2nd December 21 - Schola

Dr dear Dr: What is the point of going to school, if we have to wear masks now again?

Einstein tells us that the best education comes from fairy tales - and certainly the government instruction to wear masks at school must seem like a right rip-roaring fairy tale itself, dropped straight onto the school desk in front from the Victorian Era of the 19th Century - shocking stuff if one is a school pupil. This enquiry comes from a student in Wales, where much has been made of the Cv-19 Virus, if not a something forthcoming Ebo-23 style Virus. Now there is naturally a feeling abroad in our times that every now and then a school, particularly a disciplinarian school, needs a revolution, and certainly there are schoolgirls like Greta the Great who believe in such manifestazioni, pushing her 167th School Strike for the record at the moment, but the question shows us that sometimes a personal and privacy block to school can occur just when a student has become tired of the rules and regulations imposed at school by the government and the staff. After all, surely there is more to education than the blind following of government and governance rules from the governesses that impose their orders and make their authority felt over students like the great rulers of the world of men? After all, the friends that students make at school sometimes become long term friends, life-long friends, and many even eternal friends, and the opportunity to socialise at school is regarded by the students as one of the great blessings of the school experiment in our time. Masks seem to be a cruel and heartless way of inhibiting such educating socialisation - In other civilisations especially one ancient one, the worst insult that can be said to a person is that they are poorly educated - MALEDUCATO, education being recognised as a source of civilisation, of civilising rude and untried and untested brute nature. So much so, that many students have often revolted against such rules, but also many students have freely confessed to their parents how mentally ill they feel when Government SAGE Lockdowns shut down their access to dearly beloved friends of school. Is there any hope for our somewhat depressed schoolgirl above?

Clearly, as a Dr Karl Sikora or Dr Karl Wilkinson might say, the purpose of going to school is not to exhaust the students with endless rules and regulations, there is plenty of that elsewhere, even at home sometimes, rather at a school the student is enabled socially to encounter EDUCATORS whose job it is, is to EDUCARE - excavate or lead out from within (ANTE SE DUCERE, ANTE SE IMPELLERE) all that is noble and true and good within a student, enabling the student to find some truth in their world and in their lives, to find knowledge that leads to truth and so on. There are some Government Constitutions around the world that recognise that the right to an education begins at home, enshrining "home schooling" which we have all gotten used to since the national lockdowns this past 2 or 3 years, home schooling as a legitimate right for children, as per Article 42 of our own Constitution at home. But what of schools, where EDUCATORS are not various things:

Not philosophers;

Not political scientists;

Not social enablers;

Not catechising catechists even of the true faith;

Not authoritarian governesses;

Not government ministers even primarily;

But rather, they are EDUCATORS, theologians or scientists of the higher forms of knowledge which the student must try to aim for in order to have some background with which to confront the challenges of the world in the future. Educators are then usually and normally FUTURISTS. They buy into Science Fiction as one of the chief methods of arriving at a coordinated vision of the future. All of this activity takes place with the parents not left out though, with the parents somewhat in mind, since a teacher stands in loco parentium, and as such the school is designed especially the faith school kind, is designed to give students an education that concurs with the general lines of the CONSCIENCES of the parents, especially in matters of religion, of privacy, of respect for others, of civility, of woke prudence, of social and political correctness or politesse in the French vein, of private comportment in the privacy sphere too. So all is contained in the theology of education implicit and assumed by the original word of the genre, namely EDUCARE or EXCAVARE - to excavate and lead out from within what are the best instincts for knowledge of the student, sufficient to help that student survive in a modern futurist world of e-commerce and e-sports for example. In all of this exciting project, if the local government structures advise masks, it is not the end of the world to go through a little inconvenience and encumbrance in order to attain a higher goal, a little temporary short term sacrifice in order to secure a long term happiness goal. Schools have to take into account what philosophers call the Jeremy Bentham Curve, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The spiritualities of the times we live in are lacking in not furnishing us with something that would rival the social doctrine of "instant satisfaction", a social doctrine that makes us immature, too immature to understand a concept like a short term sacrifice of happiness in order to win a long term goal. So we advise the schoolgirl to be patient and long suffering for the time being, and to stay in touch with friends from school in any case, whatever she has to wear on her face during school hours - it is not the end of the world, it is not even the beginning of the end of the world, but it might be the end of the beginning. Bash on regardless, if you can.