Even then... the social cohesion in this country has lapsed so much in my half century of life that I can't help but think maybe we could use a little propaganda to come together more as a country.
I can't help but remember one example of my youth to my son's youth a few decades later. When I was in school, the position on fights is if you have the ability to intercede to stop it, you have a responsibility to do so... by the time my son was in school it was, "don't get involved, get a teacher or call the police."
It's just such a stark contrast to me that it's hard to fathom where things are now a couple decades further still from when I was a young kid in later elementary school and Jr. High. Without a shared society and cohesion, we're largely doomed as a society. I realize that some people actually want this, but I really don't.
I want our nation and our people to be successful.
I too am very concerned about a collapse of cohesion, mainly focused on agreement that "lies are wrong", "people given authority should be held to higher standards", "taking bribes should be punished" and "dictatorship is a bad idea". These principles are in trouble these days, as a shocking segment of people have spent a few years demonstrating they don't care. [0]
In fact, those same issues apply to your school scenario! (For the sake of argument, let's wave-away other factors like larger school-sizes, general nostalgia, easier access to deadly weapons, etc.)
Consider: Why are kids being instructed to run off and get a teacher?
It's not because eagle-eyed Mrs. Frizzle is trusted to take in the battlefield at a glance, unsheathing the old yardstick by the whiteboard, this tan-colored Excalibur falling upon the necks of the wicked in defense of the just. Well, at least not where I went to school.
It's actually the opposite, school authorities [1] are summoned because they are not trusted! They are not trusted to carefully investigate and rule fairly when it comes to the former-bystander "doing the right thing." Or, for that matter, trusted to prevent retribution and escalation.
_________
[0] Or at any rate, they weirdly place those principles beneath other stuff like "gay people can't partner up" or *checks notes* "the largest deportation operation in US history".
[1] Teachers, staff, but also indirectly the parents of those involved.
Why turn this into a divisive Trump thing? I'm literally talking about trying to bring the country closer together and the response is just more divisiveness...
The article is a divisive Trump thing about how we cannot have free media anymore because the FCC is censoring stuff.
Your comment about citizenship and tolerance makes sense, but that's also under direct attack by the Trump administration. They literally just forcefully coerced the scouts into dropping the exact things you are advocating for from their program.
There's no real path towards tolerating that and also having a tolerant society. This is the main weakness of liberal democracies, and it's being exploited to tear our institutions down.
Being libertarian minded, very classically liberal... I think most of these institutions might not need to have existed in the first place.
As an example, public funding for PBS... when all you need to is watch the PBS coverage of the SoTU address to see a perfect example in that it was indeed a partisan organization that shouldn't be getting public funding... even if I don't agree with a lot of Republican positions.
They've also been attacking most private universities and all of the privately held media and computing platforms.
As a libertarian, I don't see how you can argue that no private entities should be allowed to have freedom of speech.
Also, I wasn't talking about public funding. I was talking about the federal government illegally soliciting bribes and intimidating private organizations into implementing illegal government policies on their behalf.
I say this as a former First Class scout, the entire thing is a racket. The "point" of Boy Scouts is to make you associate pointless meritocratic flair with actual accomplishment. It is a conditioning and propaganda pipeline with the purpose of stimulating enlistment.
The Boy Scouts were not an apolitical fun-fair, which became pretty glaringly obvious when the Army recruiters came by to meet with middle-schoolers. If you didn't enlist, you probably didn't stick around to earn your Eagle scout.
I think there's some value basic survival skills, but this is pretty removed from modern scouts. It's mostly a recruitment tool and tbf the shift has been awkward in trying to capture the market that "Girl Scouts" carved out.
I can't help but remember one example of my youth to my son's youth a few decades later. When I was in school, the position on fights is if you have the ability to intercede to stop it, you have a responsibility to do so... by the time my son was in school it was, "don't get involved, get a teacher or call the police."
It's just such a stark contrast to me that it's hard to fathom where things are now a couple decades further still from when I was a young kid in later elementary school and Jr. High. Without a shared society and cohesion, we're largely doomed as a society. I realize that some people actually want this, but I really don't.
I want our nation and our people to be successful.