them and abused them. They are struggling, in these early years of identity formation, with a system that crushes their spirit because they are not “normal.” They are struggling with their fellow students who, every day, pick on them, make fun of them, beat them up, and make them feel inferior for not being part of the normal crowd. They are struggling with their teachers who force them to do busy work, who rarely give them credit for individual accomplishment, and punish them for the failings of others. They are struggling against the school administration that continuously pumps the ideology of self-annulment and self-sacrifice to the group, of subverting the mind for the sake of belonging, and that singles them out as trouble makers for not fitting the concept of the normal student. They are, in effect, lashing out against the Procrustean bed of the normal curve which has infected every facet of our society, especially our education.

This kind of social friction, this polarization of identity, this hatred and anger displayed towards one another, this tendency to fall into competing cliques: these are not signs of effective socialization. They are a far cry from any measure of social cooperation and harmony that can be found at a concert, at an arcade, or even (dare I say it) at a gun show, where no difference matters so much as that single shared interest. On the contrary, this is pure anti-social behavior, and it is found in its most stark form within schools. Schools are the problem. Schools are where we see the first symptoms of anti-social behavior, and schools are where we see the final, bloody results.

The Situation Worsens

Yet, the media, politicians, and experts continue to ignore the education system as a potential source of this behavior. Our government, our media, and our education system is controlled by the children of the Third Great Awakening: the baby boomers. They have neither the will nor capacity to challenge the “normal,” the founding principle behind mass culture and social engineering in general. Their generation is fixated upon the ideology of creating a “heaven on Earth” with their enlightened social “science.” They do not want to explore the deeper, cultural implications of events. They only want neat statistics that give them a surface impression of social phenomena. But it is not science which guides their decisions. Rather, it is an intense fear, which results in the mistreatment and marginalization of teens, especially those who fall outside the norm.

Today, many schools are run like prisons. Students have very little freedom to move about, security guards watch their every step, and some schools have even instituted the use of metal detectors. Furthermore, the faculty at these schools have become hyper-sensitive to the “warning signs” of violence, usually related to superficial signs such as dress, musical tastes, or even off-hand, generalized comments that use words like “kill,” “hate,” and so forth in an unspecific or figurative manner (Such as “We’re going to kill the other team next game,” or “Man, I really hate that guy.”). Even these words displayed on graphic t-shirts, or t-shirts that seem “violent” (subjectively speaking) in general are censored and their wearers are singled out as trouble makers. What was once considered merely eccentric behavior is increasingly considered potentially dangerous.

Teens are also badgered and abused by law. Curfews become increasingly strict, more controls are placed on video games, music, and movies, and teens are profiled as trouble makers do to their style of dress, hair, and so forth. The media, the government, and their parents increasingly beat into their heads that they are just children, they can’t handle their emotions, they can’t think for themselves, and they don’t belong in the adult world. They are treated with fear and suspicion everywhere they go, even in their own homes. They are kept from growing up, essentially, despite every biological development their bodies are making towards mature adulthood. In many ways, adolescence is the first stage of adulthood, not a stage of childhood. Yet, they are constantly marginalized by society. Their opinions are shouted down. Their preferences and tastes are ridiculed or demonized. They are not only ostracized by their “normal” schoolmates, they are ostracized by society at large.

What message of socialization does all this send? We expect teens to act with appropriate social conduct without granting them the same. We cannot expect teens to become socialized while at the same time marginalizing them. In past ages, cultures enacted “coming of age rituals” which welcomed adolescents into “adult” society, with all of the privileges and responsibilities that entails. Even today, we still have some semblance of those rituals, such as the Bar Mitzvah of Judaism, or even Confirmation in Christianity. But even these rituals tend to have lost their original meaning, and in any case they do not extend into secular society. Instead, our culture has concocted this developmental stage of adolescence as a stage of childhood, and therefore we have restricted rights and privileges to adolescents who, only a couple centuries before, would have been considered functionally adult. And now, with each new school shooting, the fear of teens grows. And, the irrational, fear-driven policies enacted only deepen the divide and exclusion of teens from the adult world. We cannot expect socialization to occur in this atmosphere; we can only expect the opposite result. When our whole culture is geared towards telling teens, implicitly or explicitly, that they are dangerous children who can’t be trusted to operate in society, it only follows that eventually they will come to accept this role.

How the Problem is Mistreated

When someone gets shot, stabbed, punched, or injured in some way, it is fairly common sense for us to explain the causes of the injury. The person with the bullet wound has the bullet wound because something shot him. The person who has the laceration on his torso was cut by something. The person has a bruise there because he was hit by some sort of blunt instrument or object. We do not assume that something is inherently wrong with the person, or that an inherent quality gave rise to his injury. We accept that the person was healthy, but was made unhealthy due to some outside occurrence, such as an attack.

