A bit back, Junior was playing with a water gun. I asked her where she got the water gun and she says we don’t call it a water gun we call it a water shooter because gun is a bad word.That would have to be the creepiest thing about sending your child off to school. Who knows what they're stuffing into the little tyke's head there?
Did they program me while I was in school? I mean, is the phone going to ring and I'm going to answer it and say "I have miles to go and promises to keep," in a flat monotone and then go do something horrible, like vote for Andre Carson, all because of some crap they taught me in second grade?
This is how tinfoil beanie wearing starts...
Forget the tin or aluminium. Go copper foil, much nicer. Trendsetting.
ReplyDeleteGuns don't kill people, shooters kill people. With guns, mostly, but sometimes crossbows.
ReplyDeleteTamara? Tamara K?
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you pass the time by playing a game of solitaire?
Now listen carefully...
Your goldfish has fleas. Your goldfish has fleas.
ReplyDelete...and this is why I will be homeschooling mine.
ReplyDeleteActually, statistical evidence suggests the use of aluminum foil helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.
ReplyDeletehttp://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/
:)
I bought my first batch of holstermaking stuff over to my parents, and was thumbing through the book and fiddling with the tools, My 5 year old nephew started asking 5 year old questions about what I was doing--
ReplyDelete"Making holsters"
"what's a holster?"
"kind of a case for a gun"
"You shouldn't have guns...Do you have guns?
"yes"
....do you shoot people with your guns?"
His Dad isn't anti-gun, his Mom claims not to be.
They don't realize that they're making little Libertarians. The only real taste of oppression that these kids see - clear unfairness, ridiculous rules that prevent them from doing reasonable things, "you can't say that" - is from the government masters.
ReplyDeleteIt will take the kids a while to shake the fog off - usually happens when they get real jobs, but it is building a gut-check feeling that is going to hurt the left in a big way.
You might argue that it's already hurting the left, as the country took a big turn away from the hard left in the 80's and especially 90s. IOW, when people who went to school in the 70s and 80s started thinking.
And kids don't vote. 2008 was a total aberration, and the feeling among the youngsters is that Obama lied to them. They won't be back.
The "Long March Through The Institutions" has destroyed the institutions.
Well, last night I came home, and she was in her Kalashnakitty shirt. So it can be fixed.
ReplyDelete-SayUncle
They did the same thing with paintball "markers"
ReplyDeleteThis is the #1 thing I am worried about once my son starts to go to school. I'm going to have to keep a close eye out and make sure to deprogram him often.
ReplyDeleteMy son starts kindergarten this year. I am so not looking forward to the constant deprogramming. How do you tell a 5 year old that his teacher is a pinko commie and still have him give her respect?
ReplyDeleteCrustyrusty beat me to it. Say paintball "gun" just to watch 'em squirm.
ReplyDeleteChad K.:
ReplyDelete"Show allegiance to the flag whatever flag they offer.
Never hint at what you really feel.
Teach the children quietly for some day sons and daughters.
Will rise up and fight where we stood still."
("Silent Running" -- Mike & The Mechanics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddi2TBnzdPo
Ignore all voices until you hear the following: "John has a long mustache, John has a long mustache".
ReplyDeleteAre you sure about the paintball "markers" being changed from something else? They originated as tree-marking tools before people realized you could play a cool game by shooting each other with them (the logging crews excepted, of course, as I'm sure the first time they gave those "tree markers" to a crew of men in the lonely woods, the first living thing to get shot with one probably wasn't a tree.)
ReplyDeleteThey were probably called "markers" back then, weren't they?
Also, it is to laugh at the notion that guns are bad but shooters are good. I mean, I'm a shooter, that's OK with me, but . . . .
The Nelson Paint Company, purveyors of the original Nel-Spot 007, refers to their products as "tree marking guns".
ReplyDeleteI don't allow toy guns in my home (even though I'd love to give my daughter a cap gun). At their age, I want the 4 rules to be burned into their skulls and don't want to be in the position of explaining why this gun is ok to play with while this one isn't. I also correct her when she accidentally points a toy gun at someone in a toy store (careful honey, we don't point guns at people, right?).
ReplyDeleteShe LOVES to go to the gun store with daddy and has her eyes on a pink Cricket rifle. She'll get one when she gets a little older and a little less excitable. :D
Chris
As to brain protection from mind-control rays, yer all wrong. What you want is Mu-Metal, according to Steven DenBeste. It stops not just the electric fields, but also the magnetic ones.
