encourage boys to play netball and take dance lessons in the name of equality.
on 12/28/2007 at 09:27 AM
I’d never even heard of netball until this post. A quick read about it on Wiki, and it looks like a sport more focused on teamwork than on being a ball-hogging “star”. Is that why it has a feminine image?
I don’t see the issue here. Sure, little boys won’t want to do dance, especially not with icky girls, but worse if they have to do so only with other boys (and the dance isn’t cave man primal). Totally gay. And they won’t want to play a game that has a “sissy” image. BUT doing things you don’t want to is part of growing up, so what’s the big deal? Of course, I am saying these things with the naive belief that the boys get to do other sports with lots of aggression, rough and tumble, and chances for personal honors.
We had something similar. We all had to do square dancing, and home ec.
I was lucky because the progressive school down the road the boys had to do jazzercise.
Posted by Hammer
12/28/2007 at 01:38 PM
We had one or two dance classes. Somehow in the middle of gym class - wrestling no less - they stopped that and brought in this ancient record player. I always figured it was a lesson in acute embarassment. But then I got to do-see-do with Laurie Bell, the tallest and curviest girl in 6th grade. Mmmm. Too bad though; after that she never talked to me again!
And they made us do faggy gymnastics too. Ok, the rings were cool, but the rest of was for poofters.
Ah, the edge of puberty. What an awful time. Shame I can remember any of it at all!
Peiper, our schools have gone over the edge too with the safety stuff. My grade school playground had swings, slides, merrygorounds and monkey bars. All built of galvanized steel. All gone because of DANGER!! Sports were played with no protective gear at all until you were on The Team in high school. The school doors weren’t locked, we didn’t have metal detectors, we didn’t have armed guards, we didn’t even have a fence around the schoolyard. Kids ate peanut butter all the time, and I think there was only one kid who had an actual learning disability. It’s a wonder we weren’t all murdered, crippled, or poisoned on a daily basis.
I don’t know what’s happened to society, but I blame the libs.
I *did* take drama and choir in school, by choice. When I went to college, I was one of 3 straight males in the theatre department. I’ve been singing since I was 4 and acting since I was 6.
I’m all in favor of offering kids *choices*, sure. And yes, I think kids should be required to get SOME exercise, they shouldn’t be allowed to glue themselves to a TV or monitor 24/7, their bodies will be halfway atrophied by adulthood if they do. But pressuring them to conform to some political activist’s agenda? It’s unjust, it’s cruel, it’s frankly mental, and it defeats the whole purpose of education in the first place. Schools are supposed to teach people how to use their minds, not how to just turn their brains off and blindly accept whatever they are told.
When I was 15 I was 5’2” and weighed about 120 lbs. I “sprouted” late, as by my 16th birthday I was 5’7” and 145. Had my high school required me to take football and daily get pounded by guys a foot taller and 100 lbs. heavier than I, I’d have had about the same opinion of it as I have about this. It’s institutionalized child abuse, required by law.Dunno about you folks, but I consider this an insult to every parent and every child in the Western world. Personally, if an irate parent took a bat to some of those people and hospitalized them *because they had threatened his children*, I for one would not consider it an inappropriate response. They’re basically telling kids they are forbidden to follow their own aptitudes and interests, and that if their parents support their desires for THEIR future, mom and dad are subject to fines and jail time. If a school bully threatened my son with kidnapping his parents and breaking his home, I can’t promise you that said bully wouldn’t “vanish mysteriously”.
I had thought the Middle Ages were over. And yet, the local Lord’s men enforce his prejudices and caprice, and any peasant who objects is subject to being thrown in the dungeon until and unless his family is able to ransom him.Ah, progress....
I wouldn’t want to be a kid these days. It’s no fun. Too ‘safe’. And too ‘icky girlie’.
I remember in grade school that we did have some dancing during gym on occasion. It was square dancing, which was (and is) fun. I liked it then, and forty years later I still like it at church socials. Works up a good cardiovascular sweat.
I also remember having a chemistry set. A real one, with real (if very weak) HCL and H2SO4. And other things that are too dangerous for the weenies we are raising these days.
