Walking away...

[elsol]

I cannot think of anything more inhumane towards young children than to take them, by force, from their parents and herd them, warehouse style into classrooms full of other children from all walks of life, categorized by age.

I can think of several things... but they all have to do with bad parents, which don't seem to exist in your world.

They exist in mine, amicus.

And not just the horrible ones, but the just plain stupid and lazy ones.

The worst punishment for a child I could dream of would be to place that child in a place he did not want to be, hold him back if he is above average, embarrass him if he is below average, and cultivate the mediocre.

The worst punishment for a child I could dream of was to ignore their reality for my ideals.

You're a good parent, I commend you for that one.

I had good parents too... excuse me, I had a good mother...my father made a choice he didn't have children.

As the thread starter stated, some children should be taught a trade they can practice, at the parents choice and leave also to the parents, the obligation and resonsibility to provide the child with the basic skills of reading and writing.

And who is the wonderful person that makes the choice what child should be 'taught a trade' and which children gets to move on.

So my daddy gets to say 'ElSol... he gets to learn to be a mechanic.'

Congratulations, Amicus... you've just raised a generation who were told what to be and to do.

So much for this personal freedom, you espouse.

I have a feeling this choice will be made by how much money a parents and what race they are. But I'm sure the race things is only my paronia... I mean I haven't heard the snickers and insults from suppossedly educated men who expected me to laugh because 'Well... you're not really one them, ElSol.'

And what do we do, oh wise one, when a parent fails to provide even the basics?

I have a suggestion... we shoot them.

I'll buy into your system, if fucking up your child's life is punishable by death, no appeal.

How any rational person could advocate forcing parents to 'educate' their children along the lines proffered by public schooling, I simply cannot understand.

Who do the children belong to anyway? The State?

Bullshit.

The children, Amicus, belong to themselves.

Not to the State, and not to their parents.

And if I have a choice, I'll preserve their choice where I can.

You can trust parents, Amicus. You can even trust humanity... but there's too much to lose if you're wrong.

I guess I'm just not a risk taker when someone else's life is on the line.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[CharleyH]

Well said, Selena...good luck home schooling...may your children blossom and bloom with knowledge....


amicus...

Is this sarcastic :| or nice? I can't tell! lol so may or may not agree, afterall?

 

[Stella_Omega]

I've always said that, If Bush really wanted to help our kids he would have said "NO CLASSROOM OVER TWENTY!"
The best teacher in the world becomes less effective with too many kids. And the worst will be a little better with less children.
But, then, everyone would see that he was lying about his commitments.

 

[amicus]

ElSol "...The children, Amicus, belong to themselves.

Not to the State, and not to their parents...."


You know, that is the typical left wing, altruistic concept that is destroying the moral fibre of our society.

"Children belong to themselves." you said. Well, not really.

Rather than lay it out for you, why not use your own mind and tell me who then, properly has responsibility for a newborn infant.

And if you say it is not the parents, the mother, the father, then pray tell who is obligated to supply the breast or the formula?

Are you really so blinded by your political beliefs that you can say and even present in public something as silly as, 'not to the State and not to their parents?'

Children do not belong to their parents?

amicus...

 

[amicus]

Ah, CharlieH, about time you displayed your lovely gams again.

My comment was intended to be complimentary as my intent was to home school my children also to keep them from the left wing influence of the Teachers Union and the State diet of forced education and Liberal socialization.

amicus...

 

[woodnymph_O]

Ok mom of an ADHD kid here, and I have thoughts of a spanking nature atleast once an hour, like right now when he is asking me for pudding for the 10th time in as many minutes. SO let me tell you one thing I figured out a long time ago. These kids will use it as an excuse if the parents let them ,, one saturday morning he was acting like an absolute insane person hopping around making weird noises , hitting his little sister, and when I told him to stop, he told me "I haven't had my pill yet thats why I'm doing it".

Well I stopped that in one statement also

I simply replied with calm "So when I paddle your butt, I can say it's because I haven't had my coffee yet".
I was amazed how quickly he changed his behavior, and without a pill

I feel for the teachers, and I won't make excuses for my child. We need a voluntary spanking agreement in school, I'd sign. If they need it they should get it, and stop taking away others feeling of safety and learning time.
The only break I want them to give my son is, to be aware that at 2:30 his medicine is running low , and if you try to give him a spelling test in the last five minutes of school he will not do as well. But that only occurs with the worst of teachers anyway.

