Schools today - training our kids to be wimps

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by purr1n, May 29, 2019.

  1. crazychile

    crazychile Eastern Iowa's Spiciest Pepper

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    Mods, please update Lyer25s tagline to "Licked electrical outlets as a child"

    I LOLed, but I bet you didn't have to go to the emergency room as a 4 yr old for putting a Hot Wheels car tire up your nose.
     
  2. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    The "back in my day" thing : well, what I've observed seems to be a true, a recent cultural shift. It would be one thing if it were a matter of bragging, that we old-timers were better. But this not the case. What I am seeing with the fascist safety trends in schools is disturbing: banning of sports such as football (and tag) that could cause injury (and then inviting x4 LA Rams stars to the school to inspire the kids), the "everybody is a winner" thing, prohibiting the sharing of food, cornering off entire sections for kids with peanut allergies (they finally got rid of this), anti-bullying programs (they don't work - one of my son's friends transferred), zero tolerance for fighting (my son had a good friend expelled - a nice who smart jewish kid who stood up for himself).

    It is these playground rules that prepare kids for future adult societal interaction. Beaning a classmate in the head and making them cry makes one realize their capacity to cause harm to others and be ostracized for being an ahole. Standing up to a bully and even losing a fight garners respect from peers and makes one realize that bullies only target the weak. Getting tackled on the pavement makes one realize that tackle football on the blacktop maybe wasn't such a good idea. Or get this: maybe realizing that not everyone in the world isn't your friend and isn't going to like you.

    One of this best experiences I had was when I was in the third grade. A group of Mexican kids ganged up on me and made me cry (my parents were poor at the time so I didn't go to a 80%+ white school in CA). Later in the day, the kids apologized, offered a hand, and since demonstrated unwavering loyalty, always being the first to defend me or each other on the playground. Things like this would never happen because the fascist safety approach of schools would never let things play out.

    --

    On the "weird" loners. These guys are rarely the ones who bully other kids and are often the targets of abuse. High school can be tough and I could easily see one or two of my friends or classmates doing this. A friend with this potential once joked / surmised: "Didn't Dylan / Klebold" actually stop at a few kids and decided not to shoot? Thinking "Oh, you're cool. You never tortured me".

    --

    There was an old school insurance corporation I used to work for. A millennial intern was there for the summer. His final report was on flexible work environments, telecommuting, couches and sofas for naps to increase productivity. I felt so bad for him. The managers in the department said a lot of shitty stuff about him behind his back while being nice to his face. The dude was clueless, obviously a product of a fascist safety school of learning.

    --

    Butt's Up is a tribal game. Let's face it and acknowledge that humans are tribal creatures. We aren't U.S.S. Enterprise yet.
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2019
  3. FallingObjects

    FallingObjects Pay It Forward

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    Lol I remember a kid in my grade 7 science class inhaling directly from the bottle of ammonia and spending the next 5 minutes bent over the trashcan.

    The teacher used it as a demonstration as to 'why you should listen to me when I instruct you on the wafting method of smelling stuff'.
     
  4. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    We used to play this game called Knuckles. There wasn't much to it... you just put your fist down on a desk and the other player would put a quarter down and flick it with their fingers into your knuckles. Swap places, repeat. The whole point was to just give and receive some small amount of pain.

    I think it came about as the punitive phase from playing quarters/football on the desk, then people ditched that and just went purely with the punitive game.

    edit: oh wait, maybe the punitive game was called Quarters. I think Knuckles was just the hand slapping game except with, well, knuckles
     
  5. elmoe

    elmoe Friend

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    It wasn't so much a whine about prices, more of a "don't put a high price on shit that doesn't deserve it" kind of post. I own high priced gear that I think is worth the money. But I hear ya, its sterile to keep it going at this point.

    For sure agree about the "boss trying to be family to get the most out of the employee" deal. I have one of those. He's not invited to my BBQs :D
     
  6. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Despite the best efforts of my school, I guess I was determined to remain a wimp.

    didn't do me any harm*...

    I was hit with various things at school, and beaten at home. It was the 1950s, and that was what happened then. Did it do me any harm? Maybe... but I have never held it against my parents, because they simply did what was right according to the wisdom of the time. The same teachers transposed a generation would have been prevented by law from doing that, and my parents, if transposed a generation, would have had a different wisdom.

    There are lots of things that I got wrong in my youth. I wish now that I had not done my best to avoid all sport, not because I might have enjoyed it, I probably wouldn't, but I'd be fitter. And I wish I had learned to fight, because, much later in life I found myself regularly wanting to. And still do. Hey ho, perhaps it's all for the best that I am a wimp!


    *Sounds like my parents talking!
     
  7. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    @purr1n Sharing food potentially dangerous cuz fatal allergies. Rough sports potentially dangerous because... concussion and broken bones. Still, it sucks that strict regulations are implemented when these are outlier cases that could easily be circumvented by not being a dumb dumb.

    Or having parents, teachers, and guardians that actually watch over kids.

    Agreed that this was a recent cultural shift, and one that IMO went way too far the other way. Road to hell paved with good intentions and all that, I'm waiting for the scales to balance out (insert Thanos meme).

    This precisely. Shit does happen but it's unreasonably hard on someone when their entire worldview undergos a full-on paradigm shift, can't expect things to just catch on. One sister, mum, and I had a... discussion about the use of corporal punishment just a couple weeks ago. Sister and I were talking about the detrimental effects of beating on development across lifespan, mum just responded with "hmph, just wait until you're parents and see if you still think that", which to me seemed a transparent side-step missing the point entirely. We don't talk about it anymore, just another landmine to avoid.