Never did eat any lead-based paint.
I remember my first BB gun. It was a pistol. I remember running around shooting at tin cans in the alley with it. I wonder what would happen if I gave a BB gun to my grandchild?
I remember my first (and only) .22 long rifle. Still have it. Grandpa gave me his when I was 12 and had earned my Shooting merit badge in the Boy Scouts. Can you imagine if I gave it to my grandchild?
Hell, I was in the Boy Scouts!
I remember going trick or treating on Halloween. All night! Or at least until midnight. None of this 2 hours on the DAY before. What’s so fun about going around during the day? Also, in our neighborhood, didn’t need any ‘adults’ to watch out for us. Once I turned eight, my parents let me go with my friends… but I had to let my two little sisters tag along.
I remember lots of things that are ‘too hard’ now. When I was in Jr. High they still had a foreign language requirement. By the time my sisters got there, that requirement was gone. Hell, in 5th grade the hardest subject was supposed to be ‘Civics’. Even my Mom couldn’t help me with that. This is now a really obscure subject that I doubt has been taught for over 35 years. We learned about the Constitution, the Federal government, the relationship between State and Federal governments. We even learned about our ‘duties’ as a citizen. Duties, not ‘rights’.
Hell, I remember prayer in school. The teacher would take us all to the lunchroom, and after we’d all sat down she’d lead us in a short prayer. I don’t remember that after about ‘68.
I don’t remember Sex Ed. Wasn’t a requirement. It was by the time my sisters hit high school. I learned about it the classical way, with my girlfriend, in the hayloft (yes, I grew up on a farm), at the drive-in, etc.
Hell, I remember drive-ins.
All of which would be too ‘unsafe’ or ‘discriminatory’ or otherwise offensive to some idiot with too much time on his/her/it’s hands.
Peiper, while you’re posting the Whitehall stupidity coming from the once Great Britain, I want you to remember three words…
Charles the First.
Take it from there.
<snipped: A bunch of stuff I should just save for a post.>
I hate it when they assume that because there are unequal outcomes there must have been unequal opportunity.
I never owned a firearm of my own, they never called to me. What I *did* have was a slingshot sold under the name “wrist rocket” that was every bit as deadly as a sniper rifle out to about 75 yards, and much quieter. I’d be surprised if they’re still legal. I could drive a 1/4 inch diameter ball bearing clean through a yellow pine 2x4 at 50 yards when I was 10, without a sound to give me away. If I went down to BBs or pellets I could bullseye a target at 100 yards with very little effort. Surgical rubber tubing, throws really flat and really fast, about equal to a good light crossbow. I could have been quite the little terrorist had I not had the discipline parents are forbidden to teach their children today.
Tsk, tsk, tsk, GrumpyO’Fart. Discipline. Bad word. You could hurt the poor little kid’s self-esteem. Another fad I missed out on entirely. Self-esteem came from actual accomplishment, like acing the test, thereby screwing up the grading ‘curve’. I used to love that one.
Mea culpa peiper, didn’t know you were living here in the States. It sucks only slightly less than being in the once Great Britain.
As a history student, I do remember that crap whereby they tried to assuage the so tender self-esteem of the liberals, uuhhh, French.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Lord Nelson die at Trafalgar?
It’s alot like this: We had an American Civil War. Robert E. Lee led the Confederates to Gettysburg. In fact, the battle could have gone the other way except for an obscure Northern cavalry commander who fought J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry on the left flank to a draw. His name? George Custer.
My point is that currently it’s ‘politically correct’ to attack the South. Personally, I wouldn’t attack the ‘South’. I’d attack the Democrats, who fought for slavery then, and are trying to enslave all of us now.
Oh, peiper, remember what did follow the regicide of Charles I. It led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Sad isn’t it. A Yank having to instruct a Brit in his own history?
Then again, a Brit might be surprised and thankful that a Yank knows a little history. That’s a common complaint about American tourists. They don’t know sh*t, much less the local language.
Next entry: ONE PO'd LADY TAKES ACTION AGAINST PUNK SLIME. Result, ARREST. HERS.
Previous entry: benazir bhutto assassinated