June 30, 2005
Gatto Chapter 16 - A conspiracy against ourselves
The real conspirators were ourselves. When we sold our liberty for the promise of automatic security, we became like children in a conspiracy against growing up, sad children who conspire against their own children, consigning them over and over to the denaturing vats of compulsory state factory schooling.
We were warned a long time ago...any man that trades freedom for security deserves neither. Government provided education that promises a good job and secure future, government managed retirement that promises a secure future, government managed health care that promises a secure future. It all ties together nicely, eh?
Unfortunately for us, none of those promises can be kept.
None of this was conspiratorial. Each increment was rationally defensible. But the net effect was the destruction of small-town, small-government America, strong families, individual liberty, and a lot of other things people weren’t aware they were trading for a regular corporate paycheck.
We also didn't realize that the regular corporate paycheck wasn't going to be regular.
Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises—no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system.
Interestingly, Daniel Pink writes in his new book that now is the time that the creative class will rise. His theory is that all the mundane production and technical work can and will be outsourced. All that will be left is creative work.
Although plenty went wrong with the national experiment in forced schooling, nothing was as damaging as this.
Samuel Johnson entered a note into his diary several hundred years ago about the powerful effect reading Hamlet was having upon him. He was nine at the time. Abraham Cowley wrote of his "infinite delight" with Spenser’s Faerie Queen—an epic poem that treats moral values allegorically in nine-line stanzas that never existed before Spenser (and hardly since). He spoke of his pleasure with its "Stories of Knights and Giants and Monsters and Brave Houses." Cowley was twelve at the time. It couldn’t have been an easy read in 1630 for anyone, and it’s beyond the reach of many elite college graduates today. What happened? The answer is that Dick and Jane happened. "Frank had a dog. His name was Spot." That happened.
I'm constantly amazed at what my kids teach themselves from books. It should go without saying that they didn't learn to read the "school way".
Gatto also touches on the future a bit. The underclasses have been sold a bill of goods. A college degree isn't really worth that much either. The working class is starting to realize that 16 years of school was just a way to keep us busy and keep us under control.
What happens if we decide to revolt?
All your children are belonging to us
In Texas, it's apparently ok to do in school mental screenings without parental permission, then come seize the kids from the parents and institutionalize them in a state hospital; where state doctors administer anti psychotic drug regimes designed primarily to spend taxpayer dollars on the drug companies newest and most expensive drugs.
Use code MJZ6LY to read the whole article.
Hat tip:The Other Mother
Permalink | Comments (1)Homeschooling has arrived
When a daily newspaper writes an article about two homeschool organizations fighting over the meaning of the word inclusive, you know you've arrived.
I'm not sure exactly where we've arrived at though, and I'm not sure we really want to be here.
The flap is over an inclusive group explicitly stating that gays are welcome, which caused home-school.com to remove their listing as discriminatory against most major religions.
If you understand that please explain it in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (1)June 29, 2005
It's like Netflix for books
Zooba. Create your reading list and once a month they ship you the book on top of your list and bill you $9.95, shipping is free.
That sounds like a very good deal.
Permalink | Comments (6)Homeschool humor - or lack thereof
How many negative stereotypes can you find in this cartoon?
Public school parent locks kids in trunk
Actually, I have no idea how the kids are educated. However, we can assume they are not homeschooled because it would be front and center in the article if they were. Bravo to the citizen that saw it happen and got help, and bravo to the off duty police officer who took charge, rescued the kids, and called in the local police.
Permalink | Comments (0)June 28, 2005
Wil Wheaton on Slashdot
Everybodys favorite writer/geek/actor Wil Wheaton finally answered his Slashdot interview questions from about 7 months ago. Lots of interesting insights into Star Trek, life in the limelight and coming to terms with life as a "former" child star.
Probably the most thoughtful and interesting interview I've seen on Slashdot.
Permalink | Comments (0)My first paid advertiser
Check it out ====================>>>>>>>>>
Woo hoo.
Now I guess I should probably actually post something interresting. It's been a few days.
Permalink | Comments (1)June 27, 2005
I survived
I survived the wild waters of the Lehigh River. Actually, class II and III rapids pretty much equates to a log flume ride without the big drop at the end. There was a dam release upstream on Friday, so the water was flowing about as high and fast as it can under normal circumstances.
