|
Docta Ignorantia XXXII Equality and Education People are not equal. There are genuine, substantial, necessary, felicitous and desirable differences among people, differences of ability, temperament, impulse, desire, destiny and more. These differences are society's endowment. Lose them and society dis-integrates. Integration is of variety, not of similarity. Similarity requires no integration. It is unproductive. The differences are the thing that is truly valuable because they are what produce. The program of education cannot be 'all for one' or 'one for all' because the little nippers are not all one. They are many and different and their differences are important and needed. We should treat people according to their genuine needs, their personal temperament, capacities and destiny. In order to do this, there must be burst a cherished bubble of American political philosophy, namely, the bubble that 'all men are created equal.' The bubble that all men are created equal must be disallowed for judicial, legislative and administrative activity. The reason is, this bubble impels the policy of putting everyone through the same general educational program, a policy which impedes the highly capable, bores the ordinary and embarrasses the disabled. The bubble that all children should go through the same general program is totalitarian, which means, inherently stupid. It is very hard to make a system of education which fosters the differences and leads out the nature and destiny of each person so that they become as happy and as useful to themselves and to society as they can be. It is hard and it is expensive to do this. This is what we have to do. When people are doing what it is their nature to do, their nature being, essentially, what is good to do, then they are happy. All that needs doing is to help each person do what it is their nature to do that is good, that is Dharmic. This itself is Dharma and Dharmic living is happy, prosperous living. A distinction is needed between, on the one hand, the principle of equal standing before the law and, on the other, recognition of inherent differences of capacity which entitle to impartial but different allocation of resource? The purpose of such a distinction, obviously, is to enable the affirmation that all should have equal protection of the law, equal access to impartial justice, but that all do not have equal capacities and, therefore, do not deserve equal allocation of resource, as in the education system? Some children need to be separated from their parent(s). Many need to be separated from their peers. For quite a few children, even the horrors of orphanages and foster homes would be preferable to what in their lives pass for homes. The state, following federal guidelines, should define basic food consumption requirements and define as criminally abused by their parent(s) children whose diet does not meet this standard. The state, also, should define adulteration of the food supply and should then define purveying adulterated food as criminal behavior. 'Health reform' turns on the American diet being corrected by government (1) proscribing adulteration of the food supply and (2) mandating standards for feeding children and enforcing those standards through propaganda and prosecution. In some cases, institution of a proper diet, while it would save the children, would comprise, also, a cultural revolution in their communities. On the other hand, much of the reason for the grinding life in which some populations are trapped is their diet. Junk and snack 'foods,' white bread, refined sugar, under-cooked flesh, lack of vitamin/mineral supplements ... these are ingredients for the perpetual devolution of society. There is no rising above improper diet. Education does not reach the malnourished. Individuals who conceive and bear children while under the influence of controlled substances should be treated as criminally abusive parents. They should be separated from the children they bear, and they should be incarcerated or sterilized or both.
Adwaitha Hermitage
|
