Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminism and author Alice Walker, who publicly called her own child a calamity in her life, has some interesting things to say about the movement. Well worth reading.
Despite spending vast amounts on our primary education system, the United States is getting only moderate return on that investment.
In primary education, on a per-pupil basis, the United States spent 66 percent more than Germany, 56 percent more than France, 27 percent more than Japan, 80 percent more than the United Kingdom, 62 percent more than Belgium, and 122 percent more than South Korea.
Andrea Moore-Emmett is an award-winning journalist and the author of God’s Brothel, a book detailing the history and current practice of polygamy in the United States. She was also the researcher for Inside Polygamy, a documentary broadcast by A&E and the BBC.
We spoke by phone and discussed the abuses she uncovered in organized polygamy, the FLDs, and the raid on the YFZ ranch.
In pointing out another case of legalistic lunacy, Susan Duclos writes:
The "zero tolerance" policy at some school and in some states, reaches levels of complete incompetence when a 6 years gets written up as a sexual offender for copying what another kid did and playfully smacking little Katherine DeLeon on the bottom twice.
Inside every candidate there are multiple personalities, each of whom run the show in turn, depending on who the audience is. Barack Obama is no different than any other. He’s touched on personal responsibility before and he does it well by not trying to pull any punches, as in Gary, Indiana today:
"You should have a curfew in your house so your children aren’t out in the streets all night. You should meet with the teacher and find out what the homework is and help that child with the homework. And if you don’t know how to do the homework, don’t be embarrassed, find someone to help you."
Samantha Torrence says: “One of the major societal epidemics in America today is the lack of respect for not only the sanctity of life, but a lack of love for our own children.” No surprise that this comes during an epidemic of self-indulgent, irresponsible behavior. Suffering the consequences for one’s actions, it seems, is no fun. So why bother?
Michelle Malkin has this story about a California court that has issued an outrageously harsh - and grotesquely incorrect - indictment against the practice of home-schooling.
From the LA Times:
“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey
Okay, civil libertarians, it’s about the time where the rubber hits the road. We’ve heard a lot of talk from some quarters about how our rights are being eroded right out from underneath us thanks to seven years of His Fascist Chimpitude. Now, I’ve yet to actually see one of these eroded rights, but I grant that they, like the Loch Ness Monster and Chessie, might well exist in some form or another.
Today, though, presents a far more solid target for our ire and action. Do we dare take the challenge as eagerly as some took the Patriot Act and the new FISA legislation?
An, in my opinion, great post at Black Shards about the Virginia Tech shooting and, more generally, the way children are raised these days…
Few children in earlier generations would have even acknowledged the idea of assaulting their parents or grandparents. This is a modern problem, one that’s been created in the eras of “peace, love, and understanding” and the aftermath.
Whether the V.T. murderer Cho Seung-hui was one of the children this country has failed to raise correctly remains to be seen. Indeed this may never be known. But consider the trends already seen and understood by Harris County’s prosecutors.Our children are perhaps no more violent than previous generations; however, the targets of their aggression are more and more often chosen inappropriately. Parents, relatives, siblings, small neighborhood children, the elderly. All are potential victims of a generation without boundaries.
I believe that the failure of parents to properly discipline their children at a young age is responsible for a large percentage of behavioral problems experienced by school-age children. Anyone who is involved with children can see which at a glance which ones have been raised to respect authority and other people and which ones have not. Children who are rewarded for behaving well and punished for breaking the rules grow to fit into society when they become adults. Often those that are allowed to wreak havoc as children become misfits later in life. Not all misfits are bad. But some are and we’d do well to give them a sense of propriety from the very beginning rather than suffer the consequences later.
As Marc points out, whether this was the case with Cho, the shooter, remains to be seen, but I do agree with Marc that the general trend is worrisome. Children are not taught to respect their parents anymore, they are taught to consider them to be friends. When a father (or mother) says “I am my child’s best friend” I always cringe: best friend? You are your child’s best friend? You should not be your child’s best friend, you should be its parent.
Cross posted at The Moderate Voice
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