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Well, I just got back from the signing. Seeing as this is Berkeley I was suprised by how placent this talk could be. None of the questions were all that challenging and we laughed at all the jokes (myself included, some were pretty damn funny). The first part is what really bothered me. One thing I truely believe it is the duty of all thinking people types to raise the level of the debate – and something which I am becoming more and more dissatisfied with. I wont try to paraphrase everything – but here are excepts:

WHERE WE LIVE:
90% of all office space built in the 90′s was in the subburb; this leads to a large class of people who are raised and mature without either an urban or rural existance. Types of subburbs: inner ring, outer ring, immigrant zones.

CHILDREARING:
“America is the only place where children are expected to be different form their parents” – Margaret Mead

Modern child rearing places kids in heavy achievements environments.
In the 60′s andd 70′s kids took drugs to ‘think out of the box’ – now we give drugs (ritilin) to make them more conformist, to think inside an established framework.

EDUCATION:
An incredible busy-ness is bred into highschool kids, when they eventually reach college after the thousands of volunteer hours and president of this, secretary of that – they are bred to be professional.

One of the failings of the great protestant learning centers is there is a lack of attention to character. There are 2 great themes running through America education 1) Achievement
2) Quality
Recently all of our kids eggs have been placed in the achievement basket

CLASH OF CULTURES:
The Bougoise and the Bohemian, the bougoise won. What we are seeing now is the prevalence of it, sometimes carring a bohemian patina.