In general I agree that we should provide more honest feedback to our children. However I think there are several points the article did not mention.

The school system is set up to provide a one-dimensional evaluation of the student (GPA). This is then equated with virtue. I have two objections to this: firstly it is a ridiculously inaccurate way to describe children, and secondly, the damage done by telling one child that he is inferior to another is so great that other ridiculous things (such as those mentioned in the article) have to be done to try to minimize the damage. Where there is less effort to compensate (as in Japan) the suicide rate among students is quite startling.

Whatever criticisms one can level at Mr. Rogers, he was basically benign. Not so ‘Shining Time Station’ which taught that everyone was entitled to sympathy except adult white males.

The article very much seems to mirror Margaret's points about training children to be adults rather than training them to be children. As we can see (if you agree with the article) even NT kids are screwed up by this system, but I'm sure their recovery time and relearning efforts will be much lower than for AS kids.

I agree John. My son was in a private school in first grade. His teacher actually posted a daily board showing who had been bad. When we went to an open house Max said "Look I have the second most bad marks. I am a trouble maker." We pulled him out.

I was completely stunned the first time I encountered a family in which the children "voted" on family decisions (and were allowed to outvote the adults! I have no problem with including children in discussions and explaining why the family is doing something--this is how you learn adult responsibilities).

Children, on some level, know they are less knowledgeable, less powerful and less responsible than competent adults. Placing them in a position to dominate family resources and decisions both weakens the parents' ability to do necessary things, and profoundly unsettles children (even if they seem to be glorying in it). "Training up" children to be adults is the point, not stretching childhood out as long as possible and providing a fantasy-land that deprives the adults of their time, labor and intimate relationships.

I have to deal with the "helicopter" parents of the spoiled college students who all think that they are special (certainly not measured by GPA--the schools give prizes for virtually anything). It is very sad to see professional adults reduced to begging and pleading their 18 year-old monster children to take some control of their own lives, but they caused the situation in the first place. I can tell you the last kid to use my first name and presume "equality" to me got quite a shock. College classes do not run to your convenience, do not give you credit for just showing up and sleeping, do not allow you to cheat and do not care who your parents are. There are crooked schools that do, but mine isn't one of them. This is a big shock to many of them, and the whining is legion.

I am not familiar with "Shining Time Station" other than what I have read in the trades. If I am not mistaken, both Ringo Starr and George Carlin played the conductor.

I did meet Mr. Rogers when I worked at a hotel in San Francisco, and he was exactly the same in person as he was on TV.

My main issue with the article is that Mr. Rogers was considered "square" even when I was a child - and so I am not sure that today's college students ever really watched him or paid any attention to him.

I also would like to take issue with your assertion that GPA is seen as a sign of "virtue," and I will tell you why.

First, I think that an awful lot of parents (and I mean awful in both senses of how this sentence can be interpreted) - don't pay attention, don't care, or don't object to anything that constitutes "passing."

Secondly, I am not sure that people really give that much credibility to teachers anymore, and thus their power to rate children is diminished.

The other night, I was watching the David Letterman program and Nicole Ritchie was the guest. Dave asked her about the prospect of her facing some jail time (which he called "prison" for comedic effect) and her answer was quite telling and started a conversation in the room where I was watching.

She said "Probably - Everyone goes to jail" or something to that effect.

And she just tossed that remark off - as if it were nothing.

Arrest and jail has become meaningless as our society has changed. When I was young, being arrested would be something to be terribly ashamed of. In today's world, it is a virtual inevitability. This is due to changes in our society which are beyond the scope of my remarks here.

I think GPA's are like arrests. Most people understand that it means that some officious moron took it upon him/herself to cause a problem.

What I agree with most in the article is that children should be included in adult discussions. This is how people learn.

I think we are in a downward spiral. As the educational system becomes ever more powerful, it tends to crush more and more students (as at Virginia Tech). I absolutely agree with you that the attempts to compensate are themselves destructive, but I don't see an answer to my point that there is a real problem to compensate for.

