Schools For Civilization

We're going to have another war! Hurrah! Lots of lovely industry, lots of excellent speeches, all our lovely lads and ladies in uniform glorying in the fight! Sure it will cost a bit, but we're all willing to do our part. What's a trillion dollar budget when you have evil itself to eradicate?

Psst. Maybe there's another way.

Subversive! Radical! Where is that devil? Where is that traitor?!

Steady yourself. Maybe there's another way to win. Maybe there's another way to eradicate the evil.

Oh! Well, that's different then. Come, come, dear friend, sit you down, have some tea. Now, what's on your mind, eh? Death rays? International computer hacking? Oh, you look a clever chap - you must be one of those "computer hackers" - is it computer anthrax you have in mind?

Not exactly, fearless one. I was thinking of ... schools.

Schools for freedom fighting! Oh, yes, we'll definitely have an appropriation for that! Teach the rebels how to torture their evil leaders - very good, very good! Let me see, I'm sure I have some useful course material here ... ah yes, "cleaning the AK-47", "electroshock for dummies", "mass graves and disappearances", ...

Pass the sugar, general. No, I was thinking of something a little different this time. What would happen if we spent our trillion dollars on this program right here. It's called "SchoolsForCivilization".

Civilization? Oh yes, I remember now, that's WhatWeAreFightingFor?! Bombs! Guns! Nukes! Civilization, hurrah! So, tell me now, what do these schools teach? How to write computer anthrax?

Oh, better still. I really think you're going to like this, champion of greatness. We're going to destroy evil at its root. We teach secularism to destroy their leaders' religious control of their critical faculties. We teach world history to destroy the political naiveté that leads to blind faith in their government. We teach civil engineering, so they can destroy the physical limitations their leaders use to starve and shackle them. We teach management, diplomacy, and science, to destroy the closed-mindedness that enables fanaticism.

Unconventional thinking! I've heard that that never works! How will you assure attendance at this school? And what about chasing out the bad guys? These evil men must be brought to justice! Dead or alive! Hang 'em high!

Quite so, brilliant mind of mightiness. We'll assure attendance by supplying the good students with food, shelter, and television. There will be regular exams. Students who do poorly will simply be shut out of the school for a week. Your troops will police the whole thing to keep any violent nutcases holed up elsewhere.

Can we at least shoot the criminals? Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, you know! Collateral damage is an acceptable price for victory! And can't we also nuke the bad guys?

Indubitably, magnificent man of action. After a few years, we'll have a graduating class of civilized, reasonable, open minded, constructive people. We'll set them up in businesses, and we'll trade with them. A few years more, and we'll be able to trust them to police themselves, because they'll be as civilized as we are. They'll find their own criminals, and they'll do with them as they see fit.

I didn't hear anything about nuking in that. Are you trying to double-talk me? I want all options open!

Never, fierce defender of niceness and sweetness. We will nuke the bad guys. All the bad guys. Those are the ones who drop out or consistently fail at our school. And we can do it cheap. When our new friends round them up we'll send all these failed humans to Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific, where they can catch fish and live happily for a few months until the nuclear residue in the soil kills them. Should be an effective killer of bad guys for ... oh, say the next few hundred millennia. And then if the radioactivity dies down, we'll nuke it again.

There's something wrong with your plan. I just can't quite put my finger on it. Another scone? Ah, I have it now. You'll never get the Taliban to go along with this.

Your perspicacity knows no bounds, enlightened lion of liberty. But the Taliban will hardly be in a position to do anything about it, since we'll allow no one with a gun or a bomb to get within ten miles of our schools. Our brave soldiers can assure this at a minimal expense.

Ah, but you're saying the United States of America is going to teach other countries about civilization? Am I missing something here? Are we truly civilized?

You never miss a beat, great man of history. There are many things about our own civilization that could be improved, if we ever set our minds to this. But we still enjoy many freedoms thanks to our laws and material wealth that others lack. If we teach and enforce our laws among our students, and impart to them the skills that created our wealth, we enable the development of our enemies, and ourselves enjoy the profits that will result. This way some good can come from this great war.

Would this school (http://archives.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000625mag-taliban.html) be a good place to start?

