The Cho Factor, Part VIII

Our Automaton Psyches

There is no question in my mind that if schools are allowed to continue with business as usual, school shootings will continue – and probably even increase in frequency. Worse, millions of innocent children will continue to have their lives ruined by unchecked bullying. Instead of taking out their anger through violence, they will simply continue to suffer quietly – relatively unnoticed – as they try to piece their lives together as adults. Perhaps it’s for responsible adults to rock the boat a bit.

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Keep it up. I like where this is going. This is a topic that no one talks about, which is precisely why those who have overcome it can afford to have that huge blind spot in their historical rear-view mirror! And why those lazy, good-for-nothing torture-chamber monitors, laughingly known as teachers, get away with doing nothing when they know, and we know that they know, that what they are doing is borderline, if not downright, criminal. – S.W.

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The subject you’re addressing has bothered me for a long time, and I feel very strongly about it. There is no excuse for the bullying behavior that is allowed to go on in schools. I can’t wait to hear your suggestions. Personally, I’ve thought for years that any teacher who allows a student to be teased or bullied in their presence should be fired. I have strong opinions about this subject, and I appreciate your addressing the topic in such a clear and concise manner. – M.L.

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If you think I’m cherry-picking the reader responses I print, I assure you that is not the case. On the contrary, I have been inundated with e-mails similar in tone to those above. The vast majority I have received since starting this series are filled with anger – anger toward bullies, anger toward teachers and school officials who condone bullying, and, above all, anger toward teachers and school officials who themselves engage in bullying.

It seems that not everyone buys into the rah-rah bumper-sticker slogans about “supporting our teachers.” The evidence suggests that teachers don’t need parental support. Rather, it’s our children who need parental protection from teachers.

The great unspoken truth is that millions of potential Chos continue to be groomed by schools throughout America (and, indeed, throughout the Western world). Again, all but a handful of those bullied students never harm anyone. Instead, they dutifully suffer in silence and carry their bullying scars with them throughout life.

This institutionally sanctioned terrorism – the beating down of the disabled, the emotionally fragile, and the weak – has been firmly entrenched throughout recorded history. And it is guaranteed to stay firmly entrenched unless a vast majority of the citizenry rises up and makes it known that it intends to fight back on behalf of those children who really are left behind.

Is it realistic to believe that this can ever be accomplished? That’s a fair question, and, frankly, one that is impossible to answer with certainty. The main obstacle I see is that, through the phenomenon of gradualism, we in the West have become lockstep automatons. We are no longer willing to fight for what we believe is right … no longer willing to fight against injustice … no longer willing to step out of line … no longer willing to do anything that might result in our being ostracized.

As Etienne de la Boetie put it: “It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say … that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”

I truly believe that if negroes were still in bondage today, they might just remain in bondage forever, because modern-day Americans have become comfortable with the deal they’ve made with the Devil: over-financed homes in the suburbs, SUVs in their driveways, and flat-screen TVs in their family rooms – all in exchange for servitude. The implied euphemism is: Don’t rock the boat!

Having said this, there are many things that could be done to drastically reduce the physical and psychological carnage of the perceived weak that is now accepted as the norm in our schools. At the end of the last installment of this series, I promised to offer some extreme measures that I believe would lessen the chances of producing more human time bombs in our schools – and, even more important, lessen the chances of producing more millions of scarred children who are left to suffer quietly.

My list of measures is growing faster than I can write, so today I’ll just leave you with a teaser: The foundation of the Cho syndrome is an insidious two-headed snake that holds our children captive from the day they first set foot inside a schoolroom.

In the next installment, I will disrobe this two-headed snake – two draconian forces that I believe need to be completely removed from the education picture if serious changes are to be brought about. In the meantime, can you guess what that two-headed snake is?

Previous – Part VII, Prime Targets

Next – Part IX, Eliminating the Two-Headed Snake of The American Education System