-> SNETNEWS Mailing List http://www.fredoneverything.net/Suspension.html Lunacy In Glorious Flower Notes From The Pansy Bed Oh joy. Today we have the latest antics of our educational parsnips as they disassemble civilization. From the News-Journal Online I learn that Flagler Country, Florida, hitherto not noted for anything, is trying to turn yet another little boy into an ungendered vegetable. Every day in every way, we get nuttier and nuttier. "A fourth-grader at Bunnell Elementary School received a 10-day suspension for drawing a picture of himself shooting another pupil with a laser gun." God almighty. The damning artwork was with the story. Yep, kid picture. Laser gun. Prima facie case. A dangerous psychopath. The machinery of correctness, ever alert for opportunities for somber fatuity, leaped into action, and recommended . . . what? See whether you can guess: (1) That the education apparatchiks grow up (2) That they apologize to the kid for being such lugubrious asses (3) That they send him to counseling. How did you do? Said Superintendent Robert Williams, for whom English seems to be a recent second language, "We are looking to find some help for the child. We are looking at some counseling. We are not taking this lightly." Clearly not, which worries me. If there's anything that calls more loudly for being taken lightly than a kid playing spacemen, I'm not sure what it might be. Think about it. The kid's nine. All his life he has watched Star Wars, in which no one does anything but shoot people with laser guns, occasionally pausing for philosophical drivel. He has presumably watched Star Trek, in which people with funny ears and no personalities shoot each other with laser guns built into their Palm Pilots. Now he's playing spacemen. Who would have thought it? Educationists unsettle me. They seem to understand kids as a pygmy understands a television. The pygmy can be taught to recognize a television. ("Yeah, boss. Dass him, you betcha. Heap talkatalk.") But the pygmy hasn't the faintest clue how a television works. I don't doubt that most teachers at Bunnell could recognize a child -- that is, pick him out of a lineup also containing a llama, an engine block, and a birthday cake. ("Uh, let me see . . . number three. That one's the kid, officer. Yes, I'm sure.") But they don't seem to have the foggiest idea how kids work, boys in particular. They know what they want boys to be, but they don't know what boys are. What they want them to be is ideologically correct little catatonics who sit quietly and play with dolls. In fact male chillun are wildmen. Always have been. It's what makes them worthwhile, if sometimes difficult. They definitely want to zap the Klingons. Any Klingons. When I was a kid in Alabama, it was Yankees, and on the playgrounds and in the woods we ran those varmints back up north where they belonged. A Yankee is just another form of Klingon. Now you couldn't do it today. You'd get those tiresome racial lobbies threatening to burn cities or file suit. Heaven help a kid playing at cowboys and Injuns. It would offend preliterate aboriginals everywhere. Step by step, we're ideologizing even recess. It gets better. Says the story: "Al Martinez, the father of the child portrayed as the victim in the picture, said Tuesday he was disappointed with the 10-day suspension. 'They didn't seem to take things seriously. It was like a joke,' Martinez said. 'He should have gotten a little more that what the got when (he) threatened a person.'" Swell. Let's give the kid the max. How about the chair? Lethal injection? Maybe mutilation would help. Permit me to suggest my own idiosyncratic response. If some unisex wuss did this to my kid, I believe I'd say, "Why don't you wrap your stupid school in barbed wire, roll it in salt, heat it red hot, and become an amazing proctologic curiosity? I'd be glad to help." See? I can do therapy too. But the real question is: What will this militant gooberishishness do to the kid? The correct answer, I think, is that nobody cares. What is wanted is ideological conformity. The child's welfare is secondary. Still, think about it: A kid plinks an android pod-monster from a bad neighborhood in Andromeda, or yells, "Bangbang, you're dead!" -- and he's booted from school for ten days. What then? He's immediately pegged as a freak. Given the moral flaccidity of everyone involved, local parents will probably forbid their kids to play with the killer next door. He will decide that he must be horrible. If that's not socially useful, I don't know what might be. Next, every week he will have to visit a manipulative and condescending woman who doesn't like men and let's Billy know that Something Is Wrong with him. Oh, no, she would never be so candid. But how stupid is Billy? Why else, he will wonder, would they send him to see this depressing drone? Bobby is now a double freak, with a psychological consult for death threats in his record jacket. Does this make any sense at all? Suppose the kid really was a burgeoning psychopath. Do you make a loon kid better by subjecting him to systematic bullying? That's more a recipe for building a profoundly angry kid than for curing one. And if he's not a loon, why do anything at all? Easy. The purpose is sheer punitive intimidation, to teach the kid that You Don't Buck Correctness. Bobby is being whipped into line. All our kids are. He will learn that he can be punished severely, at any time, for anything or nothing. The correct everywhere want control, control, control. The schools have become a limp-wristed Gulag, imposing a watered Stalinism comforting to people terrified of life. The ideology of the USSR was communism. In America, it's PC. Each embodies a rigidly held view of how people ought to act, at odds with how they ever do behave, and a merciless drive to enforce it. Each smells of a small-minded moral Puritanism, a grim assertive mediocrity in pursuit of a drab Utopia of the inadequate. The USSR put dissident adults in psychiatric wards and gave them drugs to control their behavior. Our educrats put our children in psychotherapy and give them drugs to control their behavior. And we let them. Why? ©Fred Reed 2001. All rights reserved. Oh joy. Today we have the latest antics of our educational parsnips as they disassemble civilization. From