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Yes, that's right. The Happy Meal of DOOOOOOM. Or at least, that's what they're saying in Santa Clara County, California. Since apparently we're to moronic as a society to be able to be able to figure things out on our own, SC Co is, according to the LA Times, considering banning toys. Well, just the toys in your kid's Mickey D's meal. Well, not all of them. Just the ones that have more than 485 calories, or 600 mg of sodium or "high amounts of sugar or fat". Which, is, let's face it folks, all of 'em.
But why?
Well, because a ban (in one small county of just a million and a half people) there in old San Jose will force restaurants to offer healthier meals! And, according to the dude who thought this up, toys in their fast-food meals make kids fat!
What?
Toys encourage kids to pester their mom to buy them a happy meal on their way home from soccer practice because of a little plastic thing that will fall apart in five minutes, and because of that shoddily made plastic gremlin, they'll get an unhealthy meal, and then they'll be fat. Or obese. Or chubby. Or whatever the "nice" word is these days to refer to being rotund.
Apparently, being a crappy parent isn't in the cards here. Apparently, because you're too busy getting a manicure, or watching Sex & the City, or doing yoga, or whatever it is that parents do in San Jose, and you take no responsibility for making sure your children are well taken care of, physically, mentally, emotionally, etc ... you need to ban the McDonald's and Burger King's of SC County from putting in a 25 cent toy in your kids meal?
Wow.
I'll be over here, in the corner, crying, after beating myself into a coma with my desk.
the LA Times article: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-happy-meals-20100427,0,4578399,full.story
And thanks to the Corner at the National Review for notifying me about this outrageous and indecent usurpation of your own rights, liberties, and responsibilities.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Book Review: Dumbing Us Down
Apologies to my one reader for my absence last week. The passage of Health Care disturbed me deeply, and I still cannot quite find the words to express my dismay at what is happening to the states and country.
However, I also read a book this week, and before you start asking questions, it was, thankfully, a small one. It's titled Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, written by a NYC public-school teacher John Taylor Gatto.
(Insert appropriate oath of horror and astonishment here - yes, I do read).
If nothing else, this book should be a required read for all people interested in starting a Reformation or Revolution here in America in order to give our children a fighting chance at enjoying the fruits of their liberty and of this Land. It is a most enlightening exposé on the practices and motivations behind the general public school system that is terrorizing growing Americans.
I, thank God, did not go thru' the system while growing up due to the decisions of my Parents. There were many times, particularly while being a teenager, that I wished that I was able to be with those few friends that I had IN the local HS. However, after this, I fervently thank God Above that that never came to pass.
The book is essentially a selection of essays and speeches given by the Author. The first two chapters are perhaps the most vital, concerning the function of the public system of Education, and how it corrupts the very nature of Society. The later chapters are perhaps not as vital to the ideas, but they are valuable in their own right as being necessary expositions on the ideas set forward previously, and also showing that the monolith currently served obeisance is not neccessary, drawing on free-market and histroical examples.
The first two chapters is called The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher and The Psychopathic School, respectively. Chapter One deals with what Mr Gatto refers to as the National Curriculum, that you and I, as taxpayers, in effect promote.
First: Confusion- there is no natural progression from one thing to the next and all things are artificially segmented.
Second: Class Position - jealousy of higher classes and contempt of lower, a complete affront to even the egalitarian worldviews that this system cries that it is trumpeting
Third: Indifference
Fourth: Emotional Dependency - surrender a child's will to the designated Chain of Command, here, quite possibly, very similar to the one used by Jayne Cobb - "You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with until you understand who's in ruttin' command here!"
Fith: Intellectual Dependency - do not do anything until instructed to do so, think only what told to think, etc.
Sixth: Provisional Self-Esteem - the perpetuation of dissatisfaction, and the demolition of self-confidence.
Seventh: One Can't Hide - privacy is destroyed, the ability to learn from someone other than the designated authority is destroyed, &c.
The second chapter essentially deals with the complete and utter uselessness of the current education system, specifically delineating the difference between Schooling and Learning. While Learning may indeed take place while a person is in school, and while that is trumpeted as the basic and essential reason for public Schooling, that is not in evidence. Mr. Gatto defines schooling here as a moulding of character into a deformed shape, and gives eight specific examples, or symptoms, of what happens to people when they are schooled rather than educated. These symptoms are as follows: children are indifferent to the adult world, curiosity-less and attention-less (or functionally ADD), minimal understanding of past and future, compassionless, avoid intimacy of all sorts, materialistic, and lacking in intestinal (and other kinds of) fortitude.
While I will also readily point the fingers at the social and familial vacuum that people grow up in in these days, the notion that public schooling is in some parts directly (in some manner or another) responsible for these faults is one that worries me.
Well now do I hear the pleading of such organizations as the teacher's unions, the educational establishment, &c, for more funding in order to correct the slow dissolution of functional education in our nation's public schools. Of course, we all know that the government is the best possible organization in the entire world to je put in charge of any and all facets of our life.