ReplyDeleteOh! Those black helicopters? They do exist, but they're not black, just a very very dark green.
Dark green helicopters be damned, I want me a pink Cricket!
ReplyDelete==
Jerry
(They are just as deadly as the black ones:)
Well if they did program you someone did a pretty poor job. You clearly haven't joined the collective.
ReplyDeleteThe programming at schools is nothing to take lightly, and it can be so pervasive that it is hard to locate all of it and deprogram the kids.
ReplyDeleteI experienced all three types of education--public school through 3rd grade, Private Christian school through 6th, and then Homeschooling until I set off for college.
Before homeschooling, my parents were doing their darndest to deprogram everything I was getting at the public school. They did a good job, but I still came home with many notions like Junior's that I had to re-learn on my own cause my folks never would have thought of talking about the issues. You can deprogram your kids, but you can't think of everything that's thrown at them.
Even in the private schools there are half-wits and nit-wits who will be putting ridiculous things in your children's minds. This is easier to mitigate by being involved in the school and in determining what is taught.
Homeschooling is your best option, and there are plenty of resources out there that you can use to supplement your own lack of knowledge in an area (e.g. Eastman Chemists who homeschooled their kids used to teach co-op classes in chemistry to high schoolers in Kingsport, TN.--they may still).
The garbage your children will get in college is bad enough. Teach them yourselves, and they'll be a lot less susceptible in college than if they were taught in public schools and then greatly, but incompletely deprogrammed.
Finally, on the suggestion that the public schools are churning out libertarians who just need to see that the government is the one oppressing them, I have seen the opposite. The subtle programming in the public schools that prevents this is the constant, non overt implication that your parents are the bad guys who make the ridiculous rules. It's the background of most reading assignments, and that doesn't even start to cover what your kids get on TV. (Sit down and watch Disney one afternoon and look at the subtext.)
Children see the government as a potential savior because THEY get a voice in how it is run, unlike the "autocracies" that their parents ran. I was disgusted at how many peers turned into raging Obamamaniacs during this last election simply because they thought that socialized medicine, schooling (including college), and so many other promises were RIGHTS. I know these people, and I know their families--this is not what they were taught at home, but their public schooling and time at college reprogrammed them to Obama Youth in one of the most frightening transformations I've seen.
Finally, as to their disappointment with Obama, they won't leave him because his socialism is a failure, they'll leave because he didn't execute the socialism he promised. He didn't do what they demanded, so they'll move on to the next, more radical socialist they can find.
Sorry for being so gloomy, I don't mean to extinguish hope, just what I see as a rose colored view of the public schools. Yank the kids out of them, teach them yourselves, and we can see the current revival of libertarian thinking blossom with the next generation rather than stalling out.
@joel...as Dennis Miller would say, "Viva la referencia obscura!"
ReplyDelete@justthisguy...TRUE...they ARE dark green, have no markings, and can run w/o lights.
I loathe the 'stating of the obvious', but this is why, for over 100 years Progressives have been compromising education, to get 'em young. Bastards!
Children are more easily programmed than adults, for a variety of reasons (he says and cringes thinking of what LabRat would say to that). This is not necessarily a bad thing - learning a language is programming, and in my experience the earlier safety lessons (such as the 4 rules) are taught, the deeper they stick and the more likely they are to be followed.
ReplyDeleteAs for toys vs "real" guns; the 4 rules apply just as much to toys as they do to 1911s. While you are unlikely to be much more than embarrassed by an ND with a Supersoaker, an ND with a lasertag gun much less a paintball "marker" or an airsoft has the potential of injury along with at least a temproary "death". Hammer it into the sprog early and they will grow up to index their trigger finger on the frame of a Windex bottle; and most kids *will* have a toy gun, even if it's a funny-shaped stick.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAgent K, the magics words are "squeamish" and "ossifrage." I say again, the magic words are "squeamish" and "ossifrage."
ReplyDeleteMy experience mostly matches that of Borepatch. That is, once I became essentially responsible for my myself and all the responsibilities involved with that, a lot of the programming started to crack.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the whole point of education is in large part indoctrination. It's how you turn a functionally useless, often self-obsessed little beast into a citizen with some concept of the polity in which he or she lives. We're full of indoctrination - it's just that the greater part of it makes pragmatic sense, and has survived through millennia for a reason. Thus I think we're fighting over a comparatively small part of the picture.