June 24, 2005
Gone rafting
I'm white water rafting with the Boy Scouts this weekend. Assuming I don't get thrown from the raft and drown, I'll be posting again Sunday evening. I've got a waterproof disposable camera, so hopefully I'll get some decent pictures.
Permalink | Comments (0)Don't Talk To Strangers
The 11 year Cub Scout that was lost in the Utah wilderness would have been found sooner if he had not hidden from his rescuers. The "Don't talk to Strangers" mantra was so drilled into him that he hid from the very people trying to rescue him.
Security guru Bruce Schneier points out that in real life, most people are good and the the odds are overwhelming that a random stranger will not do you harm. In fact, family and friends are probably more dangerous.
We talked about this at the dinner table a couple of night ago. I took the same approach that Bruce discusses, relative risk. If you are walking down the street in your neighborhood there is little reason talk to a stranger that pulls up in a car. At that point, you are fine and safe, so more bad things than good things can happen if you engage the stranger. However, if you are lost in the woods, the bigger risk is getting hurt or staying lost, so asking the stranger for help is now the better decision.
A commenter on Bruce's site makes the good point that the don't talk to strangers rule comes from a time when we knew everybody in our neighborhood. Today, our neighbors barely get above stranger status.
BTW, I have read Bruce's book, which may be why I explained it to the kids in much the same way.
Permalink | Comments (9)3 Priests Walk Into A Bar...
No, it's not the setup for a joke. It is a rather good blog post from a former Catholic seminary student turned waiter.
Permalink | Comments (0)June 23, 2005
With conservatives like these...
Following on the heels of the ridiculous medical marijuana ruling, The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that the government can in fact take private property and hand it over to developers. "Public use" seems to be interpreted to mean, "whatever the hell government wants to do."
So much for a system of checks and balances.
Permalink | Comments (4)June 21, 2005
Yearbook Picture Stupidity
Let me see if I understand this...
Mom thinks her 11 year old daughter's yearbook picture is so bad that it will haunt her for life, so she demands that the school recall all 200 yearbooks.
Then she goes on Good Morning America to talk about it, thereby insuring that the picture that was so traumatic when seen by 200 kids will now be posted on the internet and be seen by tens of millions of people worldwide.
Why do I think they are looking for a movie deal ala The Runaway Bride?
Permalink | Comments (2)Report from Nagasaki
George Weller was the first American to visit Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. His reports were censored by the US Military and never printed, until now.
June 20, 2005
My album goes on sale next week
Cool interview with hippie-capitalist CDBaby.com founder Derek Silvers.
My album will be there next week.
In case you don't know me that well, that is a joke. There is no album.
Permalink | Comments (1)Patrick Henry College in The New Yorker
The New Yorker has turned out a pretty good article on Patrick Henry College. The usual minor quibbles are in there, but overall it wasn't as slanted as I expected, given the source.
Permalink | Comments (0)June 18, 2005
Homeschool Testing Woes
The CAT test scoring service called this morning. They had a mechanical malfunction and one of their scoring machines ate about 25 tests. The tests were destroyed and can't even be hand scored.
One of those tests belonged to Breck.
So he gets redo this year's standardized testing exercise.
He took it rather well, once he confirmed that he wouldn't have to do anything else on those days he retakes the test.
Permalink | Comments (0)June 15, 2005
Homeschool Humor
If this makes no sense to you - don't worry. You are probably in the majority. However, I think I have a few readers that will find this as funny as I did.
- Visit the Learning By Grace web site.
- Click on Who We Are on the navigation bar.
- Choose Our Convictions from the pop up list
- Laugh at the irony.
Intrigue and Fun at Daryl's
Remember a couple of month's ago when Daryl was threatened with legal action over opinions he published on his blog?
She's back.
And here too.
And also here.
This time she has supporters popping up like moles in a whack-a-mole game at the arcade. Unfortunately for her, all her supporters are posting from the same IP address.
So what we have is a game of whack-a-troll, not whack-a-mole.
Permalink | Comments (3)Competition in the homeschooler on a horse market
Delaney isn't the only home educated daughter of a blogger studying the equestrian arts.
I love this quote too. I think it was John Taylor Gatto who remarked that of course rich Englishmen felt up to conquering the world - they'd been taught to make very large mammals jump and run when they were boys. Anyone who can make a horse do their will feels a certain confidence in life.
