There are only two things you can do about a symbol you don't like:
1) suppress it (although censorship can backfire)
or
2) supplant it with a healthier symbol.
What you cannot do is argue against it. There is no argument against a symbol. The problem many of my parents' generation had was that they tried to teach their children one thing, while an entire apparatus of symbol-making institutions (TV, movies, etc. - a truly pervasive mass media) said, "no kids, this is what life is really all about." Guess who won?
I know Plato didn't like it, but it is the poets who hold sway - the philosophers have limited influence.
Man is a rational animal and arguments are important, however a way of life is ultimately bound up in symbol systems (whether high art or simpler cultural ones). I can, thus, understand the genesis of homeschooling. Sometimes, I think some homeschoolers go too far and are too restrictive, too reclusive. They become little ignoramuses, cut off from the greater cultural resources we all need.
Nonetheless, they are on to something real. It is the pervasive culture of the mass media, all its pomps and all its works, that is the problem. THIS is truly the "infamous thing" that needs to be crushed - or better yet, supplanted. Until then, we will all have to respect each other and live as best as we can.
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2 comments:
Great points! It struck me yesterday, as I was conversing with a group of people I didn't know well, how easy it is for some to get sucked into this cultural trap or paradigm promoted by TV & movies and not to be able to see out of it. When I was younger, my siblings and I would call our non-homeschooled friends (behind their backs, of course), "schoolies." Now that I'm older, I can see what we meant by the term, though at the time we just noticed a difference and couldn't quite explain what it was. The difference lay in the fact that we homeschoolers could see "the culture" from the outside, as it were; because we were outsiders, we could critically examine some of the attitudes and views that our public schooled counterparts took for granted. We had an escape route.
I see your point about the danger of becoming too reclusive, and that is a real danger: it's a waste of time giving your children the ability to examine culture from the outside if you don't let them examine it at all. Then they just live in their minds, which never widen except by experience. However, as you point out, nowadays we can't just live passively within this mass media non-culture and expect to withstand its pervasive effects.
Moreover, in light of the previous post, I would question what greater cultural resources are available to children in school that they could not get outside of it. We can't be cafeteria Catholics, but in a way we have to be cafeteria American culturists. (Aside: Is not American culture itself a bit of a mish-mash?) Devoid of an authentic culture, we must pick and choose what aspects are consonant with the truths of our faith. This is a very difficult task. You made a great point in your last comment about culture emanating from religion. We are living in times where we have to restore and, in a sense, recreate, and this must begin with the Church.
I guess the greatest problem I see in homeschooling - are at least with some "homeschooling types," is not the socialization issue, but that everything can get turned into a MORAL issue. I understand that one would want the best moral environment for the formation of your children. No problem there. However I have encountered parents who, because they read somewhere that Mozart was involved with the fledgling Masonic movement, will fret about whether or not they should allow their children to listen to Mozart. Ridiculous, and totally counterproductive - frankly, even if he led a seriously immoral life (which he didn't), unless you can hear it in his music, than it doesn't really matter.
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