Hail La Jolla

Hail La Jolla, Alma Mater,

We will never fail,

Forward sails the good ship Viking

Hail, our high school hail 

One interesting aspect of Facebook is the reestablishment of contact with my high school classmates. This has naturally led to me thinking about high school, and in particular the pep rally. 

It will be 40 years next year so a lot of this is, thankfully, a vague haze. We would all buy ribbons to show our support of our impending football victory-not. In later years I understand the team did quite well. One of our "enemies" was Lincoln High. Why? I have no idea. Why was our school structured to encourage "school spirit." Again, I have no idea.  

Naturally the school was also divided into classes. During these Pep Rallies these classes would compete with each other to see who would be the loudest, and somehow this showed our spirit. Our class usually won. 

I was an athlete in my high school days. But for some reason they did not give me a letter jacket even though I was the best in the school. I was chess champion in my junior and senior years. 

We humans do form groups, but why do the "powers that be" encourage us to form these artificial groups? I think one reason is that it allows the elites to divide us into competing groups.  We are kept busy in trivia, like who will win the next big game. How "we" are better than "them." The Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party actually see the same problems. But it suits the elites for the two groups to hate each other, so they do.

While I do look fondly at my high school, was it a nourishing mother, an Alma Mater, for me? Not really. I am still trying to get rid of the propaganda I was taught there. The purpose of education is societal conformity. This is not all bad. But I do not want to be conformed to this world. 

My advice for those in the public education system is Paul's advice in Romans 12:2, here from the Phillips translation:

Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God re-mold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity. 

Comments

[Eddie H. Nessul]

This is absolutely true... my High School lost 44 straight football games which is still the California state record. We finally won by beating a tiny Baptist High School by a score of 7 to 6, only because they tried for a two point conversion for the win. (BTW - our high school had over 2000 kids)

Funny thing is , that after awhile , we were actually PROUD of the losing record, and there was a weird sort of sadness that we had won. For in our losing streak, we received LOTS of attention, even national magazine and newspaper coverage about our inept team.

We were lost once that identity was gone! Now we were just mediocre, unimportant High School just like the 1000s of other non-descript institutions.

Ahhh the fond memories.... when we were important because we were LOSERS!

Eddie H. Nessul
Amboy, CA

(Read Names Backwards!)