Posted on 07/25/2006 8:10:42 AM PDT by Lovingthis
LOL! The kid's got balls. He'll probably be a Fortune 500 CEO someday, once he escapes the clutches of government education. ;)
I'm glad I got through school before this cr@p hit. And I'm glad I have little girls and not little boys.
I could not survive in this environment - as a student I frequently doodled - and my doodles were usually military or RPG oriented - weapons, battles, etc. I understand that just drawing a gun is enough to get kids suspended these days...
Although it has been a very long time since I was in public school, even back then, before the feminists did their damage, I experienced some of the feminist approach to emasculating boys.
Today, it is substantially worse. The precipitous drop in the rate of boys going on to college and seeking advanced degrees establishes a poor prediction for our nation's future. As boys think less of themselves for being boys, girls (and potential girlfriends/wives) will find them equally undesireable. And when boys and girls don't mix, families aren't created; ESPECIALLY the all-important nuclear family in which a mother and father take part jointly in raising their children. This, in short, is leading the American society to an unmitigated disaster.
The emasculation of males, however, isn't limited to the schools. Everyday, Madison Avenue treats us to 30- and 60-second vignettes in which a helpless and clueless male has to be taught about his one and only shirt by his wife and "loving" family.
No matter how much the feminazis and social reconstructionists claim they want boys to get in touch with their "feminine" side, when they do, the females don't want them for anything other than a friend. For a relationship that goes beyond platonic friendship, most women want a strong guy who will be there to protect them and on whom they can rely. The end message is so convoluted, no wonder boys are confused about what society expects of them. This is leading to increased violence on their part and greater isolation.
Socialists and leftist Do-gooder "let's-all-just-get-along" types are making a mess of our society and if we don't stop kowtowing to them, there won't be too many more generations of Americans in our future.
if just drawing a gun would get you suspended I can't imagine what would have happened to me.
I used to doodle battlecruisers complete with weapon systems, decks, bridges, etc. lol.
BUMP
I worry about how to explain this fact to my son.
A friend and I spent 11th grade English, designing the world's perfect stereo system. Came to about $250,000, if I remember right. This is because the teacher spent the entire year diagramming sentences at a 4th grade level. There's not much to diagramming "The dog is under the chair"...I got classwork and homework all done in about 10 minutes, the teacher got to pass out an 'A', and the school got to crow about how successful it was. Everyone wins, right? I was happy because I was pulling good grades, doing what I was supposed to do, and still having fun.
Then I got to college, and nearly failed out because of the cruddy education that I got in High School. Only a whole lot of work, and a few new friends (who *had* good high schools, and for whom Freshman year of college was largely review) pulled my head above water.
I used to doodle weapons and try to figure out how the action would work, and how that could combine with the the ergonomics to create a realy "cool" automatic rifle - or design the combat knife I'd like to own. Did plenty of battle cruisers, too.
Along with those, I doodled B-17s, P-51s, P-47s, F4Fs, Sherman tanks, PkwIVs, pirate ships, giant robots, powered armor (after I read Starship Troopers, my GI Joe in the Mercury Spacesuit, became a Mobile Infantryman, using an M-60 with its barrel broken off as a flamer, and the Life Support pack as the jump pack/ Y rack), etc.
No way could I ever survive zero tolerance.
I'm confused by your comments about boys being required to employ some decorum in their behavior, and how this is bad.
First let me say you will not find too many more opposed to affirmative action than I. I guess I have passed this on to my kids, (both girls), as my oldest declined the best of the scholarships offered her for graduate work in engineering, (4 years of full tuition and a very generous stipend), simply because it was for women only. If you're going to assert that she does not deserve her place at a prestigious top drawer university studying for a PhD in engineering, and that she got it because she was a woman, you have an earful coming. You do not want to hear the list of accomplishments that made this a possibility for her. It might harm your thesis that this is a girl's world. So, don't peg me as a feminazi. I could not be further from it. I'm much closer to Phyllis Schaffly or Dr. Laura when it comes to most issues. But I don't buy your thesis about boys and the example used to illustrate it is just stupid. Here's why I can't buy your argument.
