Since our countries are so large and our people are from so many different kinds of backgrounds don't we need some kind of Social Glue to make us stick together? Don't we need something to give us a sense of unity in spite of all of our differences? Aren't compulsory public schools the easiest and best places to make this glue?

Of course we need some sort of glue to stick us together, especially in such big and diverse countries as the United States and Canada. Unfortunately, the main social glue that we have today in the United States is the hatred of what we see as enemy countries. Besides uniting on this front, we often find ourselves in competition with others, even those who have the same color, religion, etc. as our own. While this attitude of competition may have worked well in the founding years of our country, it doesn't work so well any longer. In fact, today, our survival, health and happiness depend upon our social glue. While some community gathering places and activities help us form this social glue, schools do not. Instead, our schools sort our children into 2 very distinct groups: winners and losers, then going on to prepare the losers for a lifetime of losing. This doesn't help people stick together! People need to be able to share experiences that make them feel good in order to cross the many barriers of race, class, custom, and belief that divide them. This is what gives them a stronger sense of their own, and therefore other people's, uniqueness, dignity, and worth. So, as long as schools have their present social tasks, they'll be unable to give such experiences our children. In fact, most of what happens in school makes children feel stupid, incompetent, ashamed, etc. Schools teach children to distrust and despise themselves. They teach our children that they can only feel better about themselves when they find others whom they can look down on even more (ie poorer children, children from other races, children who don't do as well as they themselves are doing in school). Some people may argue that even if children do learn to despise, fear, and hate children from other social groups in school, isn't it possible for these children to hate them even more if they didn't meet them in school. These people would argue that at least in school children see these other groups as real people instead of abstractions. While this may sometimes be true, but I would argue that this is only for those few children for whom the world outside of school was as dull, painful, humiliating, and threatening as the world inside school is. However, the majority of children who learn without school, or who go only when they want to, grow up with a much stronger sense of their own dignity and worth, and therefore, with much less need to despise and hate others. The United States needs more people who can afford to be polite, kind, patient, generous, forgiving, and tolerant, able and willing, not just to stand people different from themselves, but to make an effort to understand them, to see the world through their eyes. It is only this which will glue our country together. Of course, these social virtues cannot be talked, preached, discussed, bribed or threatened into people. These are virtues that come from people who have so much love and respect for themselves that they actually have some left over for others.


=^..^= Reverend Brenda Hoffman
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