Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 21:42:55 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: wes@softweyr.com (Wes Peters) Cc: c.raven@ukonline.co.uk, nicole@nmhtech.com, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [Fwd: Hopkins FBI] Message-ID: <199904272142.OAA09956@usr04.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <3724D149.7DEDD047@softweyr.com> from "Wes Peters" at Apr 26, 99 02:49:13 pm
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Moved to -chat... > > Also, to make so bold a leap and in the face of most current scientific > > opinion on these matters is itself somewhat naive. By that I mean > > blaming *violent* games for unbalanced children. > > And this wonderful scientific opinion has produced the utopia we now > live in. Gee, that's a comforting thought. I went to grades 3 through 9 in rural Utah, as Wes well knows... The principal of the school had a paddle prominently displayed on the wall in his office. There were no shootings, even though firearms were common: most boys, and a not inconsiderable fraction of girls, of 15 years or older owned a shotgun and usually a .22 caliber rifle, at a minimum. There were no knifings, even though knives were very common, and frequently (pocket knives and hunting knives) brought to school. I put the problems today down to children being "protected" from the knowledge that there are consequences to their actions. It used to be that if your child misbehaved at school, the child would be sent to the principal's office and, if necessary, given negative reinforcement for the misbehaviour by the principal as a proxy for the absent parent. Thus even if the parent failed to teach the child that there were consequences to ones actions, the school protected society at large by making it clear that the parents were not representative of the arger society, and that the larger society was where the child would be living, at least part time, and theat they better learn the rules which members of the society are expected to follow. This was our social "safety net"; now if a parent spanks the child, the child can get the parent arrested, and schools are permitted the same leeway as a British Bobby -- namely, they can yell "Stop, or I shall yell 'stop' again!". My sister is a "hands off" parent; the most frequent question she voices in response to compaints by other parents about one of my nephews is "but what could I do?". She won't accept the answer "spank him when he exhibits socially unacceptable behaviour". My nephew wears gang paraphenalia, which makes sense, since he is one of the, to be politically correct, "peer group leaders" at his school. With no adult enforcement of acceptable behaviour, I can only hope he lives long enough to attend and then graduate high school and join the Marines, since no one else is permitted (by my sister) to teach him self discipline. I find it surprising that people who have to think in statements like "if A then B" have such a hard time internalizing the idea of action and reaction. In my experience, most people who exhibit socially acceptable behaviour do so for fear of the consequences, not because people are inherently nice creatures at some genetic level. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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