I can't find a similar statement by Gatto or anybody else via Google. Anybody recognize it?
Permalink | Comments (3)June 12, 2005
Gatto Chapter 15 - The Psychopathy of Everyday Schooling
In this chapter, Gatto talks in the present for the first time. This is not a history lesson anymore, this is what the schools are doing to your kids today. If you've been keeping up, none of this will be a surprise.
To understand how this happens, you have to grok the nature of bureaucracies. It's not personal.
The sensationalistic charge that all large corporations, including school corporations, are psychopathic becomes less inflammatory if you admit the obvious first, that all such entities are nonhuman.
All large bureaucracies, public or private, are psychopathic to the degree they are well-managed. It’s a genuine paradox, but time to face the truth of it. Corporate policies like downsizing and environmental degradation, which reduce the quality of life for enormous numbers of people, make perfectly rational sense as devices to reach profitability.
The hierarchical nature of large bureaucracies is what allows these institutions, comprised of people, to ultimately make completely inhumane decisions.
Michel wrote in Political Parties that the primary mission of all institutional managers (including school managers) is to cause their institution to grow in power, in number of employees, in autonomy from public oversight, and in rewards for key personnel. The primary mission is never, of course, the publicly announced one. Whether we are talking about bureaucracies assigned to wage war, deliver mail, or educate children, there is no difference.
In 1911, a prominent German sociologist, Robert Michel, warned in his book Political Parties that the size and prosperity of modern bureaucracies had given them unprecedented ability to buy friends. In this way they shield themselves against internal reform and make themselves impervious to outside reform.
Ever notice how every government reform project, whether it be the schools, the postal system, the Pentagon, or the Dept. of Fisheries, leaves the reformed organization bigger and less efficient than before? It has to be by design. Random luck dictates that once in a while, government should be able to do something right.
Name that something. Name just one government program that works well and at least cost.
A massive effort is underway to link centrally organized control of jobs with centrally organized administration of schooling. This would be an American equivalent of the Chinese "Dangan"—linking a personal file begun in kindergarten (recording academic performance, attitudes, behavioral characteristics, medical records, and other personal data) with all work opportunities.
This is one case where government inefficiency is our friend. All this data already exists on all of us. It's scattered in hundreds of databases. Government will never effectively connect all the dots. The real problem is that government will act as though it has connected all those dots and will make decisions with incomplete data.
This American Dangan will begin with longer school days and years, with more public resources devoted to institutional schooling, with more job opportunities in the school field, more emphasis on standardized testing, more national examinations, plus hitherto unheard of developments like national teaching licenses, national curricula, national goals, national standards, and with the great dream of corporate America since 1900, School-to-Work legislation organizing the youth of America into precocious work battalions
Sound familiar? The only reason that last bit hasn't happened yet is that we have maintained historically low unemployment rates since early in the Clinton Administration. I have no doubt that next time unemployment creeps towards double digits, some sort of national jobs program, with government deciding which job you get, will be proposed.
Gatto then provides us a list of the 8 things schools are really teaching your kids.
The first lesson schools teach is forgetfulness; forcing children to forget how they taught themselves important things like walking and talking.
This was one of the great insights I had as we stared the homeschool journey. Kids teach themselves to walk and talk before age 4, yet they need government approved teachers for the relatively easy stuff after that?
The second lesson schools teach is bewilderment and confusion.
School curriculum only makes sense to school curriculum developers. The kids are totally confused. Nothing is connected from one year to the next, or even one class to the next. Everything exists in silos, devoid of any real meaning.
The third lesson schools teach is that children are assigned by experts to a social class and must stay in the class to which they have been assigned.
Increasingly, there is only one class as the schools strive to treat and teach every kid exactly the same, ignoring all those individual differences that separate us from the robots.
The fourth lesson schools teach is indifference. By bells and other concentration-destroying technology, schools teach that nothing is worth finishing because some arbitrary power intervenes both periodically and aperiodically.
This is one I had never thought about before now. How often do you fail to start something because there isn't time. Is that a learned behavior from school? If we weren't "schooled" would it be more natural to start without regard to finish times? I definitely see that tendency in my kids.
The fifth lesson schools teach is emotional dependency. By stars, checks, smiles, frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, schools condition children to lifelong emotional dependency. It’s like training a dog.
