[email protected]

In a message dated 5/1/2003 5:30:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
felesina@... writes:
> what would a person from a not so "individualistic" culture say to this?
>
> We are a culture that *worships* individuality.

Are we? School doesn't. Neither do MANY jobs. I'd say ours was a "conformist
society".

~Kelly


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Kelly Lenhart

>> We are a culture that *worships* individuality.
>
>Are we? School doesn't. Neither do MANY jobs. I'd say ours was a
"conformist
>society".
>~Kelly

Ah, but we are a conformist society of loners. We are supposed to be
independant, self motivated and self directed at all times. We are supposed
to be self directed towards the same basic capitalist goals, but......

When we are actual individuals--self directed towards something outside the
"norm" then we get nailed.

A different,
Kelly

Fetteroll

on 5/2/03 7:06 PM, kbcdlovejo@... at kbcdlovejo@... wrote:

> Are we? School doesn't. Neither do MANY jobs. I'd say ours was a "conformist
> society".

I think we're both. :-) I think we want to be individualists but we have to
pass through 12+ years of conformism in order to get old enough to be
allowed to. By then it's too late for most people to be themselves easily.
:-/

Even educators, I don't think, want kids to lose their individuality. They
want kids to conform in order to do what they have to to learn. Just as
people conform to wait in lines and such. And then educators want the kids
to be free to be themselves. As long as they don't step outside the
proprieties of school rules.

Unforunately, of course, they can't see the huge effect the society of
school and homework and everything has on kids. It's all normal life to most
educators. It's a joke when teachers talk about homeschoolers keeping their
kids away from real life. They really do beleive that school is real life.
And that kids can be themselves there.

Joyce