It reminds me of some of the theme in this movie. It was a comedy, but there was a real element of truth behind it...
Posted on 10/21/2006 10:38:35 PM PDT by SmithL
The dispatches arrived in a bunch and pointed too much to the same conclusion to be coincidence. The conclusion: We're doomed. And it's not al-Qaida doing us in. We're doing it to ourselves.
In what is surely the tip of the social iceberg, a New England grade school has joined schools across the country in prohibiting the kids from playing tag at recess.
Touch football is also banned. The schools are growingly - and legitimately - fearful of lawsuits over playground accidents by litigious parents. Seesaws and jungle gyms have long since disappeared from playgrounds.
But there is probably more at work here than just fear of the courtroom: the kids' feelings. Remember a few years ago when the schools started banning dodge ball? The problem was, dodge ball was exclusionary, the point being to knock people out of the game at great risk to their positive self-image.
The problem of unsupervised games and skinned knees may be self-solving because surveys show recesses are shriveling, with the schools arguing they need that time to prepare their students for the tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.
So how's that working out?
Not so hot, according to a Brookings Institution study. It found that, while American eighth-graders professed enjoyment of math and confidence in their math skills, they didn't perform as well as foreign eighth-graders, who were not so happy and confident.
Summed up one account: "Even the least confident students in Singapore outscored the most confident Americans."
Countries like the United States that teach math by trying to relate it to daily life using real-life examples have the worst scores. There's a two-word explanation for that: binomial theorem. When was the last time you had occasion in daily life to use that basic first step in introductory algebra? The more math you learn, the more remote it is from real life.
The final threads of this tapestry of doom came together when the Associated Press filed a story about an NFL program to help combat the epidemic of childhood obesity, a condition caused in part, the experts say, by a lack of exercise like, oh, say, playing tag or dodge ball.
The program aims to work physical activity into the classroom. Reported the AP:
"New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning dropped by a Manhattan public school this week where he showed eighth-graders how to add some exercise to their math class. He had them perform squats, then count their own heart rates for 15 seconds and multiply by four to calculate their heartbeats per minute."
So here we have eighth-graders - 13-year-olds - being challenged to count into the double digits and then multiply that number by four.
A science lesson would teach the dangers of cholesterol and the importance of healthy hearts by having the kids play - get this - tag. Imagine what it will do to the self-esteem of an eighth-grader who in a classroom game of tag is chosen to be cholesterol, heart-clogging fat.
We will ask ourselves how we got to be so fat and stupid. And the answer will come: Education.
We're doomed.
Indeed, the descendants of the flinty New Englanders who chased the British redcoats from Lexington Green and Concord Bridge back to Boston are prohibited from playing all unsupervised "chasing games."
There is likely some advantage in approaching a difficult task with humility and trepidation, but we do lead the world, however, in instilling self-esteem.
If you're really good, there are only about five other people in the world you can talk to, and none of them, very likely, is a Singaporean eighth-grader.
It reminds me of some of the theme in this movie. It was a comedy, but there was a real element of truth behind it...
And when I was young, if I told my Mother I was "bored"..she'd tell me I could run the sweeper or pick up a dust rag! (I was hardly ever "bored" :)
sw
Lord knows that there's plenty of offensive stuff this time around.
Those were great years. I wouldn't trade it either.
I used to walk 2 miles home from school when the weather was good. In the 50's you didn't need to worry about getting abducted or molested. We have lost a lot of innocence.
When my boys were in school, they had the usual 1st, 2nd and 3rd place ribbons on play day. By the time my daughter was in school, they were put in groups of 10 kids on play day and every event had 10 ribbons, 1st through 10th place. I remember thinking this is giving the kids the wrong message, the real world doesn't give you a ribbon for being in 10th place. We all need to learn to deal with the fact that some people are better suited to certain events.
When I was eight, my friend and I were walking home from school when a car pulled up and the driver flung open the passenger door and told us to "get in." When we hesitated, he said "Don't worry, I just want to give you ride home." We declined.
When I arrived home I told my Mom about the incident and she called the police. Years later she informed me that the police arrested the guy later that day based on my description and that he was a convicted child molester! That was in 1958.
I'm sure there were exceptions, but I think they were rare then. I also used to ride my bike for many miles away from home and looked on it as an adventure. I may have not been a good mark for a pervert, since I was very indepentent and pretty self assured, taller than average and athletic.
Yes, but the clock may break and become permanently stuck in the "wrong" position with no one capable of fixing it!
Being perpetually PO'd is a natural state for me...;-)
Love your post!!!
I think of the term "pussy whipped" in a much more limited sense. Maybe what is happening in schools and in society in general is that men are becoming more "nancified". Look at the whole metrosexual phenomenon. Pussy whipped usually is when a man is totally dominated by a wife or girl friend into being at her beck and call so he can get some sex out of her later----and he better be grateful for it.
Thank you for spreading the word about the http://www.antimullah.com link, which often has visitors who spend as much as TWO hours going through the various articles.
The more visits it gets, specially from Freepers or other major sites like Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter etc., and cross links on those sites helps spread the word and the message.
Alan met Ann Coulter at a Los Angeles meeting where Jim Robinson and Sheila were present, too, and Ann promised to post a link to his site on her website but has not yet done so some months later.
If any Freeper can help remind her or help her with the post and ask other Conservative sites like Michelle's to help out, then the visits will go into the thousands a day.
When Alan posted the "UN spying for Hezbollah" article which he and RegimeChangeIran broke worldwide, some reader comments were also posted on Michelle's site and promptly created about 5,000 new visits to AntiMullah.
Alan recently breaking the live story on FR of the cordon and arrest of Ayatollah Boroujerdi got some 35,000 Freeper views and about 10,000 visits to his AntiMullah site in a 36-hour period.
He is an expert on the Middle East but a self-funded, one man operation and can use all the help he can get. He does not ask for money but help to promote his site, through links on major sites with which Freepers may have good contact provides him the encouragement for writings that occasionally put him in personal danger from the Mullah regime.
FR has been wonderful in posting his very good articles through me and anything anyone can do to boost his visitor numbers would be very cheering and greatly appreciated.
A beard and no teeth. ~ fso301
And no wonder, look at the condition of the gums...
The farther you are to the Left, the more remote you are from real life.
Thanks for the info, for what it's worth, I'm going to add a link to it on my FR links page.
Thanks for the ping!
Ping!
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