Positive reinforcement with kids is a good thing, but too much of a good thing leads to the self esteem nonsense we see today.
The sixth lesson schools teach is intellectual dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. Good people do it the way the teacher wants it done. Good teachers in their turn wait for the curriculum supervisor or textbook to tell them what to do.
I was never real good at that waiting to be told what to do part.I remember frequently having the days work done 10 minutes into class. The instructional pattern was easy to figure out, so I usually knew we were going to be expected to do all the odd problems at the end of the chapter, or whatever. So instead of listening to the teacher drone on, I usually did the work on my own and was done before anybody else started. Back then, I never understood why that wasn't a good thing.
The seventh lesson schools teach is provisional self-esteem. Self-respect in children must be made contingent on the certification of experts through rituals of number magic. It must not be self-generated as it was for Benjamin Franklin, the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, or Henry Ford.
The kids that figure this out on theory own make lousy students. I know realize that lousy student should be a compliment!
It teaches how hopeless it is to resist because you are always watched. There is no place to hide. Nor should you want to.
And now we have a generation of kids, our future leaders, who think random backpack searches and metal detectors at the doors are normal and acceptable.
By allowing the existence of large bureaucratic systems under centralized control, whether corporate, governmental, or institutional, we unwittingly enter into a hideous conspiracy against ourselves, one in which we resolutely work to limit the growth of our minds and spirits. The only conceivable answer is to break the power of these things, through grit, courage, indomitability and resolution if possible, through acts of personal sabotage and disloyalty if not.
Is home education personal sabotage and disloyalty? I sort of like the sound of that actually.
Permalink | Comments (4)Homeschoolzine.com
Is anybody else getting irritated with Homeschoolzine.com? (I'm not giving them a link.) Every damn day about 25% of the posts in my Bloglines homeschool related searches are this damn site reposting from other sites. I've seen my posts there, Daryl, Spunky, etc.
There is absolutely no value-add and no commentary. The whole thing looks like a poorly conceived play to make money on Google ads.
The IP address of their web server is not showing up in my logs - the search agent must be hosted somewhere else.
Permalink | Comments (2)A Star Wars Musical Tribute
Michele is right, this is the most awesome thing ever. So awesome that I enjoyed it even though it involved listening to Don't Stop Believin' by Journey.
Permalink | Comments (3)June 10, 2005
YARTHS: Stupid Dress Codes
A Maryland senior was denied his diploma because he wore a bolo (string) tie instead of a "real" tie under his graduation gown, as a subtle nod to his Cherokee heritage.
I don't have any idea where my high school diploma is. It's just a piece of paper signed by a bureaucrat. He'll be fine without the official document.
(YARTHS = Yet Another Reason to Homeschool)
I hope he and his parents don't cave. And I hope the ACLU or a Native American rights group gets involved and raises a stink.
Permalink | Comments (1)June 09, 2005
S'Mores - Fisking a recipe
This might be an Internet first - fisking a recipe. Or it might not. I'm too lazy to Google around and see what turns up.
On the great homeschooler campout of 2005 - we stumbled into this recipe for S'Mores on the inside of a package of Hershey Bars. It was damn funny a couple of beers into the evening, and it's still pretty ridiculous 4 days later.
First, Hershey provides the ingredients
4 graham crackers, broken into halves.
2 Hershey Milk Chocolate Bars (1.55 oz.) unwrapped and broken into halves.
4 marshmallows.
For people so dumb that we need a recipe for S'Mores, this ingredient list is inadequate. They felt the need to tell us to unwrap the candy bars, yet didn't bother to specify in which direction the candy bars or crackers should be halved. Do you break them across the middle horizontally or vertically? Does it matter if you do the crackers one way and the candy bar another? I actually don't eat S'Mores (I hate marshmallow) so I can't comment on the appropriateness of the quantities. Is 4 marshmallows enough? Come to think of it, they don't specify full size marshmallows. What if you use the mini marshmallows? How many of those would you need?
If you are going to treat your customers like idiots, at least do a thorough job of it.
Continuing to the actual preparation instructions for outdoor S'Mores.
place half of a Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar onto a graham cracker half. Carefully toast a marshmallow over a grill or campfire (supervise the kids if they are doing this part of the recipe). After the marshmallow is toasted, place it on top of the chocolate bar half. Top it with the second graham cracker half and gently pres it together. Repeat for each serving. Serve immediately. 4 servings.