All that side.... if I'm ever graced with the little darlings, darned if I'll let the Prussian Model get its hands on them, regardless of whether we're talking old-school line army or modern soft conformity.
(regarding kids and toy weapons, would not a good compromise be "follow the 4 rules in handling, but other people opting into your game are valid targets for toys/markers/whatever so designed?" That's partly coming from the "you prolly ain't getting kids to stop doing it when you ain't looking" and partly just acknowledging that stage of development, especially in boys, is there to drive in the effective use of weapons for later in life. Thus proscribing using them as such in play is defeating the purpose. Or is all that assumed and I'm just over thinking it?
I don't know - I wasn't allowed to play with toy guns as a kid. Today I have a wide ranging collection... But even better, the mother who didn't allow me to play with toy guys now totes a .45.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe there is some reverse physiology going on here - what I call the broccoli effect - make a kid eat broccoli and he'll hate it. Deny him broccoli and he'll eat it out of spite.
I'm getting my counterattack to the propaganda in first.
ReplyDeleteSince I shot this video, I've replaced the black handguards with pink ones and procured pink 33db hearing protection, as requested by Little Miss Tacticute.
The shortest, and tied for best, thing James Clavell ever published is dead on:
ReplyDeleteIt was then that I realized how completely vulnerable my child’s mind was
– any mind for that matter – under controlled circumstances.
Normally – I write and rewrite and rewrite, but this story came quickly – almost by itself. Barely three words were
changed. It pleased me greatly because it keeps asking me questions….
Yeah. Homeschool if you can. Schools and teachers unions are not neutral institutions, and have not been for several generations.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't allow 'toy guns', generally, because our daughter was taught safety with the real thing. I finally bought one for MY Halloween costume, and passed it to my daughter-she was 9 or 10 at the time. One afternoon, I overheard what sounded like MY safety lecture, coming from the yard. I looked, and there was Molly, with the toy, instructing a boy a head taller than she, about safety. "DON'T you cross me with that!" she barked at her pupil. I was never so proud!
ReplyDeleteJenny said (1:50 PM, July 07, 2010):
ReplyDelete. . . regarding kids and toy weapons, would not a good compromise be "follow the 4 rules in handling, but other people opting into your game are valid targets for toys/markers/whatever so designed?" That's partly coming from the "you prolly ain't getting kids to stop doing it when you ain't looking" and partly just acknowledging that stage of development, especially in boys, is there to drive in the effective use of weapons for later in life. Thus proscribing using them as such in play is defeating the purpose. Or is all that assumed and I'm just over thinking it?
Jenny,
That's EXACTLY how we are indoctrinating our daughter. Toy guns may be pointed at people ONLY if those people have AGREED to "play guns" AT THAT TIME. At all other times, they follow the same rules as any guns that throw projectiles.
Seems to work, including her asking for the safe direction when checking out a toy gun in a store.
She turns five this fall.
Love the Telefon reference. Chuck Bronson made a great KGB cleaner and Lee Remick was hotter than a two dollar pistol.
ReplyDeleteI programmed my son as a toddler to cover his nose whenever he heard "This little piggy went to market, etc" simply by doing all the piggies then beeping his nose at the end.
ReplyDeleteHe kept covering his nose quite unconsciously when I would say "This little piggy" until he was about 12, when he admitted that NOW he was covering his nose just to make me happy.
Thank you Professor Pavlov.
I won't ever admit what I programmed my daughter to do during her formative toddler years. Let's just say the first guy to get too fresh with her will be quite surprised and likely will need medical attention. Heh.
Jenny's comment above gives me hope that all is not lost. Yeah, Tam, you absolutely were indoctrinated in school...so was Jenny, and Borepatch whose comment Jenny references, and even me way back in the class of '72. But we took it for what it was worth and moved on.
ReplyDeleteEarly teaching at home is critical; not the proselytizing of any one view, but rather in critical thinking and the concept that they as an individual are independently responsible for their beliefs, actions, and well-being.
With that background, public school and college are relegated to useful tools but with their own ulterior views, not to be taken too seriously.
And looking at the viewpoints and comments of those I mentioned above plus many others here, I do harbor hope and even confidence for the generations to come.
I actually admit to being a little surprised that Uncle's Jr. hadn't received a prior message at home of how to deal with what "we don't say or do in school". The perfect response: "Guns don't shoot people; shooters shoot people".
AT
The Jesuits were well known for saying "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man." The Jesuits were also well known for training Voltaire.
ReplyDeletePropaganda is not always effective.