Richard Feynman commented that almost all physics students coming to Caltech had been top of their class in high school. Those who found themselves in the bottom half at Caltech suffered a profound shock, and about 35% of freshmen dropped out. He pointed out that there was little Caltech could do about it, given non-selective high schools.

Perhaps I should take a Darwinian approach to your suggestion that children are "crushed" by schools - and offer that those so easily crushed deserve to be.

The school is not the most ominous, skilled, or powerful institution that the child will encounter in life. It is an introduction to oppression, not a demonstration of the full power of oppression.

I suppose my answer to your point would be an appeal to be less obsequious to what you consider "authorities." (This might be a cultural issue between us - You probably did not have the opportunity to know many people who considered authorities the "bad guys" - and with good reason - when you were growing up.)

Most education likely takes place outside the school system. The educational system is just a warehouse.

How much respect should we have for a child who allows himself to be crushed by a warehouse?

I also initially attended a college which selected out very intellectual people. In high school, I had come to the conclusion that most people are stupid. When I was at Reed, I decided that I had been incorrect, and that "regular people" (my peers there) were solid "B" people. When I left there, I realized that my high school assessment was even generous, and that in the real world, most people should have the word "FAIL" tatooed on their heads in red ink so I could more easily avoid conversing with them.

Virginia Tech didn't make that killer psycho - he was psycho before he got there. Ask his Grandma.

"I did meet Mr. Rogers when I worked at a hotel in San Francisco, and he was exactly the same in person as he was on TV."
2 Dimensional?

"Most education likely takes place outside the school system."

I should hope so. It's not even 8 hours per day, nor 7 days per week, nor 12 months of the year.

"The educational system is just a warehouse."

I think it's more akin to a factory. The process is there to mold, and molded we shall be, or be rejected as damaged goods or 'seconds'.

Or, as my very elitist grandmother used to say, "most of these people are peasants, and should be behind a plow."

Industrialization and technology have created a world in which literacy and critial thinking have become more important for more people to have than at any other time in human history. The number of people capable of this has not increased in a commisurate measure. There used to be paternalistic places for people who (although of average intelligence, I am not talking about disabled people) were just dull and could follow simple instructions but who got into trouble when unsupervised. They had a social status clearly defined and society (nobles/churches) conspired to keep them there and happy about it. There had to be a safety valve to promote the small number of capable people to positions where they could be useful, or there would be trouble.

Hmmmmmmm....

I think I could successfully argue just the opposite point.

I'm interested to hear it--I'm thinking in terms of how for much of our existance, you just didn't _need_ to read, and you needed basic survival skills far more than higher applications of logic (because most of your political or religious decisions were made for you).

I was very interested in a recent poll that found there is still a (small, but still there) percentage of people in Britain and America who believe the sun orbits the earth. Peasants used "common sense" to determine all kinds of things that are scientifically (that is, in terms of higher thinking) absolutely wrong, but which fly in the face of intuitive knowledge.

In many ways it is. Most institutions we meet as adults we can walk away from if we choose, but a school is like a prison, evey child is given a thirteen-year sentence.

The same respect whether he was crushed by a US school, or an Iraqi building hit by a US bomb.
Thanks to his thirteen-year sentence at public schools.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

I will Godwin this thread and remind you that both Hitler and Stalin went to school, too.

Logic, please.

I don't disagree with what you have written here - but how do you explain the fact that it used to be that anyone who wanted to own a restaurant at one point needed to think it through, make a menu, order products, etc - and now one need only follow a franchise plan.

In another thread, you pointed out that one needn't be very educated to press the picture of the food on the register at McDonald's in order to facilitate the transaction.

I think there is a valid argument to be made that basic math and reading skills are less important than ever. I would cite those illegal aliens who are illiterate in English as a prime example of this.

I would agree if you had said that having a MEANINGFUL relationship to society requires more education, or that to participate fully or be in the vanguard requires more - but not that more is required of the unwashed majority.

