"If it was possible to educate the Mbuti pygmies of the Congo into the cognitive equivalent of Great Neck Jews, don't you think someone would have tried this already"
Who would try that? The benign, wise rulers of the Congo?
In the Belgian Congo last week massed tom-tom drummers practiced a welcome tattoo. Prosperous Negro shopkeepers climbed up wooden ladders and draped the Congolese flag (a golden star on a blue field) from lampposts and triumphal arches set up along Boulevard Albert I, the spanking concrete highway that bisects the capital city of Leopoldville. In far-off mission churches, encircled by the rain forest that stretches through Belgian territory from the Atlantic to the Mountains of the Moon, choirs of Bantu children rehearsed the Te Deum. African regiments drilled, jazz bands blared in...
If you have a Time subscription (yeah right), you can read the whole thing on line. Otherwise, suffice it to say that (a) the memory hole is a lot deeper than you think, and (b) it's physically possible to teach Bantu children (and perhaps even pygmies) the Te Deum. Not clear that it's a safe and effective method for turning them into the King Ad-Rock, however.
The most interesting, and certainly the most effective, attempt to convert a Stone Age population directly to a civilized lifestyle wasn't even in the 20th century. Or the 19th. Consider the Reductions of Paraguay:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,866343,00.html
In the Belgian Congo last week massed tom-tom drummers practiced a welcome tattoo. Prosperous Negro shopkeepers climbed up wooden ladders and draped the Congolese flag (a golden star on a blue field) from lampposts and triumphal arches set up along Boulevard Albert I, the spanking concrete highway that bisects the capital city of Leopoldville. In far-off mission churches, encircled by the rain forest that stretches through Belgian territory from the Atlantic to the Mountains of the Moon, choirs of Bantu children rehearsed the Te Deum. African regiments drilled, jazz bands blared in...
If you have a Time subscription (yeah right), you can read the whole thing on line. Otherwise, suffice it to say that (a) the memory hole is a lot deeper than you think, and (b) it's physically possible to teach Bantu children (and perhaps even pygmies) the Te Deum. Not clear that it's a safe and effective method for turning them into the King Ad-Rock, however.
The most interesting, and certainly the most effective, attempt to convert a Stone Age population directly to a civilized lifestyle wasn't even in the 20th century. Or the 19th. Consider the Reductions of Paraguay:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit_Reductions