Perks of Being a Wallflower Reconsideration Discusssion

Re:Parents as Partners

This battle has gotten out of hand because parents and the school board who should be partners in education have been thrust into the roles of combatants. Why does this happen?

Short answer: Due to the diametric opposition and mutual exclusion between intolerance and tolerance.

For the intolerant, it is not enough that they be allowed to have and express their opinions or to control their childrens’ access to materials; they also want power over the opinions and children of other people. Witness the paragraph in the Lake Country Reporter article about the guy who had already decided that his child would not participate in the course.

Parents perceive the inclusion of the book as a threat to their ability to transmit their family values.

Which is patently ridiculous. Family values are taught in the home, not in school. As you intimate, however, the perception of the obstruction creates its own reality. The discomfort of a psychosomatic pain is not any less real just because the limb which hurts was amputated years and years ago. There is a fallacy behind this belief, though. Children learn the attitudes that they will have as adults by the they time they are ten years old, and basic attitudes are supposed to be irrevocably fixed
for life. The attitudes lie dormant until sometime between sixteen and twenty-two, inclusive; then some minor event triggers an emotional overreaction and the attitudes spring to the forefront in an instant. So even if a child is taught to be respectful of the opposite gender, he or she might still be contemptuous throughout high school and college. Those who seek to have books removed from curricula or school libraries, often talk about “impressionable youth”, as in this case, but young adults
are too old to develop the kinds of attitudes the parents fear they will. That’s not to say they won’t engage in that kind of behaviour during that latency period, mind you.

A second fallacy in this belief is that a child will learn “values” only at home and only from the primary caregiver. They also learn attitudes from brothers and sisters, peers, teachers other than at school, neighbours — and they do most of their learning by observation, not by what they are told so much. Which is probably why so many young adults think of their parents as hypocrites. (Oh, she tells me not to smoke {puff, puff}, and says she’s trying to quit, but I’ve seen her smoking out
behind the swing.)

The school board perceives the exclusion of the book as a threat to legitimate educational concerns and freedom of speech issues.

It is if the book is excluded for the wrong reasons. And all the reasons given in this case are the wrong ones.

Isn’t it the liberal way to sit and talk when there is a dispute?

That is what’s happening. The book is undergoing a review process, people have been allowed to air their views in an open forum; the free marketplace of ideas is working. The thing is, not everyone is participating with a liberal viewpoint.

Isn’t it the hallmark of a free society to arrive at a workable consensus?

That’s not always feasible. With some people, once their minds are made up they will not change them no matter what the facts are. Compromise is not an option for them, all that matters is getting their own way. If concensus were possible in this case, I think the complainants would be satisfied to settle for exercising their right to restrict access for their children instead of attempting to restrict access for everybody else’s.

It seems that what disturbs this partnership is that old demon agenda drive. Negotiations and a workable solution are the antidote to agenda driven poison.

So is having a review process policy in place before you need it; which is the case in this incident.

Instead of sideing with each side I believe that we should be encouraging discussion and resolution.

You can encourage discussion and resolution to your heart’s content but it takes two to tango. If one participant flatly refuses to engage in mutual dialogue and the free exchange of ideas, you can’t force him to. It’s like telling an alcoholic that he needs help. You can talk yourself blue in the face but it won’t do a lick of good until he admits it to himself first.

Re:Parents as Partners

That statement could apply to either side.

Prove it. You have made a statement, but have not offered any supporting arguments. Just because you say it is so does not make it so. Liberals are, by and large, quite willing to allow you to be any kind of extremist it pleases you to be within the confines of your own life. Ultra-conservatives have demonstrated time and again by their actions and attitudes that they will not reciprocate. The only way you can support your contention is with double-think.

Re:Parents as Partners

And you accuse me of doublethink?

I beg your pardon, I keep forgetting that conservatives/Republicans have no capacity for nuance. There is a difference between my teaching my child and my child learning something outside my sphere of influence. I can teach family values in the home that cannot be taught in school, but I have no control over factors that will influence my child, such as peer pressure, and from which she will learn attitudes that will shape her character.

“Liberals are, by and large, quite willing to allow you to be any kind of extremist it pleases you to be within the confines of your own life”

So do conservatives […].

Bullshit. Wholesale anti-intellectualism, sexual enslavement, picking and choosing what the public is allowed to read, or write, or say, or think. In effect: deciding how other people will be allowed to live their lives. These are the hallmarks of conservativism, and every one goes beyond the confines of your own life to interfere in the lives of others.

What makes any person free is that they have sole authority over and responsibility for their own selves. When any person or group attempts to abrogate or derogate from that principle for any reason whatsoever you necessarily reduce that other person to the status of chattel; property. A slave. The only exceptions are those people so severely disabled that they cannot be responsible for themselves. Conservatism, and ultra-conservatives in particular, seek authoritarian or totalitarian societies respectively. Study any religious regime throughout history. Start with the Taliban; they were the most recent to go that route.

Re:Parents as Partners
I take it by your statement, then, that you have no rebuttal to my arguments?