[Vision2020] public schools & indoctrination
amy smoucha
asmoucha@hotmail.com
Wed, 12 Nov 2003 01:50:31 -0600
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<P>Well, Joshua, it's been a long time since I took child development, but I think the stage where everything is "mine" belongs primarily to toddlers (and libertarians and you). Again, I sincerely doubt that children have any sense of property "rights." Yeah, before they realize their connectedness to others, and not just to mom, they live in a self-centered universe, and they think everything they can eat or touch belongs to them exclusively, but when properly loved and held and socialized (as I was and as my theoretical children would be), they move past that stage.</P>
<P>No one would argue that we should teach children that "what their parents buy for them really belongs to others." But maybe we should teach them to value others more than what their parents buy for them.</P>
<P>Amy<BR><BR></P></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>----Original Message Follows----
<DIV></DIV>From: Joshua Nieuwsma <JOSHUAHENDRIK@YAHOO.COM>
<DIV></DIV>To: asmoucha@hotmail.com, vision <VISION2020@MOSCOW.COM>
<DIV></DIV>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] public schools & indoctrination
<DIV></DIV>Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:30:48 -0800 (PST)
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<DIV></DIV>I would almost wonder if you didn't really experience life as a child. Most children I know of, and my own memories, vouch for the fact that personal property is extremely important to children. If you want to teach what you call sharing, you don't do it by giving everyone everything. You do it by withholding. And it is wrong to teach children that what their parents buy for them really belongs to others. The problem is not the teaching of sharing, which is considered a virtue by itself, the problem is the lack of teaching about gratefulness. We are to be grateful for what we have, and then we should be taught to ask to use something that belongs to someone else. It's not automatically ours just because we didn't get one from our mommies. It starts in the small things, Amy. I sincerely hope you keep your current opinion about not having kids. To be frank, they would grow up spoiled little brats. Just like most Americans today. Hmm.... wonder if there is a connecti!
on between preschool
<DIV></DIV>and attitude problems after all...
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<DIV></DIV>And I for one know exactly what people of the next generation will be doing when you're in a wheelchair or wishing for physical therapy. They will be swearing at "that old lady in the care center" that they have to go visit in order to get enough community hours to get the scholarship that they think they already deserve. They'll be fighting lawsuits to get their neighbor's BMW, they'll be suing Applebees for not providing the same food that their friends in Lewiston get. They won't understand what's behind the invented virtue of sharing at all. And it's not sharing anyhow. Kindness and generosity is not "sharing". It is giving of what you have to others, and not expecting anything, Anything back. Sharing as a "virtue" seems to me to be really part of the impossible liberal utopia, not a true fruit of the Spirit.
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<DIV></DIV>sincerely,
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<DIV></DIV>Joshua Nieuwsma
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