    @elmoe I will admit that it was hard for me to discern that, seemed the other way back then. Could blame my poor reading comprehension. Eh, it was honestly a good discussion worth having, I'm just sorry that I got snippy and crapped a lot over that thread because I enjoyed following everyone's responses :))

    I've crapped over this thread a lot now too so I'm going back to playing Exploding Kittens with ~83% of the family. Lots of yelling going on, fun. Kinda wish it were Cards Against Humanity but the parents would both get conniptions.

    P.S.
    Dammit. That'd actually be cool if I were Static Shock or something, but not so much the EE equivalent of the glue eater kid.

    But Yikes, how the hell even :))
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2019
  8. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Back in the day, when we rolled around in the farmyard shit. we didn't have allergies. Except for a touch of hay fever. (Seriously, though: it does seem to be a modern day issue. Unless I just didn't notice my friends dying as they shared my peanuts)

    (And people today don't remember schoolfriends dying of polio and haven't even heard of diphtheria. Let's do some good in the world: Share your peanuts with an antivaxxer!)
     
  9. elmoe

    elmoe Friend

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    Hey, no harm done man. I've learned a long time ago not to take shit on the internet too seriously, and tend to post in kind. I think if you're on these forums and don't have a few dislikes here and there you need to start speaking your mind more ;)
     
  10. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    :)
     
  11. Syzygy

    Syzygy Friend

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    We're a generation away from watering the grass with Gatorade.
     
  12. elmoe

    elmoe Friend

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    Shithead :D
     
  13. E_Schaaf

    E_Schaaf MOT: E.T.A Headphones

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    I think most of the games mentioned in this thread - both the watered down and OG versions, sound fun. I probably wouldn't have felt like I was missing out playing the watered-down version had I not known OG versions existed.

    All of them are better than the playground classic at one of my elementary schools (I moved a lot). The rules then were simple - how long can you leave your hand in the fire ant mound?

    Anyone who leaves Junior High without permanent emotional / cognitive (or physical) scars probably peaked in Junior High. It's a time that's meant to suck. Even stringent supervision won't protect students from their classmates. I'm glad I can't remember 99% of it.
     
  14. Mdkaler

    Mdkaler Friend

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    Yea I remember those two games. Shit it was so painful to watch. Punching someone's face I understand, but right at someone's iron fist takes a whole lot more courage.
     
  15. FallingObjects

    FallingObjects Pay It Forward

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    A book I'm reading, 'I contain multitudes,' talks about this. Under exposure to germs seems to correlate with having an overly excitable and trigger happy immune system, as because it was never 'trained' properly while young it over reacts to otherwise benign triggers. Kids raised in sterile environments and with weird/inadequate gut flora develop auto immune disorders and inflammation related diseases (like IBS or asthma) at much higher rates than baseline populations, so it makes sense on a surface level to me.

    Having a dog around a kid early in life is also good for reducing such outcomes, apparently. Man's best friend is covered in man's oldest companions haha.
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2019
  16. msommers

    msommers High on Epipens

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    TL;DR: Every generation after your own is weak and doesn't know how good they have it.
     
  17. Senorx12562

    Senorx12562 Case of the mondays

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    As the father of a millennial, (now 24), I had an experience relevant to "schools these days. " I received a call at work one day, and when I got on the phone, a woman said to me "Mr. H, this is Principal ____ from Hamilton Middle School, and I have your son in my office on speaker with me, and we need to talk about some cyber -bullying that has been taking place involving the bullying of an ex-student here by a number of current students, and your son was involved. Apparently the victim opened an online account in the name of a current student and pretended to be her, and in retaliation, some students here including some of your son's friends made some threats and said some pretty horrible things about her."

    So I said "What did my son say or do?" She said "Well, apparently he posted to one of his friends that the victim was a b-i-t-c-h." So I replied "In the first, place, you can say bitch in front of my son. He hears that word at home all the time. Secondly, sounds to me like he was right." Ah, Mr. H..." "Wait a minute, it is my turn to talk. Did my son make any threats? "Well, ah, not that I am aware of." "Did he ever communicate directly with this girl?" "I don't think so." "Ms. ______, why are we even having this conversation?" Silence, for about 5-6 seconds. "Very well, Mr. H, I will let you get back to work. Just thought you would want to know. Have a good day." Then faintly, in the background I hear her say, "Dylan, now I see why you are the way you are. Next time, I will call your mother," to which he replies, "Don't bother, woulda been even better." CLICK. When he got home, he gave me a big hug and said "I love you dad, you're the best." They never called me again.
     
  18. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room."

    Often attributed to Socrates (but maybe made up).

    On the 'grumpy old git' topic: I have at least as much trouble with most people my age or older as I do with the younger ones. And if I was at a school that didn't allow ball tag, I'd be PO'd.
     
  19. StandUp713

    StandUp713 Friend

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    Back in the 80's, in a fly over state, we played a game called "smear the queer". Probable got renamed to something more PC in todays culture. We used those hard rubber balls, instead of the new nerf balls. Those rubber balls would sting like a SOB. Head shots were encouraged.

    I would be curious to hear how Generation Nerf would handle boot camp in a military service.
     
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Smear the queer was awesome.

    Not my kids.

    So my son suggested to the other kids that they play a "real" variant of Butts Up. They all declined for fear of being hit by the ball, including the biggest and strongest kid.

    Told ya.

    My new favorite line to my kids when they need me for stupid stuff that I know they can do for themselves:

    Do what you would do if I were dead.

    --

    The only reason kids have it easy it because the parents let them have it easy.
     

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