Very true. "isms" are just designer templates for stylising thought. They restrict a person's ability to interpret the world to the view-sets listed in the template maker's catalogue. Even worse, they set such views in stone. Would Einstein have been able to perceive his alternative perspective of the universe had he been limited to retro fitting his toughts to some finite number of pre-existing "newtonist" templates?
In both meanings of the word.
It is the curriculum setters' own peculiar obsession with "politics and power relationships" which resulted in their accession to such influential positions in the first place. Are they trying to train protoges for an impractical "all chiefs and no indians" society, or merely limited by their own private obsession with controlling the thoughts of those they believe might otherwise end up controlling them?
Through their agency, compebreastion in our society - far from being eliminated - is going into overdrive as it changes from the mere jostling for prestige sought by the much-reviled "bourgeois", to a fear-driven struggle to become the one remaining individual free to think his or her own thoughts in a totalitarian society.
It is hard to imagine a more fiercly compebreastive society than the one our current curriculum setters are perhaps inadvertently bequeathing future generations.
It all boils down to one simple observation: The committee chairperson's peculiar nightmare is someone else ending up in charge. Do the rest of us really need cradle-to-grave training how to keep our place in someone else's nightmare?
