You'll find boredom where there is the absence of a good idea. - Earl Nightingale
Those evil, unenlightened and oppressive teachers! How dare they prevent our kids, our babies, from talking on phones, watching YouTube videos and twittering in class! This is America, isn't it? It's a free and democratic country. How dare they deny my angel her inalienable individual rights!
There is one thing worse than a high school dropout: A student who stays in the classroom and is bored, said Martin Bean, head of marketing and business development for Microsoft's education products group.Unfortunately, many are, Bean told a group of educators gathered Tuesday for Microsoft's School of the Future World Summit in Seattle. Bean said schools largely are not adapting to their students' digital lifestyles.
"Our end users (students) feel that the actual system in which they are forced to live is so disconnected from the world that they live in," he said, citing a U.S. Department of Education study showing that while most students believe education is important, few think it meets their needs.
Blanket policies, such as bans on cell phones or locking up computer rooms, do not help, Bean said during his keynote address and later during an interview. - Educators urged to adapt to students' tech lifestyles, Seattle PI
Let's put technology aside this time and take a little walk down memory lane. O look, over there! That looks like our old friends Discipline and Respect and Knowledge! Where have they been all these years? Are they on FaceBook?
All kidding aside, I don't remember high school being very exciting, and in retrospect it was certainly due to the quality of teachers and their teaching. Nonetheless, at the time, my peers and I respected, even feared the teachers. It really wasn't questioned very much. That made my classmates and I happy, just like it makes a puppy happy when his master is dominant and strong. Anyone who watches Cesar Millan knows this. Of course there is always the occasional poking fun at the teacher or drawing funny pictures of her during class; but all in all, we still didn't want to get in trouble.
We just wanted to get good grades and be accepted into our college of choice.
That was back in the late 80s.
And it was also in the 80s when Dr. Benjamin Spock, that child behavioral psychologist whose philosophy is embedded in the very bowels of spoiled children all across America, said the following:
''I'm very disappointed that so few young people are interested in politics,'' he told a local reporter last week. ''They seem to keep their noses to the grindstone, interested only in getting good grades and getting a good job.'' NY Times 1983
How disappointing that kids care about good grades and making something of their lives! That is just so American of them, to want to succeed and be something in their lives. You know, I was listening to Michael Savage talk about this Dr. Spock on his radio show. So thanks to Savage, this character has come under my radar. Turns out Dr. Spock was an anti-war activist in the sixties. He also was the People's Party candidate for the 1972 Presidential Election .The People's Party was created by various American socialist groups. His platform called for the legalization of abortion, homosexuality and marijuana, guaranteed minimum wage and withdrawal of American troops from all foreign countries. He is ideologically no different from Mr. Bill Education-is-the-motor-force-for-revolution-Ayers. You can read about his philosophy of education here.
So Keeping Spock politics in mind, one can even imagine the sort of child care advice this man would bring to the world. Unfortunately, his point of view on child care is now pretty much mainstream: "Time outs" instead of spankings; treating kids as equals, as individuals; being more of a friend and companion to your child, rather than a disciplinarian or mentor:
Spock's ideas have become such a part and parcel of the parenting landscape that it's easy to forget how revolutionary they were. In post-war America, parents were in awe of doctors and other childcare professionals; Spock assured them that parents were the true experts on their own children. They had been told that picking up infants when they cried would only spoil them; Spock countered that cuddling babies and bestowing affection on children would only make them happier and more secure. Instead of adhering to strict, one-size-fits-all dictates on everything from discipline to toilet training, Spock urged parents to be flexible and see their children as individuals.
Perhaps most revolutionary of all, he suggested that parenting could be fun, that mothers and fathers could actually enjoy their children and steer a course in which their own needs and wishes also were met. All this and much more, including a wealth of helpful medical advice, was delivered in a friendly, reassuring, and common-sense manner completely at odds with the cold authoritarianism favored by most other parenting books of the time. - Dr.Spock.com
Now I love to give my daughter affection, but I also know the value of a firm and consistent presence. She doesn't cry much because she knows she gets nothing out of it. Like I suggested above, you'd be better off using Cesar Millan as your child care expert. In any case, I am not sure what my daughter is going to do when she finds out that the world has changed. Everyone out there is having tantrums; and everyone is either hiring class action lawsuits to get revenge on the fact they lost their binkies,or they are electing any village idiot like Al Franken or an experienced fraud like Barack Obama to office - anyone who promises to change their diapers.
There is a viral and extremely contagious idea out there that says we need to comply with the will and ways of the young people. This idea is a symptom of democracy gone bad. Democracy gone bad is freedom toying with anarchy. Plato describes this state of affairs in his Republic:
...the father accustoms himself to become like his child and fears his sons, while the son likens himself to his father, and feels neither shame nor fear in front of his parents, so he may be free ; the metic [563a] becomes the equal of a citizen and the citizen of a metic, and similarly with the foreigner.
It indeed so happens, he said.
To these, said I, such trifles do add up: the teacher, in such a case, fears his pupils and fawns upon them, while pupils have in low esteem their teachers as well as their overseers; and, overall, the young copy the elders and contend hotly with them in words and in deeds, while the elders, lowering themselves to the level of the young, sate themselves with pleasantries [563b] and wit, mimicking the young in order not to look unpleasant and despotic.
Yet, companies like Microsoft, the technofascists and the Obama administration see this sorry state of things as an opportunity. Young people are the most impressionable. They do not have the wisdom or the experience to understand or recognize the Trojan horse that is politics and propaganda. It is always the youth that is the tool of dictatorship, whether that dictatorship be one of a political or corporate nature.
But you can always count on some dolt over at the Seattle PI to write something like this, to further illustrate the how completely clueless these tech-worshipers are in regards to the nature of the education problem in America:
In 1703, he said, teachers were concerned about the use of slates. A century later there were fears that students were using paper too much. In 1907, some officials warned that pencils were being replaced by ink. Thirty years later, a report said that students were "wallowing" in the luxury of fountain pens. And in 1950, ballpoint pens were referred to as the possible "ruin of education." Educators urged to adapt to students' tech lifestyles,
This is NOT about ballpoint pens and paper. These are tools that we should use. Technology is great and should be used. This is about the quality of discipline and the nature of the education being offered to our young people. We have an entire generation that can text faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall mountains in World of Warcraft and swallow large quantities of Rock Star in a single gulp. The destruction of respect, the sleazy love affair with youth culture and the replacement of knowledge with subversive creativity and cleverness is the death knell of American Civilization as we know it.
Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal. -Plato