Love and light to you honey, and find whatever makes you so happy you drool.

MEAN MOMMY
Nymphy

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Your Children are not Your Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
The bow that is stable.
-Kahlil Gibran

 

[cymry]

You don't have to spank (although I do when it's warranted) if you don't believe in it. Just gain some control over your children and stop making excuses for them. It doesn't make you a bad parent when they misbehave; children will be children and it takes time to learn. It does if you let them continue to do so until it gets completely out of hand.
We don't own our children, no, but we are their guides if you will. Who else have they to teach them how to live and prosper in today's society? You take on that responsibility when you have children, mothers and fathers of the world. If you don't want it, don't have kids.
I say bravo to woodnymph_o, who recognises and treats her child's ADHD but does not allow him to use it as an excuse. My daughter is a very active girl, borderline ADHD. (we call her the Social Butterfly) She would never strike another child, much less and adult, because we don't tolerate that behavior. Anywhere. Including at home.
We mostly use positive reinforcement (though there have been times when a swat on the rear was neccesary), reward for good behavior, and we teach her that sometimes there IS no reward other than knowing you've acted correctly. So many children are just left to their own devices in one way or another. Yes the public schools are miserable, but there are teachers out there who are trying their hardest and just don't get the support from the parents they need. The government can't fix what's wrong. That has to start at home, with a stable environment, with stable and consistant boundaries. It doesn't take money, all the money in the world won't instill a sense of right or wrong. Poverty is no excuse. Broken public systems are no excuse. Children don't strike their teachers because they didn't get the new play station game they wanted, they don't abuse other students because the government can't provide enough housing. They do it because their parents haven't bothered to teach them it's wrong.

Sorry for the rant...it is only my opinion after all.

 

[amicus]

Your Children are NOT your Children?

Silly females...and someone still reads ole Kahlil Gibran? sighs...another hippy age approaching with irrational dreamers and feather heads. A Jug of Wine a loaf and bread and thou..."

Lay down, I think I love you.


amicus...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

another hippy age approaching with irrational dreamers and feather heads.

could be...
but I think we'll have a better wardrobe...

can't help my Aquarian nature, ya know... <evil grin>

 

[elsol]

Are you really so blinded by your political beliefs that you can say and even present in public something as silly as, 'not to the State and not to their parents?'

Children do not belong to their parents?

amicus...

Responsibility over does not mean belong to, amicus.

That child is a separate entity from me... I am his/her parent and all the things that the word parent means, but he/she does not BELONG to me.

The words 'belong to' too easily become words of ownership.

He/she is my child, but I would not say he belongs to me.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[BlackShanglan]

El Sol, dear one, I can forgive you even encouraging Amicus for this pithy observation:

And who is the wonderful person that makes the choice what child should be 'taught a trade' and which children gets to move on.

So my daddy gets to say 'ElSol... he gets to learn to be a mechanic.'

Congratulations, Amicus... you've just raised a generation who were told what to be and to do.

Indeed. And when one looks at the roots of modern compulsory education, one sees further why it was deemed necessary. They lie in the demise of the apprenticeship system, which was thoroughly gutted by the industrial revolution. It couldn't change quickly enough or produce sufficiently flexible workers. The problem with workers trained by one person to do one task - whether parent or a master from outside the family - is that they learn to do only one thing. At the time when public education really began, that was bad news if your parent or master had been one of the many trades - weaving was particularly hard-hit, but also many other traditional crafts positions - for which powered machines were recently invented. That trade which you'd spent years learning vanished overnight, and you were left unqualified to perform any other sort of work.

In order to prevent endless repetitions of this theme, governments gradually phased in public education. The goal was to provide a workforce that had a broader basic education than one parent could give, and that could roll with the punches of a rapidly changing workplace. In modern times, as the rate of change has accelerated, this demand grows every more pronounced. To educate a child in a single trade is to shut every possibility of change or advancement in the future; it is to doom him to whatever his parent thought looked good at the time, while the world changes swiftly around him. Just imagine the prospects now of someone whose parent taught him one of the valuable trades of the not-too-distant past: repairing VCR's and cassette recorders, for instance, or computer monitors of the non-flat-screen model. I imagine that he or she would be fairly relieved to have some other education to fall back upon.

