Small, loud minority wants to control behavior of all
In the famous short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, a small, ordinary community gathers on a lovely June day for a ceremony, carried out as it always had been, honoring tradition and the old ways.
The story ends as the townspeople each pick up stones and ominously circle one of their own, ready to throw — to stone the person in the center. It is a custom as old as humanity: driving out a scapegoat, attaching blame to that individual or group.
Something very similar and as vicious is taking place today, but even worse. Because in our real-life story, the community is being taken advantage of. A small but vociferous minority seeks to manipulate others by using manufactured issues to divert attention from themselves.
People who just want to get on with their daily lives are being tricked — being handed stones and told at whom to throw them. This very vocal minority has no policies or plans; they simply want power. They hide behind buzzwords and our society’s difficult recovery from the pandemic, and claim attachment to the “old ways” and familiar customs. They encourage others to be quick to blame convenient scapegoats, and just … throw … that … stone.
Education is an obvious scapegoat. Schools are blamed for teaching accurate history, for expecting students to respect one another, for inviting all students to participate in sports and other activities, for offering important works of literature — the list goes on and on.
In other words, schools are being blamed for doing what society has always asked them to do: to prepare the nation’s youth for challenges and opportunities, to prepare them to become members of the community, to prepare them for careers and adulthood. Public school leaders are being figuratively driven out of the community — made to stand in the center of the stone-throwing circle — blamed for social trends which are actually just the result of the slow arc of history.
The majority of Americans do not think as the vocal stone-throwers do. Is it possible these loud-mouthed angry voices are trying to pull attention away from their own motives? Most Americans have always supported free and fair elections and have believed in the integrity of the process.
The 2020 election has been proven to be fair and accurately tabulated. Support has grown for early and mail-in voting. The nay-sayers are a minority. Other issues, similar numbers: more Americans, according to a Gallop Poll in 2021, support a woman’s right to choose — it is a minority who do not.
More Americans support gay marriage: According to Wikipedia the support is about 70%. Americans of both parties overwhelmingly support gun control legislation. A recent report by NPR found that “by a wide margin” parents of both political parties were satisfied with their local schools. The report finds parents generally believe schools and teachers tried their best to cope with the pandemic, and that most children did not fall seriously behind. Most parents are accepting of their children’s schools’ reading choices. Rather than throwing stones at any of these issues, everyone should be open to the facts.
That small group of attention-seekers does not want us to look for information, but rather to stay focused on issues that are mostly manufactured. They want us to be fearful of change, and to be angry because the future looks uncertain. These small vocal groups are cynically making a lot of noise, intimidating the majority of the community, forcing changes in local schools without giving thought to the impact of those changes on the quality of education; forcing families facing the worst decision of their lives to suffer needlessly, forcing libraries to censor their holdings, forcing teachers to censor their speech, sending children seeking help with identity into their own private hells.
A small minority wants to control the behavior of everyone — and they want everyone to not notice their true motives. They are gaslighting; handing out stones to throw at convenient targets, and quietly stepping into the vacuum left behind; grabbing power. No wonder the story "The Lottery" has been banned.
Sharon Kourous is a retired teacher and a member of Stronger Together Huddle, a group engaged in supporting and promoting the common good of all.
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Small, loud minority wants to control behavior of all
