Unfortunately, things haven’t changed all that much.
The Pathé news-reels at the local Bronx movie theaters before the arrival of television were always an extraordinary event. The theatre was always packed, the noise loud, the candy better than ever and the company superb. Seating in the theaters was always a difficult adventure, unless one had the ability and forethought to arrive quite early. (And of course save a seat for those pals who were tardy.)
The only negative was the “matron” who patrolled the theaters, flashlight in hand, looking for the ‘troublemakers’ and moving them to “another seat”. Perhaps more on that later!
Today’s date ‘newsy’ was something about Japan and the islands of the South Pacific. It showed men with rifles both US and Japanese searching for each other amidst the sweltering jungles and flooded rivers. Both sides longing to kill/capture the other for reasons they themselves sometimes did not know, except that it was the orders they were given. As a young boy of 11 I was not given any orders, except those of my grandmother to eat only popcorn and no candy, to behave, not throw hard candy at the matron, and to be home before dinner.
I always did get home before dinner.
The couple in front of me must have been brother and sister as he was twice the young girl’s age. Even so she climbed all over him and continually whispered in his left ear. At least she had the common good sense to talk quietly during the movie, something many of the other patrons did not do. At the film’s half way point she unbuttoned her blouse and allowed her brother to put a hand inside. I assumed she was warm, for the theatre was, and that he was feeling to see if she were sweating. He then moved his hand below her waist, she made a small noise, a sort of groaning moan, just then I turned back to watch the next newsreel.
What is still remarkable to me is that all these years later men (and now women) are still marching through jungles and flooded rivers trying to kill/capture someone for no apparent reason except that they are told to do so. They still believe that killing in the name of country is the only way. That decimating an entire country because of a hated leader is OK. It is what we need to do.
{Listen to Bob Dylan’s “With G-d on Our Side” }
We can put a man on the moon, we possess a toaster sized machine that will send 1080p pictures back to earth from Mars and yet we still haven’t figured out how to resolve conflicts, non-violently. What are we teaching in our schools?
Wouldn’t it better for society if we taught conflict resolution, and business economics (balancing your checkbook and figuring out a monthly budget) rather than trigonometry or ancient Greek History. I am not saying that these two examples are without merit, but they could become electives while the former two should be given to everyone. We talk about better education, but I think that starts with better course choices.
With a modern 21 century attention span in mind, let’s make better use of video, more sound and music, and perhaps a bit less worry about the rules of grammar. Perhaps books aren’t as important to these students as they were for us. Is that a bad thing? Maybe and maybe not. Newer methods of attaining knowledge have got to be accepted because they are certainly not going away and we still need to educate our society.
Here’s a novel approach to furthering universal education. Bring back Esperanto. Esperanto was a universal language composed of words and phrases from many different languages. The idea was that everyone would speak their own native language at home, and also know Esperanto when they traveled or dealt with people from other countries. How about that for a good idea, now mostly forgotten by the world!
Wouldn’t travel be more enlightening if you could freely converse with people from that country. If you could operate as a true citizen of the world…what might that lead to?
It seems to this writer that we are trying to solve 21st Century problems with old and outdated ideas. We are moving linearly as opposed to geometrically.
We need to do away with old thinking and open the world up to new ideas. We need to create a new methodology for the instruction of the generations that will lead us into a new and peaceful future. Without fear or remorse we must keep the wheels turning even if that concept seems frightening right now.
It isn’t. It’s just Progress.
