In addressing the Robbinsdale Radicals' dislike for my dislike of this preschool initiative, I forgot to address his comment about mental health screening for kids.
Here's what I think of mental health screening for kids: What a bunch of hooey.
Okay, now that I've made my position clear on that, let me add a link to a piece I just came across from Phyllis Schlafly that will perhaps expand on my profound comments for those who may already be knee-deep in the hooey: "Try Parenting Instead Of Mental Health Screening." Or "Try Parenting" for short. This is good advice for not just children's "mental health problems," but many of today's maladies.
So many parents today are either too lazy to parent, or too afraid of setting standards and boundaries (might be mistaken for a Right-wing radical), or too wrapped up in being their child's "friend" to be parents.
So because so many adults are too lazy or too afraid to parent, we have teen sex/pregnancy problems, drug and alcohol abuse among children, gang activity, lousy academic achievement, poor work ethic when they read adulthood, and an almost endless litany of societal ills.
Children don't just develop morals and responsibility from cosmic osmosis; they have to be taught. And if parents don't teach them, no one is going to do it adequately. The educational system can try, but it's never going to do it as well as parents can and should.
Want to fix the majority of today's problems? Start parenting!
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Try Parenting
Movie Review: FoxFaith's 'Sin Eater'
I was intrigued by the title of this one. From the Christian Post:
Set in the Appalachian Mountains in early American history, the movie explores a community of Welsh settlers that practice an eerie ritual in the wilderness. When a member dies, a cursed human, known as the “sin eater,” appears, so that he may “eat away” the past sins of the deceased individual, discharging them of their transgressions.
The film revolves around the story of a young girl in the population named Cadi Forbes (Liana Liberato) who becomes intrigued by this cursed figure. Overridden by her own guilt over a childhood incident, she seeks the man out to try to empty away her sins while she is still alive.
On her quest to discover the sin eater, she uncovers a dark secret that may divide the whole community while she also begins to understand how to gain true salvation.
The review continues on to say that while some "faith" films are shoddy work with a "Christian" label slapped on it to draw the faithful, this one is put together well.
I can't vouch for the film in any way beyond what was said in this review, but it sounds interesting and I plan to watch for it.
Preschool: Some Things Should be Common Sense
The Robbinsdale Radical takes me to task for the post on what a bad idea Governor Rounds' preschool initiative is (I would have though he'd hug my neck for opposing a Republican governor so much these days).
From the piece against preschool that I did in the Rapid City Journal a few weeks ago, I have compiled lots of information from numerous studies that show that not only are any academic boosts from preschool dissipated by the third grade (a royal waste of money, considering they have 9 more years to go), but it is often harmful to take kids away from family so young. I just became aware of this one this afternoon: All-Day Kindergarten Failing as Education Reform.
That children belong with family should be common sense, but then there isn't much common sense floating around these days.
And Curtis' statement that a minimum wage increase is somehow going to accomplish that is pretty weak. Unless you increase it far beyond what the economy could stand (even short term, because it would cause the overall cost of living to skyrocket very soon), it wouldn't suddenly "enable" parents to spend more time with their kids.
Lack of income isn't even a factor in most of the instances where both parents work outside the home (see "
My wife has a master's degree in learning disabilities, yet she chose to remain home with our children. She tutors from home and makes peanuts compared to what she could in the public school system, but being able to nurture and teach our children was more important to her (and me). And though I now make enough that we're not in a panic every time an unexpected expense comes along, it wasn't that many years ago that there was absolutely nothing left over from paycheck to paycheck. Yet even then we considered our children's development and well being more important than a new car, a big-screen TV, or fancy clothes.
It's a matter of priorities, and our children should be right up there at the top. You can't make parents make their children their highest priority, but you don't need to keep adding things to society--at taxpayer expense--that make it easier and easier to look to someone else to do what parents should be doing. Preschool is one of those things.
Stealing from Abortion Clinics
This story out of Tennessee makes me stop and think. They're prosecuting a woman for attempting her own abortion, but it she'd gone to an abortionist, she'd have been celebrated as a choice hero.
"It makes absolutely no sense that a woman could be charged with a crime against the child while she was pregnant, but yet if she tried to have the child aborted, she would be perfectly legal in that right to do so,” said Cindy Pare, AAA Women's Services.
Pare, from a local pregnancy counseling center, sees the law as a double standard, telling a woman it's okay to end the life of an unborn child in one instance but not in another.
But the law is clear. You can not take matters in your own hands. “It makes absolutely no sense that a woman could be charged with a crime against the child while she was pregnant, but yet if she tried to have the child aborted, she would be perfectly legal in that right to do so,” said Cindy Pare, AAA Women's Services.
Pare, from a local pregnancy counseling center, sees the law as a double standard, telling a woman it's okay to end the life of an unborn child in one instance but not in another.
But the law is clear. You can not take matters in your own hands.
Is it that, or is it because she deprived the abortion clinics of money they felt was rightfully theirs?