Have these people ever actually made a S'More over a campfire? Where are the flaming marshmallows? Flaming marshmallows are an integral part of the S'More construction process. If you don't burn a few marshmallows as a sacrifice to the snack Gods, very bad things can happen.
Also, if we are dumb enough to need this recipe, we need a much more explicit safety warning. Hershey's lawyers were totally asleep on this one. Not once are we warned that the S'More may be hot. There is no warning against sticking flaming marshmallows in your mouth or on any other body part. There is no explicit instruction to place the marshmallow on a stick or skewer. Following the recipe could lead you to hold your hand over the fire as you attempt to toast your marshmallow. That would hurt.
We also learned that when making S'Mores, only real Nabisco brand graham crackers will do.The generics, particularly the WalMart brand, taste like cardboard. According to the kids, they burn sort of like cardboard too.
Permalink | Comments (2)June 08, 2005
DidToday Demo
DidToday (the du Toits) has launched a self guided demo of their web based homeschool organizer product.
I like the interface, very clean and intuitive. I can't see us using something like it, but it seems useful if you need help tracking and organizing the homeschool day, or want a way to collate everything you are doing in one place. It also creates a transcript from all that data, which sounds particularly useful if your HEKs are getting near college age.
Permalink | Comments (3)Homeschool computing with Linux
An ongoing series describing how to accomlpish all the normal homeschool PC related tasks without Microsoft.
Very nice. I hope he keeps up with the series.
Permalink | Comments (1)Remembering the humble BBS
Jason Scott's documentary on the origins of the BBS is finished and available at his website. 8 hours of geeks talking about computers, modems, communication protocols, and the people that figured it all out and created and populated the BBS world.
I never ran my own BBS but I certainly spent a lot of time online at 2400 bps.
The Wired article on the documentary.
Add this to the Father's Day list :)
Permalink | Comments (0)Advertising in textbooks
Check out these scans of a 1936 Domestic Science textbook from Australia. The book is riddled with advertising.
If the public schools want to address their alleged budget shortfalls by selling advertising I won't complain. They've already sold out the kids to the drug companies anyway.
Permalink | Comments (0)June 07, 2005
Clumsy Lovers - Smart Kid
It's bluegrass-celtic-pop-rap. Or something like that. Whatever you want to call it, it's good. Clearly the best new-to-me artist I've stumbled into this year.
It would make a fine Father's Day gift, not that I'm dropping hints or anything.
Real Audio full song samples of the entire album.
Permalink | Comments (0)Congress officially worried about Bird Flu
and they have directed President Bush to form a task force.
Well, I feel a lot safer now.
Not.
Permalink | Comments (2)June 06, 2005
It's not homeschooling, it's homelearning
Great interview with a homelearning family in CA (that is their term for what they are doing). Hey Tim, does homelearning fit your criteria for a new term?
The article also gives us this delightful quote from an anonymous homeschooling mom.
Kids have been educated at home for centuries, for goodness sake. We're motivated by what’s best for our kids. If that makes us weird, then maybe we’re hitchhiking in the wrong galaxy.
[Geek humor] If she had a towel with her, she might not feel that way.[/geek humor]
via our favorite Psychometrician
Permalink | Comments (1)Why school textbooks suck.
The economic explanation. I suspect most of my readers already understand that politics is the problem. Every time you centralize power you create a target that will be profitable for somebody to exploit.
It happens every time. This is why education and just about everything else in America needs to get smaller and less centralized.
Permalink | Comments (0)Left Brain jobs going to India
Daniel Pink says our left brain is being outsourced. Jobs that can be reduced to a set of repeatable instructions are the jobs going to India. Jobs requiring creativity, not so much.
I'm a left brain guy in a right brain job. Is that good or bad for my future?
Permalink | Comments (1)Hair Supply
Natalie may have found my hidden cache of Bee Gee's CDs, but she missed Hair Supply, a heavy metal tribute to Air Supply.
Go ahead and click the link - you know you want to :)
via Famous James
Permalink | Comments (1)Dumb comments made to homeschoolers
I'm not sure about the original source of this...it is attributed to Mike Farris. It's pretty damn funny though. My favorite is Don't you think your children are being deprived of the thrill of buying school supplies at Wal-Mart when everyone else does?
