Yeah, even as a kid I could see through this logic. A typical workflow for me in school looked something like this: I get bullied → I stand up for myself → the bully gets violent → I defend myself → we both go to the principal’s office and wind up suspended for the same length of time because “violence is bad.”
Meanwhile in class I was learning about how our heroic grandfathers stood up to the ultimate bullies and defeated them with… you guessed it, violence.
It made no sense to me then and it makes no sense to me now, because it’s illogical. Complete cognitive divorce between “theory” and “practice,” or “abstract book knowledge” and “real-world actions/decisions/experience.”
The entire US school system is designed around teaching you one thing while encouraging enforcing you to behave otherwise, honestly…
Yeah, even as a kid I could see through this logic. A typical workflow for me in school looked something like this: I get bullied → I stand up for myself → the bully gets violent → I defend myself → we both go to the principal’s office and wind up suspended for the same length of time because “violence is bad.”
Meanwhile in class I was learning about how our heroic grandfathers stood up to the ultimate bullies and defeated them with… you guessed it, violence.
It made no sense to me then and it makes no sense to me now, because it’s illogical. Complete cognitive divorce between “theory” and “practice,” or “abstract book knowledge” and “real-world actions/decisions/experience.”
The entire US school system is designed around teaching you one thing while
encouragingenforcing you to behave otherwise, honestly…