Written during the days of “magic beasts back to cage”

写在“神兽归笼”的日子里 -- 献给孩子们

This is International Children's Day. Even the countries most oppressive to them give them a nominal salutation today.

In our country, they are publicly called “magic beasts”, by the whole nation from the government to media, from schools to parents, who are celebrating “Magic Beasts Back To The Cage” these days, as the pandemic receded and schools reopening. On the official news of the Central TV, a parent was laughing heartily after sending the unwilling “magic beast back to the cage”: “He is very miserable. But I am very happy!” This was reported as a good, positive, humorous, genuine reaction, to one of the greatest benefits of life going back to “normal”. Did anyone ask the children? Our child thought the popular phrase used even in official school notices a deeply scary phenomenon. I agree.

When the entire society regards the most vigorous, most curious part of its population, the young, as beasts, that their boundless energy and desire to explore are unwelcome, and that they must be caged, and schools are accurately perceived and designated as the cage..., is there something wrong?

Yes, something is fundamentally wrong, and not with the children, but with society itself.

Let me recall a memory first: Last year I accompanied a Canadian graduate student to Sierra Norte of Oaxaca in southern Mexico for field research. There, due to the rugged terrain, the Zapotec and other Indian tribes have never been totally conquered by the Spanish colonists, but to a large extent preserved their cultures and languages, by living in relative isolation. A Mexican law was passed, to allow them to govern themselves not by Mexican laws, but by “usos y costumbres”, that is, their own traditions and customs.

In many such communities, land is community-owned and not for sale. Every family has a piece of land to build a house and cultivate subsistence crops. The community is governed by elected but unpaid officials, who serve for a fixed period of time but subject to immediate recall if not doing the work or obeying the people. A community member has to serve the community in various government positions, gradually from low to high, in his entire adulthood, until he reaches the venerable old age. Such “cargo”s usually start from age 18, but if one does not want to go to school, one may start early, as a man we talked to did. He started at 12. Now at 30, he is a registrar, an important senior position under the president. Women were not allowed to take “cargo” until fairly recently, but they have become a major force in changing things for the better, especially in healthcare and education. We have met a female president in a village of about 200 residents in the deep mountains.

In this village, the people have realized the official schools were teaching their children nothing relevant, but destroying their culture and language. Therefore they have started their own little schools, picking subjects the parents and children are interested in.

We met with a teenage girl who just graduated from their own school, and was furthering her learning online out of her own choice. She is working in the tourist information office, probably her first public position, her first “cargo”. At about 15, the child is competent, confident, happy, known to the community as one of the persons in charge of that office. She knows she is working for her own community, therefore her manners are of a dignified yet friendly host, nothing slavish as typical of a waged slave or a salesperson on commission in a capitalist society.

Good-looking or not, smart or not, all of them are frank and at ease, confident in their abilities and their knowledge of the community. Everyone is useful and respected. The children do not want to leave the community. They want to make it better. They have a say in everything. And they can take public offices, now or later.

The children are valued members of society, their will is respected, their energy is put in use. They have roles, positions, responsibilities, not in make-believe plays, not in simulation games, not just in school and class, but in real life, in their own community. No one would dare to call them magic beasts, deem their vigour and curiosity unwanted, and cage them in prison-like schools. What we take for granted in China would be very strange to these indigenous societies indeed.

In early May, only two weeks back to school, a child had a breakdown. His mom had to request a one-month stress leave for him. He was unable to sleep, and vomited out what he ate. He was caught by his grandmother at the subway station when running away from home. 15 years old, Grade 9, friendly to everyone and good at studies, this child has been put on a full schedule since Grade 2, with all kinds of extra classes after school, not an hour to spare on playing, to the dismay of his old playmates. In short, he has not been allowed to be a child and finally collapsed. Nobody heard his silent cry for help, and this little kid alone stood helplessly wrapped up by pressure and torture in the name of parenting. No escape. And nobody can save him from his home. A best friend of his says he loves learning, and his parents love him very much. Let us hope after his mental and physical breakdown, his parents will love him enough to keep the cruelty in check. Yet in my conscience I hear his silent cry, and see his lone short thin little figure standing helplessly in the midst of the entire inhuman culture, in which the “successful” conditioning of a child weighs far more than his happiness. Such collective crime committed by adults to children never ceases to enrage me.

The notion of compulsory schooling and standardized education is a relatively recent concept, not as long-standing as people think. It was invented less than 400 years ago by a European male, John Amos Comenius (1592-1670), for nationalist purposes.

“The endeavor to put all men through successive stages of enlightenment is rooted deeply in alchemy, the Great Art of the waning Middle Ages. John Amos Comenius, a Moravian bishop of the seventeenth century, a self-styled pansophist and pedagogue, is rightly considered one of the founders of the modern school. He was among the first to propose seven or twelve grades of compulsory learning. In his Magna Didactica he described schools as devices to “teach everybody everything” and outlined a blueprint for the assembly-line production of knowledge, which according to his method would make education cheaper and better and make growth into full humanity possible for all. But Comenius was not only an early theoretician of mass production, he was an alchemist who adapted the technical language of his craft to describe the art of rearing children. The alchemist sought to refine base elements by graduating their spirits through twelve stages of successive enlightenment, so that for their own and all the world’s benefit they might be transformed into gold. Of course, alchemists failed no matter how often they tried, but each time their “science” yielded new reasons for their failure, and they tried again.

The industrial mode of production was first fully rationalized in the manufacture of a new invisible commodity, called “education.” Pedagogy opened a new chapter in the history of the Ars Magna. Education became the search for an alchemic process that would bring forth a new type of man who would fit into an environment created by scientific magic. But no matter how much each generation spent on its schools, it always turned out that the majority of people were certified as unfit for higher grades of enlightenment and had to be discarded as unprepared for the good life in a man-made world.” (Ivan Illich: Tools for Conviviality)

This practice, therefore, is not from time immemorial, but a modern mistake. Children are not born to be unwelcome beasts, let alone caged. Society, east and west, need to reflect on itself. The Mad Man (Lu Xun: The Mad Man's Diary) read the histories full of morals and ethics, and discovered there were only two words, repeated everywhere on every page between the lines: “EAT MAN”. The Mad Man's final cry was: “Save the children!” This cry never grew out of date. Will anyone hear?

On this day, in this country, I would like to say, with all sincerity, that the world belongs to the children. This is not rhetoric, but literally the truth. This truth is truer than ever before, at this moment of catastrophe leading to extinction. We adults have almost completely destroyed this living earth with our patriarchal civilization. The children, the girls and the boys with them, have to take charge and save the world. Otherwise, this will be the end for all living things. There is no Planet B. Let us be on the side of children.

June 1, 2020