[thechat] Jan 18 peace march

[aardvark]

> From: Erika Meyer <emeyer at lclark.edu>
[...]
> Anyway, brainwashing starts at home, sure, but I think the schools
> brainwash the worst.  Me & the PTA been battling a bit about such
> things.  Guess who's gonna win.  (Damn pushy holier-than-though
> stay-at-home soccer moms...)
[...]

good morning america this morning interviewed a collection of black
kids and white kids to ask about the perceptions of each... granted,
i watched it through a fever, so the dancing fish i saw may not have
really been there...

but we all think children offer the most honest answers, and that is
true -- until they're in school... then they offer insight into what
their teachers say... i could see a lot of pre-programmed responses
coming from kids, in words that were surely not their own...

i think back to my own time in school when one day i realized that
teachers weren't always teaching facts... after that, challenging
teachers to prove their assertions became something of a hobby, and
every now and then, like freshman year social studies, i actually
found a teacher with whom i could *debate*...

you're right, too many kids are brainwashed by more than parents,
especially when teachers are the prevalent role models in their
lives...

i remember looking out my office window one day and seeing about 50
kids, no older than 5, walking down the street to march on city hall
for higher teacher wages... *that* disgusted me, and i went down and
said as much... none of those kids new what they were doing, and they
were being used as nothing more than props...

but hey, kids are a renewable resource, right?

--
my latest book project:
  Web Graphics for Non-Designers
  http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151159/evoltorg02-20
  ISBN: 1904151159