It is very interesting to me how we have totally different ways of coming at the same thing. I agree with you--the peasant from 500 years ago can certainly be trained to press the button at MacDonalds. The difference is that western society (at least) now expects that same person to participate in a meaningful way by voting, or obeying complex regulations, or taking preventative health measures. I love democracy, but I have strong suspicions most people are too dumb to parcipate in it. People have always been irresponsible and dumb, but until recently, establishments have been structured to acknowledge that and not include them in a meaningful way. Now that we've bought into (to whatever degree) systems in which "the people" get a say, you have to listen to the idiots.

That Jean-Jacques Rousseau just ruined everything with his "will of the people" nonsense.

How do you feel about technocracy, Margaret?

Well, the problem always seems to be that irrational people cause all kinds of problems for the benevolent master computer and it ends up having to send the killer robots after us.

I'm joking.

Unfortunately, you'd have to find these mythical, selfless, non-self-aggrandizing elites to make decisions that did not benefit themselves. As I said before, given the long history of human hardwiring, good luck with that. It also would have to deal with some incredibly backwards people and places (i.e. the shockingly numerous places in remote West Virginia that still lack indoor plumbing).

It worked on Star Trek, though, didn't it.

Maybe I am a cynic, but I think that the purpose of voting is so the powerful can claim that "democracy" is happening and thus legitimize their own power, used for their own purposes. Reading and understanding and choosing are not really a part of the modern right to vote.

First of all, the two parties both represent corporate interests. Ballot initiatives are generally constructed in such a way as to have emotional appeal rather than logical, rational appeal.

I would argue that the purpose of voting is to make it look as if the granting of privileges to corporations and the oppression of the poor is the doing of the common man, and not imposed from above. No reading or "ciphering" (as Jethro Bodine would say)required in order for that goal to have been achieved.

Do you think that both parties are trying so hard to create voters out of 12 million illegals because their literacy and brilliant ability to be logical and reasonable will help America? Or merely because they will fit beautifully into the existing system?

People serve "the beast" best when they are unable to follow complex regulations. The largest political donor in the state of California is the union of prison guards - bigger than the teachers union even. Who can we imprison if everyone can read and follow regulations?

"Preventive health" measures generally involve people blindly consuming pharmaceuticals (pharma doesn't have lobbyists, do they? ) - and has little to do with science or health. The medical industry doesn't profit from health, thus health is unsupported by feral capitalist economies like America.

I'd like to believe that voting is real and that people take it seriously- but the evidence doesn't support it. I would like to say that the prison union's donations don't affect policy, but we incarcerate more people per capita than any other Western nation, and by huge margins.
I would like to think that doctors want us to be well, but that would put them out of business. I was recently told by a doctor that I needed to come in, so he could bill me, (he actually said "So I can get paid") - in order to renew my insulin prescription. I asked him to cite me one case of a type one diabetic going into spontaneous remission from insulin need - and I would come in - Needless to say, he is no longer my doctor.

Preventive health? This guy almost killed me so he could bill an insurance company!

And yet, socuety rolls on. I choose to believe, perhaps falsely, that there is a logic and a force behind things working the way they do.

I don't think illiterate voters and prison guard unions and lobbyists are all a grand accident.

When it comes to oppression, I am a creationist, not an evolutionist. It all works too well and the pieces fit together too well to be an accident.

I vote for intelligent design.

You are right (and cynical). However, I am certain that there are at least a handful of criminals who can damn well follow rules and just don't want to. There's a certain job security in prison management.

I'm also thinking of how difficult it is to conduct any sort of debate on science when a large portion of the US population has recieved such poor training in critical thinking and science that they believe the earth is 6,000 years old (the new "museum" in Kentucky cracks me up) and have knee jerk opinions about both wanting all the advantages of evolution (antibiotics, DNA analysis at crime scenes, etc.) while doing the "we're not monkeys" dance.

I do a whole routine in my European history classes about "Fun with Plebescites", which are a great tradition in the French electoral process. Do you want GREAT LEADER X to take power and solve all your problems while looking VEERY sexy in a uniform, or not? If you vote no, be advised we have no other plan except to let you starve and possibly be conquered by people in pointy hats.

