The flight to safety also happened at school. Dangerous play structures were removed from playgrounds; peanut butter was banned from student lunches. After the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, many schools cracked down on bullying, implementing “zero tolerance” policies. In a variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process “affective partisan polarization,” and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.

It’s difficult to know exactly why vindictive protectiveness has burst forth so powerfully in the past few years. The phenomenon may be related to recent changes in the interpretation of federal antidiscrimination statutes (about which more later). But the answer probably involves generational shifts as well. Childhood itself has changed greatly during the past generation. Many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers can remember riding their bicycles around their hometowns, unchaperoned by adults, by the time they were 8 or 9 years old. In the hours after school, kids were expected to occupy themselves, getting into minor scrapes and learning from their experiences. But “free range” childhood became less common in the 1980s. The surge in crime from the ’60s through the early ’90s made Baby Boomer parents more protective than their own parents had been. Stories of abducted children appeared more frequently in the news, and in 1984, images of them began showing up on milk cartons. In response, many parents pulled in the reins and worked harder to keep their children safe.

I don't know about you, but I'm not buying. IN fact, I rather strongly suspect that this type of psychologization of "education" in the USA shares a major part of the responsibility for the disaster.The real problem is very simple: by and large, Americans - including the so-called American power elite - are stupid. Don't believe me? Just look at the idiots running for President in both political parties. With but a few exceptions, these are not terribly well-educated people. Clever, yes. Educated, no. To be sure, some of them have degrees, but one must ask, what, really, is a degree from an American insitution really worth(besides a lot of debt to obtain a lisence to pratice a job that probably won't be there anyway upon graduation)?We have been deliberately dumbed down by an education profession focused more upon "method and pedagogy" and all the psychologization that goes with it, than we have been on content of a discipline and the ability to argue positions. The shift from content profession to method-oriented instruction has resulted in a similar shift in what "argumentation" means in the American academic context, for content must be replaced with something, and in this case, it's emotions, i.e., the focus on the self and its emotional needs, desires, and psychology. In such a quackademic culture, it is easy to become offended, because there is no other content or preoccupation in focus. Indeed, in a real academic culture, "microaggressions" would diminish simply because people would be far too busy trying to learn literature, or calculus, or biology, and wouldn't have time for such nonsense, including the nonsense of "being offended" - when no offense was intended or implied - at every little remark. It is a measure of how coddled the American "mind" is that, throughout the entire article, there is almost no mention of content, but a great deal of focus on psychology. It's a world of make-believe in which the "cloud" and "ebooks" are tailor-made for "adjustment" to everyone's "sensistivities," and the danger, of course, is that history and human memory itself can be adjusted.

Increasingly I come to the sad realization that the system is irretrievably broken, and not fixable. More computers, more technology, more homework, more standardized tests, more teacher hours, more stringent "credentialing" requirements, more studies, more money, more classroom time, more method, are not going to fix it. They created the mess.

And this means, if you're a parent, that you have to teach your children, and hence educate yourself, on your own. And if you're a student at one of America's university indoctrination centers, this means that you will have to educate yourself.

See you on the flip side...