'I believe, Mimplat, ' I answered, 'that they've been able to achieve this breatharianism, as you call it, over many generations. But don't forget, they do eat together from time to time, although it's more of a social thing or even a ritual. Real food, of course. Nothing processed here. And no packaging either. No plastic. Nothing that would harm the environment or any life-form. It kind of raises the bar for us guys at the QSA. Wouldn't you think?'
I told them that the Lemurians work when they feel like it, albeit out of love, not necessity. Sanchi from Schools and Universities was enthralled by their ideas on education.
'Those holograms they use are so amazing!' she began, 'But what about real learning? Do they study at all? It's all very well to discover things, but you still have to sit down and study, don't you?'
'I suppose you could call it experiential learning,' I ventured, 'learning by doing, active participating. When studying western philosophy, for example - and they don't have much to say about western philosophy! - the student interfaces with holograms of the actual philosophers, interviews them, challenges them, and so on.'
'Wow!' gasped Sanchi. 'Can you imagine the kind of technology required for a system like that? I want to live there!'
'You'd have to learn telepathy first!' snapped Mimplat. 'And live on a diet of air and water!'
'Apparently, Sanchi,' I said, 'they're horrified to see how we at home have turned education into a mere springboard for jobs. Even worse is the fact that our education is compulsory and worse again, competitive. They say our schooling, as they call it, destroys the springtime of our lives, confining us to the four walls of a classroom. That's how they put it.'
'You can add the summertime of our lives to that!' laughed Sanchi. 'I spent an extra twelve years on my Masters and PhD!'
'Four walls, they say?' cried Mimplat. 'So what would they prefer? Three walls? No wall at all? It's a school, isn't it? A building! You'd swear it was a prison they were moaning about!'
'They say we spend our whole lives in one kind of a prison or another,' I responded. 'White-collar prisons, blue-collar prisons, prisons of our own making, we are prisoners of our beliefs, he said, of social norms, of advertising and consumerism. Prisons of our own minds. Atlantis is an open prison, according to Xendo. We learn how to be model prisoners at school.'
'That sounds pretty hostile to me,' Mimplat retorted, peevishly. 'No wonder we don't have any truck with these weirdos.'
'Nevertheless, Mimplat, the fact that there are no schools, no churches, no hospitals or no prisons in Lemuria would make you want to sit up and pay attention, wouldn't it? No teachers, no doctors, no police force, no army. No shops, no advertisers, no salespeople. No money. No stress. Just freedom. And beauty. I think he even went so far as to say that it's actually because of our schools that our prisons - the ones with the iron bars - are full.'
'But everybody knows that's simply not true!' demanded Sanshi. 'Education doesn't imprison us. It's the other way round! Surely, you must agree that education is the one redeeming factor in our world that keeps people out of prison! Nobody can deny that!'
'Hear, hear! This Lemurian nonsense is all a load of codswallop! And if I may say so, I speak with some authority here,' cried Craxl, from Justice and Law Enforcement. 'Linking our schools to our prisons is pure cynicism. Who do these Lemurians think they are? They may not have any prisons but they don't have any lawyers either. What kind of a society has no lawyers?'
'OK, Craxl,' I ventured, 'let's play the devil's advocate for a moment, shall we?'
'Be my guest.'
'Education is mandatory in Atlantis up the age of sixteen, right? So we can assume that all the millions of people incarcerated in our prison system have attended school, one way or another, as formative, impressionable children for at least ten years. Would that be correct?'
'So?' he questioned.
'So my case rests, as your legal colleagues might phrase it.'
'But you can't blame the schools if these people turn into criminals, can you? What about the parents? Their social backgrounds?'
'The point the Lemurians were trying to make is that our schools do not offer children the guidance, love and emotional support they need, irrespective of their backgrounds. Even if some schools do, the large class-sizes, the one-size-fits-all approach, the drive to compete and the inexorable link between education, worthiness, respectability, and jobs, all of these things are corrosive. If kids are having a hard time at home, it's going to be even harder for them at school. Youth should be a time of love and joy, not pressure and hard work. It should be like springtime! There is no love in our schools. And where there is no love, fear, anger and delinquency fill the vacuum. That's the point the Lemurians were trying to make.'
I actually got an applause for that little speech!
'More people are educated in our society now than at any time in our history. Isn't this a good thing?' probed Sanshi.
'Actually, I put that very point to them! But you see, they don't regard what we do as education. Simple as that. The idea of an authority figure coming into a room, demanding respect and dumping a load of information to be learned by rote and to regurgitate, much of it questionable, on a bunch of kids or even university students under pressure to do competitive examinations, is simply abhorrent to them. I think fundamentally, they see our system of competitive, repetitive, unjust and invasive programming as a mechanism designed to babysit our children while the parents are out working themselves to the bone to keep the wheels of the economy turning for the benefit of the privileged few. The nefarious link between education and the economy is even worse. The brainwashed children grow up to propagate a system bolstered by the media which is funded to uphold a culture of sleepwalking consumerism.'
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