This is not the attitude expressed towards teens that have been broken by the Procrustean standards of normalcy. No one recognizes that their minds, their spirits, have been brutalized, or that their sense of injustice at being injured is justified. Instead, the common position to take is that there is something wrong with them. They are sick. They suffer from mental illness and need to be put on anti-depressants or behavior modifying drugs. Certainly, they do suffer from an unnatural state, but a state brought about by the abuse they’ve taken, much like a wound from an attack. But that is not the conception of this “illness.” Rather, the belief is that it stems from their biology, from who they are. In essence, they are injured because there is something wrong with them.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to draw from a Newsweek article written by Sharon Begley after the Columbine school shooting.* In her article, “Why the Young Kill,” she argues that school shooters are genetically prone to violence, and outlines how this propensity becomes realized under certain conditions, such as neglect, but also such influences as violent games and music. Of these, she states, “Today’s pop culture offers all too many dangerous [ideologies], from the music of Rammstein to the game of Doom” (p. 179). She identifies these things, along with supposed easy access to guns, as contributors to violent personalities. “To deny the role of these influences is like denying that air pollution triggers childhood asthma,” she writes (p. 180). Thus, she implies that violence in pop culture can influence those already genetically susceptible to their influence. Thus, these troubled teens simply have a slight problem with their genetics which, under certain environmental conditions, produces violent behavior. Their injury is due mainly to their genetics, and the outer conditions are only a contributing factor. Imagine telling a stabbing victim that his wound was caused by genetics, and that the knife only enhanced his natural propensity to be cut!

Underlying her thesis is the assumption that there is something wrong with these teens, that they are abnormal. In discussing their supposed genetic vulnerability, she writes, “It is only a tiny bend in a twig, but depending on how the child grows up, the bend will be exaggerated or straightened out” (p. 179). By “bend” she means the abnormal genetic anomaly, and by “straightened out,” she means that the aberrant behavior will not manifest, hence a “normal” person will develop. I cannot think of a better choice of words. Drawing on my analogy of the Procrustean bed, it is the assumption of the media and so-called “experts” that these teens need to be straightened out, that their differences result from a defect that needs to be fixed. They need to be straightened out in the same way that the rack straightens out its victims. The only problem is, this straightening out requires an artificially imposed re-bending of this “bent” person in order to fit him to the shape demanded by society. The normally flexible joints of the mind are pulled and tugged ever straighter, stressing the ligaments, until finally they are dislocated and ripped out.

What teens do not get is a feeling that someone understands them, that someone connects with them, and the reassurance that there is nothing wrong with them. Instead, writers like Begley assert, “An adult can often see his way to restoring a sense of self-worth… through success at work or love. A child usually lacks the emotional skills to do that” (p. 180). What a dismissive, insensitive mode of understanding! How is a teen supposed to restore self-worth when every success in school is devalued, when HE is devalued as a person for the sake of the group? How is he supposed to find love in a society that fears and shuns him? How is he to have self-worth in the first place when, because he lies outside the fictional “normal,” he is constantly told that he is aberrant, weird, sick, or dangerous? It’s easy to say that all teens need is to be loved, but our society is not set up for that. Our society has been, over the last hundred years or so, engineered to love only those who fit into the normal range of the curve. Everyone else is ignored, picked on, punished, or generally treated as inferior. This is especially true with the public education system, which comprises a large chunk of teens’ social experience. Their minds have been tortured by the normalizing and self-annulment of modern schools. Their potential for individual identities has been assaulted, their needs left unfulfilled, and their talents left to languish underdeveloped. They have been stretched to the breaking point, a point which a few have crossed. There is nothing inherently wrong with them. They have been injured grievously, yet they receive no care or sympathy for crimes committed against them. All they hear is that there is something wrong with them.

Conclusion

So, it is not segments of pop culture or even guns which break the minds of teens. Rather, it is the Procrustean bed of modern education, based on socialization and the fictional “normal,” which has so abused young adults that it has socialized them for destructive and anti-social behavior. The fears and superficial reactions of society only exacerbate the problem as we further marginalize and mistreat the youth in America. We continue to blame the victim, and teens who fall outside the norm have no where to go for understanding. So, they turn to video games, music, and sometimes even gangs, among other things, as an outlet for their feelings of disenfranchisement and rage. In some cases, such as music and video games, this can result in a positive social experience, perhaps even enough to get them through the difficulties of adolescence. In other cases, like gangs, it’s not so positive, and actual violence may result. In any case, these are all symptoms of the same causative force, a lunacy we’ve inherited from faux philosophers and pseudo-scientists of society and education. If we continue on this path, I can only see more devastation to come. I don’t mean just school shootings. Rather, I’m worried about those who have had their minds broken, but did not go so far as murder/suicide. What will happen when they grow up and are responsible for running our country? 20^th century social engineering has created a Frankenstein monster, and I can’t predict good things to happen when it gets loose.

*Begley, Sharon. “Why the Young Kill,” Newsweek, May 3, 1999. Referenced from reprint in - Fass, Paula S. and Mary Ann Mason, ed. Childhood in America, New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 177-180. All page citations from the Fass/Mason.

Further reading: In addition to names and sources mentioned above, I recommend reading Robert Fogel’s The Fourth Great Awakening and Oliver Zunz’s Why the American Century? to get a background of the history behind what I’m discussing.