I suggest this book to any and all of you. Please, particularly if you intend on teaching, or if you have children soon to be schooled ... Read.
So how is this reformable? Only by its very destruction. You must call, you must write, you must genteelly kick in the doors of Congress, State Senates and Representatives, Governors, County Commissoners, &c, and demand that they give you choice in your child's education. You must never cease in that demand. You must use that choice and send your children to private schools or school them in your home. You must convince them and those around you that Public Education as an institution is only an institution in the same way a mental hospital is an institution, and that to keep sending our very children to such a place is irresponsible in the least, and an act of such desperate laziness and corruption that deserves the most strident and insistent damnation.
And you must teach children that they are precious as jewels in your eyes. You must teach through your actions. If you truly care about your children, and about the future of your state, you must not ship them off to a factory of the mind. You must show them worth, and you can only do that if they are around you constantly.
However, I also read a book this week, and before you start asking questions, it was, thankfully, a small one. It's titled Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, written by a NYC public-school teacher John Taylor Gatto.
(Insert appropriate oath of horror and astonishment here - yes, I do read).
If nothing else, this book should be a required read for all people interested in starting a Reformation or Revolution here in America in order to give our children a fighting chance at enjoying the fruits of their liberty and of this Land. It is a most enlightening exposé on the practices and motivations behind the general public school system that is terrorizing growing Americans.
I, thank God, did not go thru' the system while growing up due to the decisions of my Parents. There were many times, particularly while being a teenager, that I wished that I was able to be with those few friends that I had IN the local HS. However, after this, I fervently thank God Above that that never came to pass.
The book is essentially a selection of essays and speeches given by the Author. The first two chapters are perhaps the most vital, concerning the function of the public system of Education, and how it corrupts the very nature of Society. The later chapters are perhaps not as vital to the ideas, but they are valuable in their own right as being necessary expositions on the ideas set forward previously, and also showing that the monolith currently served obeisance is not neccessary, drawing on free-market and histroical examples.
The first two chapters is called The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher and The Psychopathic School, respectively. Chapter One deals with what Mr Gatto refers to as the National Curriculum, that you and I, as taxpayers, in effect promote.
First: Confusion- there is no natural progression from one thing to the next and all things are artificially segmented.
Second: Class Position - jealousy of higher classes and contempt of lower, a complete affront to even the egalitarian worldviews that this system cries that it is trumpeting
Third: Indifference
Fourth: Emotional Dependency - surrender a child's will to the designated Chain of Command, here, quite possibly, very similar to the one used by Jayne Cobb - "You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with until you understand who's in ruttin' command here!"
Fith: Intellectual Dependency - do not do anything until instructed to do so, think only what told to think, etc.
Sixth: Provisional Self-Esteem - the perpetuation of dissatisfaction, and the demolition of self-confidence.
Seventh: One Can't Hide - privacy is destroyed, the ability to learn from someone other than the designated authority is destroyed, &c.
The second chapter essentially deals with the complete and utter uselessness of the current education system, specifically delineating the difference between Schooling and Learning. While Learning may indeed take place while a person is in school, and while that is trumpeted as the basic and essential reason for public Schooling, that is not in evidence. Mr. Gatto defines schooling here as a moulding of character into a deformed shape, and gives eight specific examples, or symptoms, of what happens to people when they are schooled rather than educated. These symptoms are as follows: children are indifferent to the adult world, curiosity-less and attention-less (or functionally ADD), minimal understanding of past and future, compassionless, avoid intimacy of all sorts, materialistic, and lacking in intestinal (and other kinds of) fortitude.
While I will also readily point the fingers at the social and familial vacuum that people grow up in in these days, the notion that public schooling is in some parts directly (in some manner or another) responsible for these faults is one that worries me.
Well now do I hear the pleading of such organizations as the teacher's unions, the educational establishment, &c, for more funding in order to correct the slow dissolution of functional education in our nation's public schools. Of course, we all know that the government is the best possible organization in the entire world to je put in charge of any and all facets of our life.
I suggest this book to any and all of you. Please, particularly if you intend on teaching, or if you have children soon to be schooled ... Read.
So how is this reformable? Only by its very destruction. You must call, you must write, you must genteelly kick in the doors of Congress, State Senates and Representatives, Governors, County Commissoners, &c, and demand that they give you choice in your child's education. You must never cease in that demand. You must use that choice and send your children to private schools or school them in your home. You must convince them and those around you that Public Education as an institution is only an institution in the same way a mental hospital is an institution, and that to keep sending our very children to such a place is irresponsible in the least, and an act of such desperate laziness and corruption that deserves the most strident and insistent damnation.
And you must teach children that they are precious as jewels in your eyes. You must teach through your actions. If you truly care about your children, and about the future of your state, you must not ship them off to a factory of the mind. You must show them worth, and you can only do that if they are around you constantly.
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