Surely not, fearsome instrument of vengeance. That is a school of fervid religion, the very opposite of our SchoolsForCivilization. We intend here to instill our democratic and financial methods, our western culture, our values, our civilization in the children of the barbarians. But make no mistake; the establishment of these schools is not itself an act of civilization. It is an act of war, which is why I bring it to you, scion of supreme force. But it is a new kind of war - one with an achievable and constructive end, and a very low budget. This is finally the war we can win.

"Food, shelter, and television" - I was under the impression consumer society was destroying civilization.

How can that be, superman of serenity, when it has produced such an exemplar of excellence as yourself? I scarcely need explain that, if people are constantly scrapping for food and shelter, they will never be able to take time to acquire civilization. And as for television, our civilization was built on the ideals of Big Bird and Barney. Tolerance and human kindness, inculcated in those of the tenderest years, strike at the heart of the culture of our enemies. Our satirical sitcoms are the perfect instrument to pacify idealists and revolutionaries among their parents. Look at our western world - how passive and thoughtless is our TV-controlled populace. Truly an invaluable instrument of civilization is our TV.

Ah yes, idealists, young fools devoted to improving the lives of the unwashed. And revolutionaries, heaven forbid that America should ever have anything to do with them! Best if all were dispatched haste-post-haste, none of this bun-foodling with televisions!

Indeed, best every last one perish by fire, market-leader of magnanimity, if they would impose their ideals by the slaughter of innocents. Such two-legged beasts will never accept the material and intellectual benefits of our society. Yet how can we tell friend from foe? Dreamy folk-lyricist from bomb-toting maniac? We can't just go by their choice of headgear. We must give each an opportunity to prove themselves worthy of productive lives in our culture. This is just the opportunity provided by SchoolsForCivilization.

If everyone does it, it might work. If they don't, it won't. Imagine the odds of everybody starting from behind that 'curtain of anonymity'. It'll be slow going if it's not done on a massive scale.

Your expansive vision is a great gift, venge-giver of unquestionable puissance. A journey of a thousand miles begins at the spot beneath one's feet. The growth of the system of schools must be nurtured and marshaled. It will require careful planning, management, and a capitalistic bottom line if it's to avoid counterproduction and collapse. But there are precedents. Think of SchoolsForCivilization as the establishment of a secular monastic system. Just as the medieval monks enabled the reformation, renaissance, and enlightenment of the West, so SchoolsForCivilization must bring new light to the ThirdWorld?.

CARE does this - without the silly television part. It works quite well. It's also an effective form of birth control. (This might not be your objective, but it can be an effective part of a strategy to reduce poverty.) -- JeffGrigg

Effective international birth control (aside of the female infanticide issue) begins with the recognition that societies (regardless of their stated cultural preachings on fertility) in practice really do cycle between periods of high and low production. A system of gentle rewards for reducing population pressure would be more likely to work than an adversarial public attack on a culture's superficial stated ideals. But of course we've only been trying the latter. --PhlIp

Does being colonized by Catholics count as "a culture's superficial stated ideals"? --SimonArmstrong

Not all Catholicized cultures are the same. In some, priests marry. In the Peruvian jungle, for example, locals still practice amour seco ("dry love") using an herbal medicine. --PhlIp

Check out the Grameen Bank, http://www.grameen-info.org to see civilization autodidacticism in action.

But oh bejeweled money lender - what good is a little money without a little education to teach people what to do with it, besides buy Happy Meals?

Keep in mind that the programs to provide small step-up loans to the WOMEN in under-developed countries has done wonders. In those countries the men are typically lazy slobs who strut around carrying huge guns and never lift a finger to fix any infrastructure. The women, tired of waiting for them to fix things, typically band together to get anything done.

Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think about western civilization?

Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

See HistoryIsWrittenByTheConquerors.

What would be taught in this school? WhatIsCivilization?

The White Man's Burden, by Rudyard Kipling

(written by Kipling (who was British) when the U.S. conquered the Phillipines around 1900)

Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden-- No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper-- The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden-- And reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard-- The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-- "Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden-- Ye dare not stoop to less-- Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden-- Have done with childish days-- The lightly proferred laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!