Education

Tuesday, May 3, 2006

I may, or may not, have mentioned that, after being out of school for almost 30 years (I did take some classes in the interim, but that was still 20 years ago), I am now enrolled in a paralegal program at my local community college. Considering the fact that I am, more likely than not, the first openly transgender student to ever have attended this instiyution, I would absolutely grade their tolerance and acceptance levels with an A+!! Considering that we are located in Central North Carolina, I would suggest that this is no mean feat. Even though it feels like baby steps, the world is changing before our very eyes. Nonetheless...it seems that for every step forward, there are concommitant steps back. For example, a high school in our area has banned the existence of a GLBT friendly on campus for dubious reasons. Within this same jurisdiction, Kate Bornstein, who had been scheduled to appear, was cancelled with last minute notice...again for what appear to be dubious reasons.

It is interesting that the very institutions that are supposed to educate our children exhibit, unfortunately, some of the most monolithic ideas. How can we expect kids to function in the world if they are not exposed to a broad spectrum of viewpoints?? Are they not, especially in high school, capable of digesting and differentiating more than one perspective? We complain that our educational standards are falling behind the rest of the world, yet we are so obtuse as to wonder why?

When you teach kids that the theory of evolution is incorrect, when you teach kids that there is no such thing as global warming, when you teach kids that everything we know about geology and carbon testing is debated and denied by the book of Genesis...is it any wonder why we are producing a generation of kids who are not trained in the arts of critical thinking?

Of course...when you allow spurious theories, often advanced by so called religious and, more often than not, dogmatic, bodies of thought...the net result is a generation of automatons who parrot the local party line.

Even though experiences at my school give me hope...the fact that I am able to interact with many "people of faith" and am still accepted...this is highly laudable...yet, a quick perusal of letters to the editor in my local newspaper, surveyed over, perhaps, a week's time, will scare the stuffing out of any person exhibiting one wit of intelligience. The vitriol, the defamations, the blasphemies to the varieties of experience...the recalitrance and stubborness and refuge in literalist and constructionist mindsets, baffles and worries me about just what the younger generation is learning at home, never mind the schools.

It is time to open the windows and doors of our minds and let a little light shine in!! A house where the doors and windows are never opened gets awfully stale and stuffy!!

trickster108