We Left!

I wrote the following in response to some reading at www.leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com 

I’m always impressed every time I come to this site and do a little reading. I think Jonny that you do very important work. Edmund Cohen at the end of his “TheMind of the Bible-Believer” (1986) in the postscript to the paper back edition makes an observation with which I concur fully:

“One mental-health matter that does seem ripe for further comment now is the rather long period of readjustment often needed by those who ‘come out’. . . . The former believers I know best have reported that they sought new intellectual stimulation to counteract the biblical pseudophilosphy in which their minds had been immersed, that it took a lot of quiet time for the devotional bad habits ingrained in them to be extinguished, and that intellectual and emotional self-reliance was the next major life issue they needed to address. It may be that only people with the potential to become strongly independent and self-reliant do come out at present.”

28 year after the writing of Cohen’s book referenced above, I’m asking myself how much more we know about the workings of the Bible-Believer’s Mind? How about the Koran-Believer’s mind? in fairness any other xxxx-Believer’s Mind as in the Mind of the Athiest-Believer [of course I acknowledge that non-existent can not be construed to be existent.] So for the fun of the analogy . . . the Athiest-Believer, the Zen-Believer, the Science-Believer, the USA-Believer, the Republican,Democrat, Liberal, Conservative-Believers, etc Regardless of the xxxx-Believer, it’s healthy to ask the hard questions.

Along another more simplistic analogy, we need to look under the hood of the ‘car’ and see what makes the thing run! If we had a beautiful luxury car on the sale block with no engine under the hood, and a dilapidated skeleton of a stripped down 12 cylinder racing car sitting beside the beautiful car . . . . well let me beat out some observations . . .

I’m not a mechanic, but I can educate myself with sufficient knowledge to understand the differences between a car that has no engine at all and won’t run, and a car that has a 12 cylinder racing engine that makes the car actually fly. I might even easily know the difference between a fossil-fuel combustion engine, and an electric engine. I could learn the difference between a car that cranks only and a car that actually cranks, fires, and runs, all the way down to a car that has a running engine to one that has all the necessary components to actually move the car but who’s transmission only has one functional gear.

Coughing and sputtering, temporary mobility and then permanent dysfunction could be easily learned for one’s own self if not before making a purchase decision but at least after the fact and getting some real live experience between the beautiful car still sitting on the sale block, or the speeding ticket on the way home in the race car.

I can know this for myself without the fancy brochure or fast talking salesman that points out the excellent design and beauty of the interior of the car that has no engine, how beautiful the outside of the car is, what intrinsic values I may derive from owning such a fancy car, how it would look in my drive or parked on the street, the list could go on endlessly until I would walk over and observe the fact that there was “no engine” in the engine compartment. Fundamentally I cannot be duped into making a purchase if I simply test drove the car with the engine vs. pretending to go to the supermarket with all my friends in the back seat of a car that does not even have an elementary component for actually moving the car.

Regardless of how benign or sacred the out-ward physical, emotional, spiritual appeal may be, we owe it to ourselves to ask WHY. Explore. Look for those things that exist and don’t exist. What does not exist in ACE actually concerns me more than than the surface observations made by a cursory review of the whole course of study K-12. It’s what missing that is so damaging. And why are not educational ministers and state educational inspectors not picking up on the missing components?

As I step in and out of the conversation here, the fundamental issues I’m observing is that we are dealing with our own journeys to healing the damage of the past indoctrination implicit or explicit, overtly or covertly of a belief system that ACE fully encompasses and imparts to it’s students regardless of doctrinal or denominational differences between the church schools or the parents of the home-schooled children using the curricula.

Let me point out something I noticed yesterday. My son’s first day of school is today. Last night we took over school supplies met the teacher and other classmates.

