SCHOOL -- 1957 vs. 2007

Scenario:
Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957
- Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007
- School goes into lock dow n, 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 fistfight after school.
1957
- Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.


Scenario:
Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.
1957
- Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.


Scenario:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister 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 aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario:
Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. 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 cannot speak English..

Scenario:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007- 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.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.


This should hit every e-mail to show how stupid we have become!


And if we do not wake up and take our country back - WE will not have a country , nor a society to grow old in or for our children to grow up in


Think about it !
I got this from another retired teacher-things were bad enough when I retired 11 (oops THAT LONG?)years ago.

quote:

Thanks MB. I didn't mean to stir up a pile of sh**

You didn't stir a thing, Gypsy. It's up to people to make their own decisions on how to react. I get emails from my uncle who's in his mid-80s that reflect an even longer view of the ludicrous changes in our society. All I know is that people didn't used to die waiting in our ERs and no one do anything...

Thanks MB. I didn't mean to stir up a pile of sh**. But this hit so many of the things that I saw change in my 33 years as a teacher. Maybe somebody much younger doesn't see the truth of the loss of common sense. When I retired 11 years ago we were told not to even pat a student on the back"good job" the primary teachers found it especially difficult. We had the no pills policy too-had to be kept in the office with parent and dr. note. Only exception I can remember was an epi-pen. Common sense is a very difficult thing to teach but it can be encouraged-it needs to come much earlier than school or maybe it has to be inherited. I hope somebody has some before it is too late for all of us. OOPS need duck tape. Maybe it was/is different in big cities-I have NEVER lived in one duck tape time. Gypsy

quote:

I'm sorry you felt the need to erase the link to lolcatz. That actually was humor.

I am sure you meant, that IN YOUR OPINION, that was humour. Cat haters might not agree... Check in the "We Laugh To Survive" forum. I created a new thread and moved the cat humour because it was not relevant to this topic. If you have a question about moderation here, please direct it by PM to one of the mods as we typically do not discuss forum administration in the threads.

***rrrrriiiipppppp***

There are many types of humour. Some is dark and biting, some is tongue-in-cheek; some is caustic and sarcastic. As for all of your "replies" to the darkly humourous topic posted in this thread, while YOU may not agree, there are a LOT of lifestyles and viewpoints other than the ones we may each possess. Your replies are as far-fetched as some of the points made in the original post. For example:

- the word "adorable" never appeared in the original post. Shotguns and hunting before and after school was a way many people put food on their table. Don't ever remember a school shooting, but I do remember guns in racks during hunting season.

- The word "beating" never appeared in the original post. I have had personal experience with having my kid thrown out of school because he was a victim of a witnessed unprovoked attack and did nothing but shove the kid off him. Never raised a fist, but he served the same suspension as the aggressor. So much for "zero" tolerance. "Zero" tolerance equals "zero" common sense having to be exercised by the administration and teachers. The lesson he learned was that if he is gonna be punished anyway, he might as well have knocked the ever-livin' the crud out of the bully who sucker-punched him. Good lesson, there school administration...

- Getting licks from a paddle at school does not constitute "beating" nor did that word appear in the original post. I personally learned not to pay a kid a nickel a day to do my math homework by this concise method of punishment. MANY children with ADHD were/are given drugs that were NOT in their best interest, just as many elders are drugged into drooling zombies. A kids doesn't need built-in excuses for his/her behavior. No matter WHAT a child's particular problem might be, he/she will have to learn compensatory behavior which drugs and schools do NOT teach. Again, I know this from personal experience. The world does not give a crap if you are a child or an adult with ADHD or any other behavioral or mental condition - it's up to the individual to learn how to fit in, not for the world to fit to the afflicted person. Around here we call that "the tail wagging the dog."

- Corporal punishment IS one of the methods of correction that is common to not only our own species, but all the higher apes, as well as many other species. If humans were as wise about how, when and to what extent corporal punishment should be administered as their cousins in the wild kingdom, we wouldn't need social services to tell us whether or not it is appropriate to spank a child.

- It is against school policy in every school in this state for a child to bring a drug of ANY KIND including Midol, aspirin, ExLax or prescription medicine to school without first filing a form signed by the doctor and parent with the school board and taking that drug to the school office or nurse for administration. This includs OTC meds as well as prescription meds. Another example of "zero tolerance" for common sense. Kids are suspended or expelled from school here for that offense. Having severe allergies, I had a purse full of medications that I was to take as needed when I became sick at school. Today, I would have to leave class and have such "drugs" administered to me by a school nurse. Yet another great example of "the tail wagging the dog." Since some people do wrong, the rest of society has to change what they do because some people abuse their privileges. I now have to sign more paperwork to purchase sudafed for my allergies than I do to fill a prescription for a Schedule Narcotic because some people use it to make methamphetimine. Let them make it, blow themselves up and die. Problem solved.

- Apparently you are unaware that fussing at an incompetent bank employee in this country causes a security report to be made to Homeland Security if they "feel threatened." I know this because my older son experienced this when he called an obstructive, rude bank employee an "incompetent boob." She felt "threatened." Sparkler bombs can indeed trigger just such a report, especially if discovered by people who do not know what they are looking at... Stupid, yes. Domestic terrorism, give me a break...

