Additionally, there is a sort of simultaneous fear of and fear about children.
Like Freud's Vienna, Americans have trouble with the idea that sexuality is natural and may occur for some very early. Instead there is a sort of blanket denial expressed sometimes in legislation but in other ways as well. I have overheard conversations where, if one did not know better, you would have thought that someone had died--while, the possibility being entertained was merely that they might have had sexual intercourse.
Now, having just returned from the grounds of a high school, I am in shock.
First the theater there (where I happened to be part of a rehearsal) was filthy dirty.
It was every bit as dirty as a run-down theater in Eastern Europe. (I know; I've been there and I have been backstage at a state-owned theater which is dirty because the governments of former socialist/communist countries suffer from a shortage of funds.) In this respect El Paso, Texas reminds me of Slovakia, a country which Americans (inaccurately) call "Eastern European".
No signs on the road told me that the high school was there. I had to guess on the basis of the physical layout of the buildings. No sign told me where to go to reach the theatre. And I note in passing that the enormous parking lots suggest that the school is not teaching children about the fact of climate change.
But, worst of all were the actual signs that were there: telling students how they were allowed to dress....
As if something so simple as a clothing style could doom a person to hell---a clear superstition, but one which I have come to associate with high schools run by citizens of the USA.... (See my previous entry about dress codes in the USA run international school in Bratislava...)
How horrible.
How ugly.
How uncivilized.
How sad.
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