I guess we are also depriving them of the lesson in socialism when the teacher makes the class put all their supplies into a community bucket. After all, it's not fair if Johnny has more pencils than Jimmy.
Permalink | Comments (2)June 05, 2005
More from the "scary" PS teacher
The teacher referenced last week has added to his comments. It is, as Daryl suggested, very much the Reich argument that the state has a compelling interest in making sure we (homeschoolers) bring our kids up in a sufficiently diverse environment.
To his credit, Jonathan did get motivated to look into Gatto from several references in his comments - and he had some surprisingly good things to say about Gatto's basic thesis.
Speaking of Gatto...I haven't quit. However, I have 3 little league games, fencing, little league team pictures, and a girl scout bridging ceremony to deal with this week. Plus I have that job thing to deal with too.
Permalink | Comments (0)Blogger Beach Campout
I'm under a wife-imposed NDA so I can't disclose any details from the weekend. Feel free to peruse the photos and come to your own conclusions :)
Yes, we had a good time. It stopped raining about 30 minutes before I got to the campground, which was nice. (It was pouring the whole drive down). Beer was drank, campfires were burned, steaks were grilled, and we learned that WalMart brand Graham Crackers taste like cardboard and are unsuitable for the important camping task of making S'mores.
Permalink | Comments (3)
June 02, 2005
Offline for a long weekend
Don't make a mess of the place while I'm gone.
Permalink | Comments (5)I got Farked
Somebody submitted this post to TotalFark - creating a small influx of traffic on May 11. Not exactly my choice for my first appearance on Fark, but I don't control these things.
Permalink | Comments (0)More scary thoughts from the mind of a teacher
This one comes to us courtesy of Bellvue, WA.
...parents are unable to give their children access to a limitless range of choices, because they are limited by their own knowledge and means, and also because they demand more of their children than they would have a right to expect of them merely as fellow citizens. This creates a gap wherein parents lose the moral right to make all choices for their children and yet where these children do not have the full capacity to choose freely for themselves. Schools occupy this gap. This has some interesting implications, about which I plan to write more. One of these implications is the permissibility of home or private schooling. Children must be sheltered from indoctrination; that is, exposure to one viewpoint to the exclusion of all others. Home schooling sits in very dangerous territory.
Does anybody remember having limitless choices in school? Does anybody remember being offered your choice of 12 textbooks in any given subject? Does anybody remember the school library offering a limitless selection of books? Does anybody remember free thought and diversive opinions being encouraged in school?
I don't.
What he really means is that children must be sheltered from indoctrination that he doesn't agree with. The indoctrination happening every day in the school system doesn't seem to bother him.
Permalink | Comments (3)Play 20 Questions...
against an artificial intelligence. I tried 4 different items, fan, carpet, baseball, and coffee. It got them all right. It took 23 questions on coffee, which it blamed on me giving misleading answers. ( I didn't do it on purpose...)
Permalink | Comments (1)June 01, 2005
We are creating a nation of bubble children
A former member of The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports suggests using silken scarves rather than, say, uncooperative tennis balls that lead to frustration and anxiety. "Scarves," he points out, "are soft, non-threatening, and float down slowly.
Please, please let these kids be the competition my kids face when they are older. My kids will crush them like bugs.
The next round of fencing class starts next week. They use real metal foils and are taught to attack and hit like they mean it.
But two decades of research have failed to show a significant connection between high self-esteem and achievement, kindness, or good personal relationships. Unmerited self-esteem, on the other hand, is known to be associated with antisocial behavior — even criminality. Nevertheless, most of our national institutions and organizations that deal with children remain fixated on self-esteem.
Yet another reason to avoid national institutions.
The good intentions or dedication of the self-esteem educators and Scout leaders are not in question. But their common sense is. With few exceptions, the nation's children are mentally and emotionally sound. They relish the challenge of high expectations. They can cope with red pens, tug of war and dodge ball. They can handle being "It."
The author is speaking of Girl Scouts - where PC silliness runs amok. Boy Scouts, for the most part, hasn't changed a whole lot. Breck's troop ends most meetings with a violent game of some sort.
Permalink | Comments (1)