I hear the people in pointy hats carry social diseases.

The evolution thing makes me nuts. I am engaged in a "debate" on another board about it. People are claiming that the six day creation is literal. I asked which of the two creation stories in Genesis they believed literally, as the two are somewhat contradictory.

I ended up spending (wasting) a lot of time trying to explain the theory of relativity and the flexibility of time - only to be answered by "but, but, but.... God told me...."

(Sorry for having added to my above post while you were responding to it.)

You are quite correct about criminals. When I lived in a different town, i was introduced to some hardcore ex-convicts through some neighbours.

Their tales of prison life convinced me that prison society and prison culture is quite demanding and unforgiving.

They seem to have adapted so well to the rules made by their fellow inmates and inmates before them that I wondered why they couldn't adapt similarly to the rules of larger society.

Maybe prison is more democratic than society at large.

One thing that I found admirable about the convicts: Their word was their bond. If they saw you as a person, and not a victim/potential victim, they would sooner fall on a sword than screw you over.

I think the most relevant part of what you said is what I underlined. I went to an English boarding school (similar to a US military academy) which could have been described in the same way. It's much harder to learn to adjust to the more complex society outside, where the repercussions from anti-social acts are less certain.

Your comment that ex-cons see a small group as people to be treated fairly and all others as potential victims is also interesting. Boarding schoolboys are also taught to some extent to treat other graduates of boarding schools as equals, but others as inferiors. I doubt you find that so admirable.

Margaret Sankey's remarks that most people are fit only to be peasants have a similar ring.

I would answer your post, but I have learned that you are not a fellow graduate of any of my schools.

The "museum" gift shop is particularly great. I bought a biology colleague of mine a coffee cup with scantily-dressed Adam and Eve frolicking with dinosaurs. He loved it and carries it around everywhere.

Have you, by any chance, read the "blogging the Bible" entries on Slate.com? A well-read, well-educated but pretty much secular Jewish guy spent a year re-reading the Old Testament and blogging. It is great--very funny, and makes your point that there are an awful lot of strange, violent and contradictory things. I got kicked out of a lot of Episco Sunday school classes for pointing out the parts of the stories that the blue-haired ladies didn't include in the flannel board story. The most spectacular was when asked the moral of the Book of Esther (I think they wanted some "be true to yourself" answer), I said "trust the eunuchs for good fashion tips."

Have you ever looked at the book of Thoth of the ancient Egyptians? Or their 15 commandments?

I love throwing that stuff at people. There si even an ancient Egyptian ritual of locking people into a pyramid for three days at the end of their spiritual induction so they can be reborn.

I guess I am a theological liberal when it comes to Christianity, because I believe that something can have both a historical truth and a spiritual truth, or a scientific truth and a revelatory truth, and that none of those choices need be either/or.


I will check out the Slate posts.

Or look at any Isis holding Horus as a child statue and not see immediately where all the Virgin and Child motifs in Christianity come from?

I do really like the idea of weighing your heart against the feather of truth and throwing the losers to the crocodile god. There's just something spiritually satisfying to that.

I always get Ammut and Ma'at confused.

I think this Egyptian myth has survived in a slightly altered form in the "tollhouse" teachings of some of the Orthodox Churches.

It is said that after death, the soul passes through spiritual tollhouses, staffed by demons, who look for anything they recognize in the soul.

In order to pass through, the soul must be pure.

FWIW, I went to Sunday School when I was 7. My parents didn't ask me to, nor force me to. I was curious, and arranged to go with a family 2 doors down. Towards the middle of the 'class' I asked, "Aren't these stories just like Grimm's Fairy Tales?" I was told, "No" and summarily hastened out of the class, and asked to never come back. Unlike anything else could have, this confirmed to me that they are exactly like Grimm's Tales, and worthy of just as much respect. There is much there about human nature, but don't take it literally.

Traditional Christian churches, such as the Catholic and Orthodox Christian faiths tend to teach that the Bible is true, but is subject to interpretation.