Shanglan

 

[Selena_Kitt]

They lie in the demise of the apprenticeship system

That's one thing I love about my current profession. The apprenticeship system is alive and well in the world of midwifery.

 

[elsol]

El Sol, dear one, I can forgive you even encouraging Amicus for this pithy observation:

I was not encouraging!

Okay, maybe a little... but I do it to liberals too.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[amicus]

ElSol....et al....

That is a reasonable assertion for the existence of compulsory education, I guess, although I think there might have been other methods than the use of force to accomplish the same goal.

You express ideas, as do many here, that are practical, pragmatic, and once in place are difficult to abolish or change.

I doubt few would advocate returning to a 'guild' or an 'apprentice' mentality.

My objection, as always, is the same pony I whup on all the time, freedom and choice.

China limits population by enforcing a 'one child only' policy and punishment is harsh for violators.

From what I understand of the public school system, the last thing they try to do is prepare a young person for the ever changing job market. Trade schools do a much better job.

Tax funded education and retirement, Social Security, are both programs that should not exist in a free society.

You justify them by saying they are necessary and practical and ignore the fact that the indidivudal is given no choice.

Perhaps I am one of a dying breed of men who do not wish to be told how to live my life, spend my money, time and energy.

It surely seems so on this forum.

amicus...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

The reality is that doing what should be done with schools (allowing freedom and choice) would cost so much LESS than we spend now that the interests involved (most importantly our government, but a lot of other lobbies connected to it) simply couldn't allow it to happen. First and foremost, public schools are a business, above all else, and that is where their interests lie.

Of course public schools are against charter schools, religious schools, home schooling, etc. They lose funding with every child who doesn't go through their system. But a free market education system would allow a great deal of freedom and choice, and would most importantly allow students to volunteer for the kinds of education that most fits for them.

Has anyone seen "The Corporation"? Public schools, to me, are nothing but... and in the same vein, are highly psychopathic in nature.

Unpopular and radical as this opinion might be, it's a valid one...

as for parents influencing their child's choices... I hope we never get away from that! Haven't you seen the commercials aimed at parents to talk to their kids about drugs, alcohol, sex, AIDS? Why would they spend time and money marketing something that they didn't believe would WORK?

Parents have a great deal of influence over their children, and for good reason! Home and community life are meant to teach children much much more than schools. Lessons in service, self-respect and self-motivation, integrity, empathy, love... schools can only be a substitute (and a poor one) for teaching these things.

Parents are actually getting less and less influence over their children, which I don't consider a good thing. Between 2 parent incomes to keep up with the frenzy of the consumer culture, television and school, parents lose precious time with their children. "Quality time" is a catch phrase made up by guilty parents.

Can school substitute for the time and attention, and most importantly, love, that a parent can give? If they could, would they be marketing to parents to talk to their kids about the "important" things? I don't think so.

Such a double bind... *sigh* Story of our lives...

 

[rgraham666]

The problem with the public school system, in my opinion, is that it uses the wrong paradigm.

Our school system is actually a manufacturing system, a production line. It's designed to turn out human resources suitable for employment.

Like all production lines, it takes raw material and makes them into subassemblies, the subassemblies are then assembled into final products and the products are placed on the market.

At each stage of the production process, the raw material or sub assembly is tested for standards. If it doesn't meet the standards, it is removed from the production line and goes no further.

Once the product is on the market, it may still be rejected by the consumer for the myriad reasons any other product is rejected.

We prefer this system, partly because it suits our society's predilection for numbers, after all, every aspect of education has a number assigned to it, partly because our society's basic belief system is based around commerce, and partly because we can't imagine any other way.

I think gardening would be a better paradigm. Give our kids the attention, care and resources we would give a garden. We'd be surprised what our kids would grow into.

But we won't do that. Gardens aren't efficient and we prefer efficiency. And it would be expensive, and we're no longer willing to pay for a luxury such as a decent education for all our kids.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Gardens aren't efficient and we prefer efficiency.

And what happens when we mass produce our food, and we try to make our food production more "cost effective?"

the metaphor is a powerful one...

 

[BlackShanglan]

And what happens when we mass produce our food, and we try to make our food production more "cost effective?"

Ah, actually, not to be too contentious ... it becomes staggeringly cheaper and more plentiful than it was pre-industrialization. The percentages of the typical household's expenditures on food and clothing before and after industrialization are enough to give the most die-hard opponent of mass production pause.