On the one hand you praise the "rational disciplined approach" used by the military, and on the other you condemn a teacher for "disciplining" a student for highly inappropriate comments in a classroom. If you have not been in the classroom, you can't take this to its logical conclusion, that is, what would happen if you tolerated any and all trash talk coming from these kids mouths. The classroom would be a joke, or more of a joke than it can be in the current climate of indulgent parents who think their little darlings can do no wrong. Think these kinds of kids can make it in the military? I'd love to witness the kid asking the officer in charge why the hell he had to fall in and do "crap" like that. Believe me, this kind of behavior is not helpful in math and science.
Moreover, I can certainly attest to having witnessed both as a student and as a professor, that in the "hard sciences" you cite as requiring this type of behavior, it is rarely seen. In fact, you have a very large international community of men and women involved in these areas, and believe me, they work their a$$es off and don't give any lip. There is far too much work to split hairs over certain assignments. In fact, this type of whining is a good indicator that the hard sciences is too tough and probably not a good choice for this type of person, (male or female). Inquisitive? Yes. Argumentative? In aruing for or against a particular solution to a problem, yes, again, but not disrespectfully. This is a basic rule in the technology industry, where little is accomplished if managers let the creative process degenerate into finger pointing and fighting.
The problem with your reasoning is that the "inquisitive" trait you describe as being helpful in math, science and business, is very different from the disrespectful, arrogant traits shining through in the "why do we have to do this crap?" comment from the example in this article. So, what I might have considered an interesting topic fell completely flat.
The solution. Vouchers! Universal vouchers.
As an indication of the quality of job being done by our current education system, look at the SATs. At the last "renorming" (in 1994, the last I've heard about, anyway) they decided to add 70 points to all the SAT Verbal scores and 10 points to the SAT Math scores.
This means that, in order to get scores comparable to those of the prior generation, they had to increase average scores by about 10%, for the same level of overall performance.
Of course, it was only a 5-6% bonus for those getting very good scores, but it was more than 10% for those doing badly.
As to the allusion that I SUPPORTED the referenced 10th grade male who was disruptive, another read of my posting will show you that I did not.
That said, his attitude could be used to illustrate 10 years of frustration at not having more respectful inquiries answered in a rational way. And to suggest that military TRAINING does not respond to such inquiry is reflective of your ignorance of the military method. Military training ALWAYS answers the "why" in a rational way...but the "why" is rarely asked, and never answered, under operational circumstances.
Now, the technology business is something I have a couple of decades of experience with (in addition to a decade of military experience). The "why" question is ALWAYS ASKED, and eventually, ALWAYS ANSWERED. Additionally, competitive behavior is generally, and culturally, encouraged. There are winners and losers. Winners are great and losers suck. Same with military culture.
Anethema to your feminine sensibilites, I'm sure.
Male only schools are the best way to fix this problem. And the schools should be run by MEN.
I have been concerned about this for a long time.
It also brings back the memory of my freshman algebra class. The nun in charge had a great way of dealing with the variety of 'abilities' in the class. Every Friday we had a quiz. And first thing Monday morning she read the results in reverse order of performance, starting with the lowest grade. Which desk we sat at for the remainder of the week was determined by our grade on the quiz. I and the other 'dummies' had their names read first and proceeded to take our seats in the BACK of the room. Interesting how public shame worked just as well as all that high-falutin educational theory to spur us to better performance.
Boys today feel isolated and outgunned, but many, like Brandon, don’t lack pluck and courage. They often seem to have more of it than their parents, who writhe uncomfortably before a system steeled in the armor of “social conscience.” The game, parents whisper to themselves, is to play along, to maneuver, to outdistance your rival. Brandon’s struggle is an honest one: to preserve truth and his own integrity.
Boys who get a compartment on the special-ed train take the ride to its end without looking out the window. They wait for the moment when they can step out and scorn the rattletrap that took them nowhere. At the end of the line, some, like Brandon, may have forged the resiliency of survival. But that’s not what school is for.
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