I found this on eBaum's World today and it really hit home. It's American, but it applies here too.
50 Years
See what 50 years will do:
Scenario: Jack pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack.
1956 - Vice Principal comes over, takes a look at Jack's rifle, goes to his car and gets his to show Jack.
2006 - School goes into lockdown, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.
1956 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends. Nobody goes to jail, nobody arrested, nobody expelled.
2006 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charges them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
Scenario: Jason won't be still in class, disrupts other students.
1956 - Jason sent to office and given a good paddling by Principal. Sits still in class.
2006 - Jason given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. School gets extra money from state because Jason has a disability.
Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his father's car and his Dad gives him a whipping.
1956 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2006 - Billy's Dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Billy's sister is told by state psychologist that she remembers being abused herself and their Dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.
Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some headache medicine to school.
1956 - Mark shares headache medicine with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2006 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.
Scenario: Pedro fails high school English.
1956 : Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2006 : Pedro's cause is taken up by state Democratic Party. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he can't speak English.
Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed
1956 - Ants die.
2006 - BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary, hugs him to comfort him.
1956 - In a short time Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2006 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison.
-------
Never mind 1956. I went to school in the seventies and eighties and let me tell you, if current standards were enforced then, I would have been expelled literally hundreds of times. In grades one and two I was constantly getting in fights, so much so that the teacher would give me gold stars for not getting in a fight over a recess. Never mind that...in grades two and three, we played kissing tag pretty much every day. There were just two of us boys, most days, myself and Gordon. Four girls joined us every day--and yes, I remember them: Laura, Sonia, Anna, and Catherine. Various other girls would cycle in and out, and a couple of other boys. It was an absolute blast. And guess what? The teachers all knew about it. Not one of them said a word. Oh, except one, who thought it was "cute".
Imagine that today.
Boy, things were different back then. All that kissing--and there was a lot of it--was completely innocent. Well, Laura and I thought we were in love, of course--so did Gordon and Catherine--but it never so much as occurred to any of us to be jealous if somebody was kissing somebody else's girl or guy. I know, grade three, jealousy's unheard of at that age, right?
Probably not in 2007. In this era of "rainbow parties"--if you don't know what those are, ask your son or daughter, because I'm not going to tell you--I don't think much is unheard of anymore.
The other day I was walking through a Zellers and happened to notice an itsy-bitsy T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Sexy's Back!" Lingerie? Nope, size 6x for little girls. It's far from the first time I've been confronted with age-inappropriate attire, of course. And I find it utterly insane. I mean, here we are in this society where people can be punished for just looking at a child with a certain gleam in their eye--rightfully so, I must add--but we insist on dressing our children in clothing by Hookers of Hollywood? What gives? Can anyone even attempt to explain that?
Fighting. I can say with certainty that schoolyard fights were always one-on-one affairs, settled with fists and feet only. Bringing a weapon would have been ridiculous even to contemplate--it would have branded you a coward, of course, not to mention the legal consequences we were all aware of. And to have somebody else jump in if you were losing constituted a breach of honour so grave as to be unthinkable.
I don't need to tell you what happens now. Check your local newspaper.
The punishment for being in a fight has changed, too. It used to be detention, or in later grades, study hall. Now you're suspended or, more likely, expelled--which is a real hoot since most of the people we used to call 'juvenile deliquents' don't like school anyway. Why are we rewarding them for their antisocial behaviour? I don't get it.
About once a month I hear of some house party gone wrong. You know what I mean: a dozen kids invited, and two hundred or more show up and proceed to trash the house. In several cases over a hundred thousand dollars damage is done and the family is left homeless. Did that ever happen when we were that age? I think my parents would have killed me. Several times, in fact.
Which brings me to: spanking. Yes, I was spanked, from age three to about eight or nine. Last I looked, I'm not a monster. What's more, I know for a fact my mother was spanked, my father was spanked, and I'm pretty sure their mothers and fathers were spanked, and so on and so forth unto the dawn of time.
In my case, I was spanked because nothing else worked. I don't blame my mother in the slightest for administering the low justice, at first with a "spanking stick" spatula, later with a belt. Hell, I would have spanked me too, probably twice as hard.
Is it the right way to parent? Not anymore, that's for sure. How in the hell did spanking go from completely acceptable to utterly indefensible in one short generation?
Is it something in the water that's turned us all crazy?
No comments:
Post a Comment