- While english has never been made an "official language" of the US, it is sad that fewer and fewer of our kids can speak or write it adequately. Immigrants (of the legal variety) to this country used to feel it was incumbent upon them to LEARN the language and customs of their new country. Billions of taxpayer's dollars are spent in this country because people are too lazy to learn how to communicate, and many of those dollars are spent on people who are not even legal citizens or visitors to this country. Hearing impaired US citizens are jailed and tased every day because they cannot speech-read when they are frightened, and are assumed to be under the influence of drugs (because of their poor speech) or are not cooperating with an officer (because they cannot hear what is being yelled at them), but there are no requirements that police departments must have people on the force who can sign to them.

- Again, I don't think you are even close to aware how EXTREMELY careful teachers, coaches, etc. must be these days to deal with children. "Hugging" kids IS frowned upon. In fact, you aren't advised to touch them at all.

I will agree that everything about the good ol' days was not all good. I grew up reading about lynchings, being asked over the phone up north if we were "colored or southern white" because we had southern accents, and violence and crime has always been around just like poverty and ignorance. People had *secret* FBI files because they chose to demonstrate against government policies or attend peaceful moratoriums in the 1960s.

What you may have grown up with in California may have been quite different from what I experienced in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Alabama, Florida and Louisiana. What people experience in densely populated urban areas is quite different from what one experiences growing up in the middle of nowhere in Montana. People with high IQs sometimes forget that they are as far from the "norm" as a mentally challenged person with an IQ nowhere near 100 (the average). Public documents are geared to an 8th grade reading level.

Be real careful about characterizing statements which you may not have experienced, understand or agree with as "conservative politics." That's a lot like making the mistake of thinking that people who live in rural areas are stupid.

I think the point the original post was making was to point up the dearth of common sense in our lives today versus 50 years ago. I personally agree that it's application is sorely lacking in modern society. If we do not wish to become babbits as our population increases, we had better understand responsibility of the individual in a hurry 'cause our liberties are going out the window faster than a jackrabbit on fire.

*** replaces duct tape over lips***

No, they are not true.

- A student coming to school with a shotgun on his truck was never a good thing. It was not adorable in the 1950s but a danger to the students now. It was always a danger to the students

- A fistfight in the 1950s was violence. It was not a lark then but a disaster now. Violence is always a disaster and a student should have a reasonable expectation that school will not treat a beating as though it is just light-hearted highjinks.

- You could beat Johnny until he was damaged psychologically and physically, but that was not going to solve hyperactivity that disrupted the class. Not in the 1950s or now. It did, however, teach young adults that older adults maintain order only through the use of beatings: might makes right. In fact, that kind of "teaching" is likely to lead to the student applying the lesson to those who are more helpless than himself. (See example above: Students get in fistfight.) And Ritalin does not turn those who need it into zombies -- it is not good to be paranoid about needed medication, as I think everyone here in this forum is aware, just as it's not good to assume a pill will solve every problem. We need to have some sense.

- Billy gets a whipping for breaking a window and never does it again but grows up "normal"? I wouldn't like to have been one of his employees when he had learned that "violence is the best persuader."

- I do not believe that any student is disiplined for taking aspirin, though I could easily believe a student seen popping pills might be questioned. Good. A student popping pills should be questioned.

- English is not an inherently superior language, nor is it the official language of this nation. In the 1950s, Pedro was never going to be playing on a level playing field and, alas, is all the more likely to face prejudice today. As for lack of learning, perhaps the fact that school taxes are linked to property taxes, so that rich neighborhoods have good schools and poor neighborhoods have bad ones has a lot to do with that -- in the 1950s and now.

- Considering Columbine, if Johnny is making homemade explosives in his garage, I would hope his parents ARE aware of it and supervising. I doubt very, very much Homeland Security gets involved unless Johnny is also wearing paramilitary outfits to school and talking about "getting the geeks."

- I doubt very much a teacher has ever been accused of child molestation for hugging a small child after a fall. I do think teachers have been accused of child molestation when they are inappropriate with children. Considering the damage that is done when a child is introduced to sexual behavior by a pedophile, I would think it a good thing that we can now talk about it and take action on it.

The "good old days" were never as good as people make them out to be through the rosy glasses of nostalgia. I'll never forget Laura Ingalls Wilder's account in "Farmer Boy" of a teacher being beaten to death by the rowdy teens in her husband's home town. And that was in times even more "innocent" than the 50s.

In the 1950s, the world population was less than half what it is today: over six billion people, soon to be seven billion. Lack of funding, overcrowding, cultural value of education or lack thereof -- all these influence what children learn in school but there is no returning to a past that never existed. What we need is progress and a government that supports it both intellectually and with the money needed to do a decent job.

I'm sorry you felt the need to erase the link to lolcatz. That actually was humor.

quote:

Is this forum an appropriate place for politics?

Don't feel bad about that itchin' problem you've got, Opie - I've been living in the south for a very long time and ya get used to the itching - have no hair on my upper lip because of the continuous applications of duct tape.

I'd like to have refuted the slanted, inaccurate observations except I have LIVED a good many of them!! The sad part is how many STUPID things like that are actually TRUE...
**********************************************

quote:

And if we do not wake up and take our country back - WE will not have a country , nor a society to grow old in or for our children to grow up in

No, that's politics, and conservative politics at that. Instead of laughing, I was itching to refute these slanted and inaccurate observations.

Op, dear, it's a JOKE!

It's is a great place for the signs of the times. and this is "we laugh to survive" room.

Sometimes we laugh `til we cry or cry `til we laugh. Thanks , gypsy, for another good one.

Is this forum an appropriate place for politics?