Here in America, organized education is making sure our children know what kind of society they will have to live in and how they will be expected to “accept the things they cannot change.”

Three examples have hit the news recently.

In Wilton, CT, a forward thinking high school theatre troupe wanted to stage a play entitled Voices in Conflict, in which students played Iraqi War soldiers, including those from the high school, and read from their private and public statements about their experiences and thoughts about the war.

You can probably guess what happened.

The principal of this modern salon of contemporary American education, Timothy H. Canty, who, according to the New York Times, has had kittens over his students’ free speech before, quashed the production after the apparent protest of one student who has a brother serving in Iraq that the production was not “fair and balanced” in the Fox News sense.

That may be unfair to the student, Gabby Alessi-Friedlander, because Canty, like many other U.S. high school principals, may have cancelled the play without any external pressure at all. Students later tried to rework the play so it would be adapted to “community standards” but even that wouldn’t mollify a principal running scared.

Not only was the performance banned in the school, but in typical overreaching fashion, Canty banned the theatre department from performing the play outside the school as well.

Of course, Canty’s move was a typically stupid bureaucratic overreaction which had the predicted boomerang effect — a play that probably would have garnered little notice outside Wilton is now splashed all over the national media and Internet. Good job of keeping that lid on the controversy, Tim!

As always in cases like this, the students are learning a different and perhaps more valuable lesson: When it comes to anything controversial about the hot button issues of American life, it’s best to let the adults in the mainstream media safely frame the issue.

But the mission of American education and its network of obedience schools is broader than reminding students that any opinions outside those which societal authorities provide them with are dangerous and unwanted.

The Wilton story had wings largely because the students had access to the Internet, where one could actually read the various scripts of Voices of Conflict as well as the comments of students and bloggers about the controversy.

And that access to the Internet is also in the sights of various school administrators who understand that the Net is the biggest single threat to their job security and hopes of further career advancement as well as a threat to the kind of society they are helping to shape.

A Catholic grade school, St. Hugo of the Hills in affluent Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, has banned its kindergarten through eighth grade students from having personal sites on MySpace, the popular networking site.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Sister Margaret Van Velzen, principal of the school, said the policy was in response to concerns about students posting “nasty things on the Internet,” and as an attempt to keep the children safe.

And to make sure none of the kiddies with Net skills that would shame most of their parents are still lurking in the dangerous ether, school volunteers are busily combing MySpace to ferret out any lingering samizdat.

They might have learned those techniques from the Chinese government, but I digress.

What is also interesting is that both private and public schools now feel their long arm of administrative control can reach far outside the classroom and into the private lives and activities of its students and their families. This is also consistent with the government’s evolving view of its citizens.

In fact, there is a case current before the U.S. Supreme Court, the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case, which may give legal imprimatur on such reach. That case revolves around a student who unfurled a banner with the previously mentioned phrase, in a public place outside school hours and property but in a school sponsored activity.

I would bet that even though Christian legal groups are supporting the student’s free speech rights (so Christian kids can have the same speech rights in schools) that the Court will, in the current fashion, rule in favour of control and authority.

What always amazes me in these cases are the issues that schools should be facing but instead they opt for the draconian crushing of free speech. In the St. Hugo case, why are its students lying en masse to open MySpace accounts, which you must be 14 to sign up for according to the site’s rules?

Oh, but that’s an issue the good Sister doesn’t want to strike with a 12 inch ruler, eh?

And, in the Wilton case, why exactly are the actual words of Iraqi war veterans too dangerous to be uttered on a public high school stage? Why must some students’ sensibilities toward facing unpleasant realities trump other students’ rights to explore those realities?

Again, I’m sure you won’t see Tim Canty leading a discussion panel on that issue anytime soon.

Okay, what have we learned so far, kids? Schools see it as their mission to provide you with a milquetoast education that makes you compliant citizens in the new world of market control, so keep political opinions to yourself. And, second, don’t try to post any of those opinions on the Net — or risk suspension. You are being watched.

One more thing — within the classroom, let’s alter history and blunt its sharper edges so students won’t get any ideas about actually changing society later because, as anyone who has cracked open an American high school “social studies” textbook knows, everything is now, and has generally always been, A-OK.

Most American schools use bland, non-controversial textbooks approved by religious fruitcakes in Texas, as a way of shunting aside any objections by powerful business and religious groups who see the school system as the primary producer of compliant, non-questioning citizens.

Occasionally though, in order to protect the sanitized, triumphalist version of American history and life which pressure groups insist our students learn (and if they didn’t, how could we find enough willing participants for all these wars?), sometimes schools have to step in and do it themselves.

A Los Angeles area charter elementary school, 80 per cent black and about 100 per cent minority, recently banned children from reciting a poem about Emmett Till during Black History Month.

Till, to recap, was a young black man lynched in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. Till’s lynching proved a turning point and rallying cry for the American civil rights movement, but of course, we don’t discuss such historical dirty linen in polite company anymore.

In fact, the co-founder and executive director of Celerity Nascent Charter School, said it best to The Los Angeles Times: “Our whole goal is how do we get these kids to not look at all of the bad things that could happen to them and instead focus on the process of how do we become the next surgeon or the next politician,” said Vielka McFarlane. “We don’t want to focus on how the history of the country has been checkered (emphasis mine and isn’t that a safe way to put it?) but on how do we dress for success, walk proud and celebrate all the accomplishments we’ve made.”

The idea that those who do not learn from history are condemned to see it repeated is probably lost on Ms. McFarlane. She’s right about churning out people who will “dress for success” and play the corporate game, which might be the first prime directive of American education today.

So the kiddies delicate sensibilities were protected from this nasty part of American history. And to make sure such threats against sanitized history are not repeated, the school dutifully fired the teachers who dared to actually teach these kids about their history.

Yes American public and private education should be proud of their growing role in producing esteemed yet ignorant students who will accept opinions formulated for their protection — students trained not to ask uncomfortable questions who learn that opinions not vetted by authority figures are dangerous and unwelcome.

And if anyone thinks universities will undo the damage, dangerous ideas there are being quashed by people like Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz and their academic stormtroopers as well as by the influence of all that corporate and Pentagon research cash that keeps many a college in the black.

So we see trends in American education that directly lead to the kind of society evolving today — one built not on the vibrant give-and-take of a true democracy, but on rampant media fueled consumerism in which ignorant citizens passively cede their rights and freedoms to the ruling élite.

Somewhere, Pavlov, Huxley and Orwell shake their heads knowingly.

Keith Gottschalk

Keith Gottschalk

U.S. Keith Gottschalk has written for daily newspapers in Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. He also had a recent stint as a radio talk show host in Illinois. As a result of living in the high ground...