Our expectations now are much higher than they were in pre-mass-production societies. One of the measures our government has used to define poverty in children, for example, is failing to receive meat, fish, or dairy protein in at least two meals per day. By the standards of even a hundred years ago - already well into the process of industrialization - that was the definition of luxury for most laboring class homes. If we go back further, digs in early American colonies have revealed, through examination of human remains, that even the people with the most resources - the governors and their families - suffered from what we would now call malnutrition. And while I object I think as much as anyone to the dehumanizing effects that industry and mass production can have, infantile malnutrition even more drastically, coldly, and permanently limits one's potential and happiness.

Yes, industrialization and mass production have their ugly side. I'm too fond of Marx to argue otherwise; I think he has very valid points about alienation of labor and reduction of all human behavior to consumption and competition. There is, however, a reason why mass production occurs. It is often greatly more efficient. Those of us who scoff at efficiency as a thing not worth having would do well to spend a day hauling water and wood by hand, kindling a fire, and then setting about hand-pounding the grain to eventually make the bread we might be eating by sunset. I don't think that efficiency is an idol to bow down and worship, but mass production does have its points.

Shanglan

 

[Selena_Kitt]

it becomes staggeringly cheaper and more plentiful than it was pre-industrialization.

Yes, indeed.

At what cost?

The metaphor still applies.

Think of the amount of "processed" food we have now because of mass production. The amount of pesticides used in growing food and how seriously dangerous it is to our collective health. The antibiotics and other drugs used to bulk up animals or produce *more* of whatever it is they are harvesting. It is a business, now, and as such, will always look at the bottom line first at the expense of anything else, including human life.

No different with schools.

Which is why the garden analogy was so apt. If I am growing my own food, tending my own garden, I am much, much more invested in making sure it is healthy and thriving and I am very closely connected to its welfare. Same with home schooling a child. Or even "community" schooling a child (or communities growing food.)

Ah yes, Amicus will go on about the new generation of hippies... <grin>

and I know efficiency has its place, I suppose... but we have lost any equilibrium we might have once had... I'm all for chopping wood and carrying water if it means cleaner air, healthier food, and more conscious living...

 

[BlackShanglan]

Think of the amount of "processed" food we have now because of mass production. The amount of pesticides used in growing food and how seriously dangerous it is to our collective health. The antibiotics and other drugs used to bulk up animals or produce *more* of whatever it is they are harvesting. It is a business, now, and as such, will always look at the bottom line first at the expense of anything else, including human life.
...
and I know efficiency has its place, I suppose... but we have lost any equilibrium we might have once had... I'm all for chopping wood and carrying water if it means cleaner air, healthier food, and more conscious living...

I do take your point, and I agree that we need to look at the human cost. However, there's a heavy human cost to eschewing those pesticides and antibiotics as well. The cost can be starvation and malnutrition. I don't wish to deny that there are serious problems with pushing industrialization to its limits and to introducing unlimited chemical and industrial intervention into the food supply. However, returning to non-industrialized (non-mass-produced) farming would make it very difficult to feed our current population. I'd also quibble with the "if" in your last line - "if it means cleaner air, healthier food, and more conscious living." I'm not convinced it will. Food laid to ruin by pests or poor soil may lose in quantity what it might gain in quality through absence of pesticides and fertilizers. Healthier air is a dubious prospect when one recognizes that organic matter fires (wood and dung, rather than petrochemicals) are generally more rather than less polluting than electric heat.

There's this, as well. Industrialization, like many gains of efficiency in the past, frees people to do different jobs. It creates the spare labor supply to make more doctors, scientists, engineers, artists, computer programmers, and other non-manual-labor jobs. When one rolls back the efficiency of industrialization, one rolls back vast numbers of people into manual labor jobs. They have to go there; otherwise no one can eat, because it now takes a hundred men to harvest the field instead of one in a massive combine tractor. I would, personally, possibly prefer the hand-harvesting task to driving the tractor - for a day or two. Now, when I'm relatively young and fit. But day in and day out for the rest of my life? And when it's not just the choice between the hand-harvest and the tractor, but between the hand-harvest and being a doctor, or a painter, or a writer, because society needs that much more manual labor? If we push opposition to mass production and industrialization far enough, it starts to look a lot like its opposite extreme: masses of people stuck in work they don't want to do, simply because it's the only way to stay alive.

