Really fine article on the way in which childhood was purposefully 'extended' as part of the Industrial Revolution at the same time that JP Morgan, Carnegie and others pushed the Compulsory State Education (conditioning/training program for factory life, dumbing down and control of future populations as they expand) and how that translates today into the previously unknown 'generation gap', teen rebellion and consumerism.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200703/trashing-teens
Here's a few pertinent quotes just to whet yer appetite!
" In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring "children" well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now extends childhood well into the 20s. The age at which Americans reach adulthood is increasing—30 is the new 20—and most Americans now believe a person isn't an adult until age 26.
The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways."
Which ties into what I have been saying for some time : that all creatures have innate learning abilities that enable them to master their being within the habitat. Only in Industrial Societies are children deemed unable to learn and therefore require enforced 'tuition'...
Schooling was inspired by the Hindi Rote System of conditioning or 'teaching', brought over to England and adapted to the needs of the factory owners, at the same time that the enclosure acts took the bulk of the common land from the people. Thus forcing them into the factories to 'work' to get cash to buy food....
It was an Anglican Military Chaplain who first observed and understood how this system worked. His name was Andrew Bell.
"“The entire purpose of the Hindu Schooling was to preserve the class system.”" A direct quote.....
What Andrew Bell saw and understood in the early 1800s was that by gathering the children into large groups, where they had to learn drills by rote, where corporal punishment was widely used, where there was a number of powerful external imperatives to show that one had learned, (could repeat the scriptures, perform the rituals, read the texts, and today pass the 'exams' ....) the Hindi Caste system had created a solid state and class structure that had endured for thousands of years, and had resisted the British in spite of the British technological superiority in sea faring and in warfare.
"Imagine what it would feel like—or think back to what it felt like—when your body and mind are telling you you're an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you're a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed, with their distress carrying over into their families and contributing to our high divorce rate. It's hard to keep a marriage together when there is constant conflict with teens."
There's the fundmental of the generation gap/teen rebellion. In one paragraph.
I could go on, but I think you should read the entire article as it is so well written, and 'twould be rude to re-publish it here.... and the research you do to follow up this will be more useful to you than anything I could say or write... trust me!
The recent attempt by Ed Balls, and Mr. Badman, to taint homeschooling with the brush of paedophilia resulted in the largest ever submissions of petitions by MPs in the House of Commons to reject Badmans assertions.
This shows the power of relatively few people (50,000 families home school in the UK at present) whose minds are clear, who refuse the conditioning of their children by strangers, who trust their childrens abilities as learners, when they get going.. A nation of such like would NEVER have allowed Tony Blair to prosecute the Afghan and Iraq wars, privatise the NHS and Post Office, etc etc... would never allow their children to be trained as profession killers.
These are the kinds of people any nation would be proud of.
One of the reasons the media focuses on 'teen knife crime' is to keep the teens under control, to keep the adult wortd fearful and envious of our youth.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's your gift to universe