Here is what I saw: A BIG poster on the class room wall with big bold print at the top “Critical Thinking Questions”

Undoubtedly the poster hanging in my son’s 3rd grade public school class room that thrilled me “Critical Thinking Questions” would send shivers down the backs of all the ACE school principles I ever knew. Never once in my entire ACE career of K-12, I repeat, never, ever, once, in attending multiple ACE schools, visiting multiple ACE Schools, did I ever see the like of that simple poster. I never found anything like this in the PACES. (correct me if I’m forgetting an isolated instance where this might have occurred)

I know beyond any shadow of any doubt that Critical Thinking Questions were not an integral part of my personal ACE learning process 1st, 2nd or 3rd editions included. Now in front of me last night is this very PAINFUL reminder! A poster in a USA 3rd grade public school class room that would have “slightly” altered the course of my own destiny had this most fundamental premise of all learning been of the slightest interest to Donald Howard (I don’t at all respect the title(s) often attached to his name; even Mister seems uncouth, what is so genteel of willful ignorance and decidedly willful caprice to a known “dis-education”…sorry, a little anger coming out).

Now after much time as Cohen put it: “it took a lot of quiet time for the devotional bad habits ingrained in them to be extinguished” A very slow process spanning 9 years to the day! I’m liking more and more the Critical Thinking Process. I like the philosophies and psychologies that look at the “what’s missing” part. The fact that ACE altogether expunges critical thinking from a system that panders as a pseudo-education leaves a great big HOLE. We need to ask “WHY” does this not matter to ACE or to the Fundamental Bible-Believer, the ACE kind.

Case in point: I did not fully comprehend my own injustice, my own victimization at the hands of ACE and those who decided to use that curriculum, until just yesterday that a US citizen in 3rd grade was encouraged by the US public education system to think critically. As a father I safely assumed that at some point those skills would be taught, but I was thrilled to see the simple solid questions out-lined right out in the open for my very own flesh and blood to view, to ponder, and apply personally in 3rd grade!

My memory is so short, and though the points made a lot of sense as I went over them, I cannot quote any of the Critical Thinking Questions from memory at the moment. Contrast to “in the beginning was the word” which I can pull out of memory at any given moment . . . The Gospel of John…Psalms…and many other portions of the writ. I committed to memory (well now a more isolated portion of my memory) large passages of mindless rhetoric! Maybe as neuron science teaches me, something I learned on my own, many years after the fact and publications of these findings, some of my Bible-Beleiver neurons in my brain that fired together wired so aptly together to make memorization and retention of passages of writ so accessible are loosing their preeminence to new firing patterns that are wiring up new thinking patterns in my brain. Does it matter? ACE, slogging through all this crap. I suppose that depends on the bias of the person making the observation.

So those of you who think this “leavingfundamentalism/ACE is all made up, or it was just “his/her” experience. Think again, but this time critically! The criticism/detractions that sometimes appears on this site, Jonny, are the opinions of fellow-humans who have an engine compartment, in fact each all have grey matter in the compartment, but why do the “gears slip” so to speak, why are there such mindless, thoughtless things said here by those who want to point out the exterior qualities and beauties of an “pseudo-educational system”. They are the voices of those who think, they have the capacity to think, but may be missing a few thinking components, hopefully the missing components are being somehow activated by their expressions that detract from the underlining reality of pain and suffering that ACE has created for so many of us that gather on this site.

Self-deception is a human propensity! It’s scary, really scary to break out of the individual status quo of the ACE system of thought. Cohen says we are special, and as broken and as screwed up as our thinking is, as cautious, scared, scarred, and self-debasing and what sometimes feels like the opposite of self-reliant, well we have got to make the honest admission: “WE LEFT” Cohen is right! We here are “becom(ing) strongly independent and self-reliant.

My postscript . . . . . .

PLEASE those of you in higher education circles, those of you who can think, are lucid; HELP US, those of us who are late-bloomers, those of us who want to learn, want to know how to critically think for ourselves. PLEASE get involved in these discussions here and other modern political think tanks of education systems and governments in the USA, Europe, and the world over.

We are smarter than this craziness that you see us all dealing and slogging through here at leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com World cultures are making many minor and major corrections as we all evolve. I hope that I can be compassionate always. I don’t tolerate injustice, and at least here in the US the compulsory dictum of children having the right to a free public education is of the greatest concern to me personally.

Many detractors jeer, leer, and prey upon us as we find our way to some semblance of sanity. Those of you who respect us for who we are, where we are at in our journeys . . . PLEASE HELP, and if you’ve tried once and we didn’t listen, please keep trying. Point us to those resources and information that will jump-start us on our journeys to mental health and human wholeness.