Every generation seems to argue that “their music” is the best, but sorry to tell you that the music of the 60s-80s is the best of all time and there will likely never be anything like it again.
It was a time when music fueled – whether good or bad – cultural revolutions, called out “The man” for the corrupt system that it is and preached to the angst of the teenage journey like no other generation.
My generation never needed the so-called college frat party experience because as The Ramones aptly pointed out in 1979 with “Rock ‘n Roll High School,” high school was the ultimate party life already.
For some of us anyway, and The Who paints a fine picture of life back then for some in their song, “Teenage Wasteland.”
Alice Cooper’s 1972 “School’s Out for Summer,” perfectly captures the intensity of how much we yearned for the school year to end even at the expense of blowing up the school.
Can you imagine that today? Back then, even as teens, we understood irony and satire and didn’t take every little thing as reality.
I think my generation followed in the rebellious footsteps of the 1950s generation fairly closely in that we rebelled against everything even though there wasn’t anything in particular to rebel against other than our parents and not being allowed to leave the dinner table until every last lima bean was consumed.
Not even our dog would eat those slimy, nasty things so I spent hours staring at cold lima beans, or brussel sprouts or one of my dad’s favorites: liver, onions and boiled spinach.
Dad had a weird taste in food and I spent much of my childhood at the dining room table refusing to eat. I couldn’t get the dog to eat what Dad liked so I tried all the tricks as far as spreading the “food” around the plate to make it look like there was less than what was actually there and the napkin only held so much without it being obvious I was stuffing food inside it.
None of that is really the point, but it was just part of growing up back then, though today’s teenage journey appears to be much different than the past few decades.
Today’s generation actually has something to rebel against when it comes to indoctrination, the push to make some of our young believe they aren’t the gender they are, books that normalize pedophilia in their school libraries and so much more these days.
Sometimes when I hear some of those old songs from my high school years, I wonder if some of them were warnings about the future.
I can think of no song better to make that argument than Pink Floyd’s 1979, “Another Brick in the Wall.”
The song opens with:
“We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave them kids alone.”
The next verse emphasizes the point with, “Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone. All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall. All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.”
The song, in essence, is describing “the wall,” as a tragedy, injustice or abuse and each time one of those things occurs, it represents another brick in that wall.
Roger Waters believed in his heart that kids within the educational system were being controlled so much that they were essentially better off without teachers ruining their minds.
For those of us who rebelled during those younger years, perhaps we saw the educational system in a similar way, even during a time when education focused largely on actual education.
In reality, our rebellion, perhaps like the 50s, was simply against authority, but we really didn’t need a reason to rebel. It’s just part of being a teenager and each generation navigates its own way of doing so.
We just had more fun doing it.
But if Waters, and certainly some of us, saw the educational system as a means of control in the 70s and 80s, how bad is it for our teenagers today?
We, as adults, see what’s going on from the outside, so how bad is it from the inside? Are we giving our teens enough of a voice?
We have teachers replacing the American flags in their classrooms with BLM and Pride flags. The Colorado teacher’s union just voted to condemn capitalism.
The union released a statement that read:
“The CEA believes that capitalism inherently exploits children, public schools, land, labor and resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education equality and income income equality.”
Clearly we could have an entire conversation about the insanity of that statement and how disturbing it is that it comes from an organization designed to protect the educational institution, but in fact is a left-wing political organization with leftist goals of destroying everything they touch.
I could easily pick their argument apart, but it’s only a small part of the overall problem that our teens today face that we did not.
We in Manatee County have suffered our own share of scandals and the internal totalitarianism of our school district was exposed, but still with no real accountability despite this new Conservative controlled school board moving the district forward in what appears thus far to be a positive direction.
Or at the very least, we are at a standstill and the district doesn’t appear to be getting worse. I’ll take that as a victory for now.
Moving forward is good, but I don’t think I’m alone in calling for heads within this district to roll for a decade of sinning against our children by building the foundations of indoctrination.
Don’t forget this district had every intention of implementing critical race theory until they were caught by parents.
Schools across the country are canceling Christmas, Halloween and even Valentine’s Day celebrations to limit the risk of offending the nutcases out there.
Schools are banning classic novels like To Kill a Mocking Bird and Tom Sawyer, but as noted, think it’s OK to keep books on normalizing pedophilia.
School administrations are sending students home to change clothes if they wear something patriotic and if the clothes actually make a pro-life, pro-America, or pro-heterosexual statement, they are getting suspended.
Gov. Ron DeSantis makes common sense legislation to review what kind of materials our kids are being exposed to and the rest of the nation – including some people here who I thought were smart – launch their faux outrage about “book burning,” and call us 1930s Nazi Germany.
Nonsense.
Like I said, we see all the disturbing craziness from the outside. We are rightfully outraged and parents are organizing.
I see the occasional student make the news by addressing this kind of nonsense to their school boards, and then I watch the liberal media attack these fine young American students who just want to learn what schools are supposed to teach them.
We are seeing the American educational system ratings drop from first place overall in 2018 to 10th place this year. That’s just the overall ranking. We have dropped even further in individual class rankings.
The fight to return normalcy to our schools is underway and thank God for that. But how much long-term damage has been done? How much damage is being done before We The People right this sinking educational ship?
We have our voices and are using them. I just want to make sure that the most important voices of all … our students … are being heard as well.
Now granted, as many problems as our school district has, it’s probably better than in most deep blue states where the attempt to revive the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are well underway.
But our own students have their share of issues to face with the damage that has been done by our school district. I’d like to hear from them.
I’d like to set up a roundtable discussion with a few of our students and/or recent graduates. The discussion can be anonymous if the student prefers or I’m also happy to thank them publicly for their contribution. It’s up to you and it’s up to them and I’ll honor and respect either decision.
If I can set this group discussion up, parents are, of course, welcome to attend.
If you have a student who has something to say about the concerns they are seeing in their schools, feel free to reach out to me at mark.young@manateeherald.com and let’s set up a discussion.
I hear from parents all the time. I want to hear the voices of our children.
Stay vigilant my fellow Patriots. We are making headway but this long-term battle to save America and our families is far, far from over. Keep informed and please keep sharing our truth.
