Posted on 08/09/2020 1:23:45 PM PDT by Twotone
As I write this — one month before the traditional start of the school year — a particular coronavirus-related debate burns hotter with each passing day: Should schools reopen this September or not?
I don't have a kid in this fight, and don't envy those who do. My opinions are merely those of an outsider, although that status has never stopped me from expressing myself before.
While I don't have children, I was a child once. I loved the idea of school, but the real thing was marred by the presence of way too many other children, most of whom were loud, restless, unimaginative, rude, and uninterested in or incapable of learning.
One of the pivotal moments of my life was being taken by my estranged father to see Woody Allen's Annie Hall on my 13th birthday, which he had uncharacteristically remembered. Today — perhaps having inherited this mental quirk from my dad — I can't recall the day or even the year I got married (although I do know the month began with a "J") but have no difficulty reliving the revelatory thrill of Not Being Alone In This World as this scene unspooled onto the screen.
The thoughtless lip service we pay to the high-minded, "progressive" concept of mass public education is not reflected in the broader popular culture, where the Truth (or something like it) frequently seeps out between the cracks of our unexamined platitudes.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
My feeling is that the school teachers should have skin in the game. Teach in person or don’t get paid.
It is my opinion that most of the people in our society who are all for the extended lockdown are people who have a guaranteed income stream...retirees, government employees, people who are going to get paid regardless.
I’ll bet they would be clamoring for industry to reopen if they lacked a paycheck due to the lockdown.
Other that “Social Classes” like Band and Sports, I do not remember many positive aspects of being around a lot of other children for 8 hours a day, and a lot of pretty noxious ones.
I saw the film “If” in 1969. It rocked my world.
I HATED school.
If not for the occasional girl, it had no redeeming value at all.
...If not for the occasional girl, it had no redeeming value at all.
Yeah, there was that, but they were on the prowl too.
Lots of +/- there also, I’m quite sure the girls have similar things to say
Tomorrow I will point out to my irritating neighbor who constantly harps that Whites With Guns are responsible for school shootings, that it is White Movie Makers With Guns that are responsible for school shootings.
Another Reason to Homeschool
FTA;
“To circle back to Woody Allen: Annie Hall was the first “grown up” movie he made. Previously, his films were “the early funny ones” he sardonically acknowledged in Stardust Memories — movies like Take the Money and Run, Love and Death, and 1973’s Sleeper.”
I haven’t seen “Love and Death,” but I did see the other two, two of the funniest movies ever. When Woody stared making “grown up” movies, he stopped making really good movies.
I despised school with a white hot burning passion.
But I learned a lot about my fellow humans during that interval, good and bad, that served me well in life.
And also learned a lot about myself as well. I think those are important lessons worth learning.
As for what I scholastically learned in school? Well...I did learn how to type back in the Sixties, and look at me now...
Yes, I do.
Most of the “socialization” learned in school must be unlearned if one is to be successful in marriage, with relatives, the community, and....especially!...in one’s work.
Thankfully, most humans unlearn the toxic school habits and move on to reasonably successful relationships and lives.
School socialization in many ways resembles prison survival socialization. What are cliques? They are school protection gangs!
Add to this the many other ways schools resemble day camp prisons:
...Bells control the inmates movements.
...Students eat in prison like cafeterias with prison quality food.
...They form prison-like social cliques.
...They are told when they can use the restroom ( if they dare).
...Speech, press, and assembly is strictly regulated.
...Students are assigned strict times for exercise.
...School play yards look like prison exercise areas.
...Government bureaucrats regulate with whom a student can assemble.
...Government sniff dogs search lockers for drugs.
...Metal detectors are now routinely found in schools across the nation.
If a student **RATIONALLY** rebels, he is subjects to police, court, and hard-core prison action. If he were sufficiently rebellious, armed police would kill him!
Remember: Behind every government school teacher in this nation stand armed police! ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip!)
Prisoners in prison learn a lot about fellow humans, too.
I went to a small school. Only 65 in my senior class.
Had a smoking hot girlfriend at 15. We broke up 4 years later. The carnal kno2ledge was fun.
True. I intensely disliked some of the lessons I learned about the way people treated each other, but I believe it was indispensable to me to become the person I am today.
We are a composition of both the good and bad things in life that happened to us, and while it would be great fun to not have learned those things, it helped me when I went out into the world, both in how I treated other people, and the understanding of the depths of cruelty and treachery our fellow humans are capable of.
I wouldn’t be me without that.
I moved around a lot (dad was military) and went to eight or nine different schools. I dreaded the first day of school each year, and when the year was up, it was indeed like being released from prison forever.
Or at least for a few months!
My formative events as an adolescent my last two years in high school came not from high school, but from a CYO marching band (like a drum and bugle corps) that I got involved with it. All my love affairs, fights, joys, successes, failures, and lifelong friendships sprung from that activity.
As an aside, I don’t believe our founders could have done as good a job forging a successful Constitution if they hadn’t been subjected to the tyranny of England.
It helped them in incorporating protections against the dark sides of human nature.
Evil exists. Bad people exist. We can’t get through life ignoring them.
Just my opinion.
I was reasonably popular in high school. Editor of the award winning newspaper and literary magazine, graduated third in my class out of 300 or so, AP and Honors classes all the time, and all that.
I hated every single second of it.
I can’t think of any redeeming feature of the experience that I use today. If they had just forced me to read in the real library every day for 8 hours, I could have pulled off a better education in every thing but labs.
It really was just an exercise in paperwork to get to college. Three years wasted as far as I was concerned although everybody thought I must have loved it because I faked interest.
The girl infighting did set me up pretty well for corporate life later, though.
bkmk
Why are **children** expected to put up with conditions in school that would earn an adult **millions** if it happened in a workplace?
Then to rub salt into the injury children are told that this abuse is “good” for them.
While you may choose to submit your children to this cruel environment, other parents are demanding choice. That demand is growing day by day.
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