The strict literal understanding of the Bible comes about within Protestantism because having rejected (so the argument goes) the fullness of understanding of the Church, including the writings of the Church Fathers and Saints, the Protestants are left with nothing but the Bible.

Why people think that Bible should be a science textbook, I will never understand.

When a fuse blows in my truck, I don't look in the Bible to find out where the fusebox is. It may be true, but it doesn't meant that it is the exclusive repository of truth. Sometimes a nice gas chromatograph analysis or a wiring diagram from a Ford manual are the more relevant truth in a given situation.

My grandmother used to grumble that her neighbors treated their Italian au pair badly, saying "she isn't a slave!" She also used to subscribe to a magazine that prescribed a daily Bible reading and accompanying platitudes. The magazine claimed to cover the entire Bible every two(?) years. I was suspicious of this since they kept jumping around, so I went through the required number of back issues, and sure enough, big chunks of Leviticus et. al. were left out. Naturally, I read those chunks. (I must have been around six or seven.) I remember reading that it was OK to have a slave from a neighboring tribe, but Jewish slaves had to be set free (I am working from memory here, so forgive any inaccuracies). My grandmother was not happy when I told her it was OK for Sophia to be a slave because she was Italian!

I think Winston Churchill had it just about right when he described democracy as the worst system except for all the others.

Of the six countries who actually fought in WWII, it is quite startling how much larger were the irrationalities of the four dictatorships than either of the democracies managed. Plato and Lenin might argue that an elite would make better decisions, but somehow it doesn't work out that way. I think the problem with any elitist system is 'who picks the elite'? In practice, each generation of the elite picks their successors, leading to the problem I discussed in http://www.caseint.com/john/dilbert.htm .

I would agree with Margaret, and further put forth the theory that what we now call "democracies" are systems in which the wealthy are able to buy a particular result through either media spending or media ownership and concentration.

The lack of genuine education found in the masses, including even the level of literacy (dumbing down) - makes for a very malleable mass, manipulable with even the most unbelievable propaganda.

This is a relatively new state of affairs, and I would argue that there is no data yet that tells us if this form of "democracy" is different from any other form of control by the wealthy.

There is a reason that those who favour an American Empire (please read the "PNAC" documents) believe in spreading "democracy" around the world. It allows them to purchase a result.

This is why Putin has been reasserting control over the media after the PNAC boys plowed millions into buying the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. He has also restricted NGO's and "religious" organizations from operating. These are two other categories of organizations which the U.S. has used to spread influence.

The Orange Revolution ultimately failed, resulting in a gridlocked government rather than a U.S satellite on Russia's border.

My opinion is that its failure was due to a miscalculation on the part of its American engineers as to the educational level of the populace.

Democracy, these days, means an election that can be bought or stolen one way or another.

The proposition that a modern "democracy" is much easier to influence or accomplish a "regime change" in than a "dictatorship" can not be argued against.

(Anyone interested in looking at what America is really up to lately will enjoy reading about it here: http://www.newamericancentury.org/ - They advocated an Iraq invasion in the 90's, and even stated that a "new pearl harbor" would help to make it happen.)

Check this out: http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/orwell_rolls_in_his_grave.htm

There will never be a large society in which every person has the same degree of influence. The best that can be hoped for is that influence is spread among various competing groups, giving us 'little guys' a chance to appeal from one influential group to another.

Very early in the movie, one (presumably 'good-guy') talking head says 'media vies with the government'. Implicitly, this comment acknowledges that the US is about as good as it gets.

The difference in the quality of life between the US and the USSR, where nothing 'vied with the government' is enormous.

I just remembered when school had us read "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. The teacher asked us which animal was the hero of the story. Of course all the other kids gave the expected platitudinous answers of "Snowball led the charge that drove the humans out" and "Boxer the horse who worked so hard". My answer was "Benjamin the donkey". When asked why, I said "He was the only intelligent animal. When asked whether he approved of the revolution, he would answer only 'Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey.'" The school's response was "six of the best".