I suspect secular education here, at least for a part of his education experience. Some of the ideas are borderline tolerable,
just keep well away from me but I'll agree you can make any idiotic decision you choose under your own steam, sort of thing. Hippies would be an on-topic example here. Grow your hair like an abandoned hedge? Fine: grow away! Dress like a scarecrow on acid drops?
some acid dropsSome acid drops are included for reference. None of it matters except insofar as it bodes ill for their eternities; even there though, once I've explained The Gospel Message it's up to them. Which brings us to secular education and exploring lifestyle choices as presented in the classroom. “See those hippies over there?” a teacher enquires – “Perhaps you're a hippie, Nisbert?” The wretched pupil sees the hippies out the classroom window, making swings off a tree, weaving flowers into garlands, laughing a lot and jumping up and down and showing one another how to program laser light shows, some of which are quite good (he thinks) and on the way home he wonders if maybe he really is a hippie after all?
When this happens, telling Mother he'd like to be addressed as
hey maaan, even requesting marihuana muesli for breakfast and fluoro paint for his bedroom walls, there is going to be a reaction. It will be orders of magnitude greater than any reaction to hippies miles away, whom Mother can avoid quite easily, and it will be motivating. She understands (which Nisbert does not) that there are people who can get rid of the hippies. They would like to do so but do need broader community support than they had last week before the so-called teacher had the hippie identity awareness lesson. Unfortunately, it's not only hippies these groups want to get rid of. In fact the hippies would be little more than collateral damage, according to their agenda – but, yes, they would get rid of the hippies.
This seems to be a blind spot in the progressive world view. They may understand that others have different likes and dislikes, different expectations from life and different hopes for subsequent generations. There may well be some overlap: everyone would expect to eat for instance. A major difference, however, is what the final objective should be and that's a difference where matters of taste in wall paint fade into insignificance. As the hippies would say,
It's on another planet, maaan!
Perhaps education of this type existed at the school he attended?