Here's hoping for a happy medium.

Shanglan

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Industrialization, like many gains of efficiency in the past, frees people to do different jobs.

Yes, but that's the beauty of true community. There will be people whose "calling" it is to farm. People who love it, who want to do it, and who want to pass that down to their children, or their neighbor's children. And in a community, there is always job sharing, spreading the burden of responsibility around. There is a part of me that longs for that kind of community again in our world... I don't know that I will ever have it or live to see it. But I do long for it. And I truly believe it's possible. I'm not talking about going back in time, I'm talking about utilizing the resources we have right now, at our disposal, solar energy, alternative fuel sources, organic farming etc.

Now, of course, this is all idyllic and it isn't the world we actually live in at the moment.

All we can do in the moment is the best we can with what we've got. Which is basically an industrialized, materialistic nation with very flawed social systems in place.

And back to the original topic... it all comes down to our own individual gardens. How do they grow? Really, it does. From our food to our children to our own psyches. Jung said if only a few people, perhaps only a dozen, would deeply do their own individual inner work, they could redeem the world. I believe that, too, on many levels, not just psychologically.

But I'm an idealist, not a realist.

 

[BlackShanglan]

But I'm an idealist, not a realist.

The realists need a goal. All they have is a process.

 

[rgraham666]

I've become less of a fan of efficiency ever since my favourite authour pointed out that The Holocaust was very efficient. It was carried out on a production line basis as well.

And I wonder about our industrial agriculture. I once read with relief that there are repositories of no longer grown grains. Some one was smart enough to realise that one global pandemic could destroy most of our food crops. In our quest for efficiency, we've made ourselves horribly vulnerable.

And there are three million case of acute pesticide poisoning every year world wide, with about ten percent fatal.

Not saying we should get rid of industrial agriculture, just saying it ain't as consequence free as we like to think.

The problem with production line education is similar to the problem in the second paragraph. A production line concentrates on a small number of 'measurable' human traits. But not all the important human traits can be reduced to numbers.

A large number of people who can only think in a similar manner is as dangerous to our society as the small gene pool is to our food.

 

[amicus]

SelenaKittyn....

I was not going to reply to your comments, but a question arose in my mind, have you or anyone on this forum actually lived on a farm? Not a fully mechanized one, but a rural existence with few amenities...

Well, I have...as a boy, in Washington State.

We did have electricity and running water and not much else. There was a kitchen wood stove and a front room wood heating stove.

My first chore, before the sun was up, was to build a fire in each of those stoves, from kindling and wood I had cut and stacked before.

Then it was out to a pasture to untether a milk cow, walk her to the barn, feed her and milk her. I then took the two gallons of warm fresh milk back into the house, strained it through cheese cloth, put it into gallon glass jars and store it in the refrigerator. Then I would check and refuel both stoves and head back out to feed 100 chicks and chickens, gather eggs from the hen house, feed 20 rabbits and four pigs, usually a sow and some piglets.

Then walk the cow back out to a fresh patch of grass in the pasture, make sure the water bin was full and go back and clean the barn.

By that time my mother was up doing breakfast, usually oatmeal, for kids, there was no hot water heater, so any hot water was warmed on the wood kitchen stove, I usually tried to dab at my face and wash the cow smell off my hands for school.

It was a mile and a half walk to school and I usually made my own lunch and carried it in a brown paper sack.

This was a daily routine and depending on the time of year, different things took place. During the summer, 15 to 20 cords of wood was delivered that had to be chopped and stacked for winter.

Later on, I got a paper route and then two, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, managed to buy myself a Schwinn Deluxe bike.

Then in summer, there was the garden, well over an acre and nothing went to waste, we ate off that garden and canned everything that was left. I also went into the fields and was paid in produce for picking, we canned that also, corn, cherries, green beans, strawberries (made our own jelly) raspberries and blackberries. Tons of tomatoes and potatoes, carrots, beets, lettuce, cabbage, all consumed or canned...and canning...have you ever canned food? the old mason jars with the lids and rings and the huge pots of boiling water...

welll...thas enough of that...although there is much, much more about living on a rural farm that is not quite as idealic as you seem to think...which prompted me to ask if you had ever lived on a small farm...


amicus...