"Life is not about 'me,' 'having fun,' or 'expressing my individuality' as spoiled American brats and their self-centered parents seem to believe."
Me: Jesus, Wojtek -- is that so? Okay, so in Wojtek-world, life is not about having fun.
Seems like you've drawn a false dichotomy between expressing individuality and social solidarity. I think "life" can be about the things you mention -- expressing individuality, having fun, etc. -- and also be about social, collective responsibility, esp. w/ regards to making this miserable hell on earth into a better place to live, a society where one truly can explore one's own innate potentialities to their fullest degree (you know, their individuality, "being me"), instead of having this potentiality endlessly deferred to some future date that may never come, but which is supposed to come with enough obedience, upwardly-brown nosing, and wealth.
[WJ]: "I think the value of schooling is not to provide a substitute for 'nurturing parents' as many bleeding hearts tend to believe, but to wean children from such nurturance and create a 'dry run' for the real life experience. It prepares children to cope with other people, many of whom are mean spirited whether one likes it or not, to deal with adversities that life brings whether one likes them or not, and to have a chance to see something bigger than one's own navel."
The value of schooling IS this? Or the value of schooling in Wojtek-Land *SHOULD* be this?
Because right now, this is not the value of any schooling that I am familiar with.
You mention that school provides a "dry run" and prepares one "for the real life experience." Newsflash: School IS the "real life experience."
It is not a dry run for anything; it is the dry run itself, for about a third or more of your life. It is not preparation for some hallowed area that is, finally, ultimately, "real life."
I remember, when unemployed for awhile (and not by choice), folks mentioning things like, "Well, once you get back 'into the real world again'..." etc. Well, what in the hell is not "the real world" about the fact of unemployment? It was miserable. I had bills and rent to pay, etc. The real world did not go away; it was knocking on my door. I was living it, and kids live in the real world in school, in the workplace, in the retirement home, etc.
It might be great if school doled out all the hard-assed lessons you mention above, because lord knows one does encounter all manner of unsavory characters, popularity cliques, loathsome sycophancy that is repugnantly rewarded by superiors, etc., in that total institution. That's why when some of us leave high school we derisively refer to undesirable adult situations as "high school popularity contests," etc. -- because those kinds of things were bad things. I guess it all prepared us for "the real world" - but what a shitty world, and one that can be better. Te reassert: We're *always* in "the real world," school or not -- but things in school, believe it or not, possibly damage us, belabor us with stuff we're eager to leave behind, and provide a time of our life that some of us look back upon with nothing but sheer, utter contempt, for many different reasons.
-B.