the News-Journal Online I learn that Flagler Country, Florida, hitherto not noted for anything, is trying to turn yet another little boy into an ungendered vegetable. Every day in every way, we get nuttier and nuttier. "A fourth-grader at Bunnell Elementary School received a 10-day suspension for drawing a picture of himself shooting another pupil with a laser gun." God almighty. The damning artwork was with the story. Yep, kid picture. Laser gun. Prima facie case. A dangerous psychopath. The machinery of correctness, ever alert for opportunities for somber fatuity, leaped into action, and recommended . . . what? See whether you can guess: (1) That the education apparatchiks grow up (2) That they apologize to the kid for being such lugubrious asses (3) That they send him to counseling. How did you do? Said Superintendent Robert Williams, for whom English seems to be a recent second language, "We are looking to find some help for the child. We are looking at some counseling. We are not taking this lightly." Clearly not, which worries me. If there's anything that calls more loudly for being taken lightly than a kid playing spacemen, I'm not sure what it might be. Think about it. The kid's nine. All his life he has watched Star Wars, in which no one does anything but shoot people with laser guns, occasionally pausing for philosophical drivel. He has presumably watched Star Trek, in which people with funny ears and no personalities shoot each other with laser guns built into their Palm Pilots. Now he's playing spacemen. Who would have thought it? Educationists unsettle me. They seem to understand kids as a pygmy understands a television. The pygmy can be taught to recognize a television. ("Yeah, boss. Dass him, you betcha. Heap talkatalk.") But the pygmy hasn't the faintest clue how a television works. I don't doubt that most teachers at Bunnell could recognize a child -- that is, pick him out of a lineup also containing a llama, an engine block, and a birthday cake. ("Uh, let me see . . . number three. That one's the kid, officer. Yes, I'm sure.") But they don't seem to have the foggiest idea how kids work, boys in particular. They know what they want boys to be, but they don't know what boys are. What they want them to be is ideologically correct little catatonics who sit quietly and play with dolls. In fact male chillun are wildmen. Always have been. It's what makes them worthwhile, if sometimes difficult. They definitely want to zap the Klingons. Any Klingons. When I was a kid in Alabama, it was Yankees, and on the playgrounds and in the woods we ran those varmints back up north where they belonged. A Yankee is just another form of Klingon. Now you couldn't do it today. You'd get those tiresome racial lobbies threatening to burn cities or file suit. Heaven help a kid playing at cowboys and Injuns. It would offend preliterate aboriginals everywhere. Step by step, we're ideologizing even recess. It gets better. Says the story: "Al Martinez, the father of the child portrayed as the victim in the picture, said Tuesday he was disappointed with the 10-day suspension. 'They didn't seem to take things seriously. It was like a joke,' Martinez said. 'He should have gotten a little more that what the got when (he) threatened a person.'" Swell. Let's give the kid the max. How about the chair? Lethal injection? Maybe mutilation would help. Permit me to suggest my own idiosyncratic response. If some unisex wuss did this to my kid, I believe I'd say, "Why don't you wrap your stupid school in barbed wire, roll it in salt, heat it red hot, and become an amazing proctologic curiosity? I'd be glad to help." See? I can do therapy too. But the real question is: What will this militant gooberishishness do to the kid? The correct answer, I think, is that nobody cares. What is wanted is ideological conformity. The child's welfare is secondary. Still, think about it: A kid plinks an android pod-monster from a bad neighborhood in Andromeda, or yells, "Bangbang, you're dead!" -- and he's booted from school for ten days. What then? He's immediately pegged as a freak. Given the moral flaccidity of everyone involved, local parents will probably forbid their kids to play with the killer next door. He will decide that he must be horrible. If that's not socially useful, I don't know what might be. Next, every week he will have to visit a manipulative and condescending woman who doesn't like men and let's Billy know that Something Is Wrong with him. Oh, no, she would never be so candid. But how stupid is Billy? Why else, he will wonder, would they send him to see this depressing drone? Bobby is now a double freak, with a psychological consult for death threats in his record jacket. Does this make any sense at all? Suppose the kid really was a burgeoning psychopath. Do you make a loon kid better by subjecting him to systematic bullying? That's more a recipe for building a profoundly angry kid than for curing one. And if he's not a loon, why do anything at all? Easy. The purpose is sheer punitive intimidation, to teach the kid that You Don't Buck Correctness. Bobby is being whipped into line. All our kids are. He will learn that he can be punished severely, at any time, for anything or nothing. The correct everywhere want control, control, control. The schools have become a limp-wristed Gulag, imposing a watered Stalinism comforting to people terrified of life. The ideology of the USSR was communism. In America, it's PC. Each embodies a rigidly held view of how people ought to act, at odds with how they ever do behave, and a merciless drive to enforce it. Each smells of a small-minded moral Puritanism, a grim assertive mediocrity in pursuit of a drab Utopia of the inadequate. The USSR put dissident adults in psychiatric wards and gave them drugs to control their behavior. Our educrats put our children in psychotherapy and give them drugs to control their behavior. And we let them. Why? ©Fred Reed 2001. All rights reserved. -> To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?b1ddDh.b18SeS Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Learn More. Surf Less. Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Topics You Choose. http://www.topica.com/partner/tag01 ==^================================================================
