Archive for February 29th, 2008
Proof that Less is More
Feb 29
In the giant competition we know as ‘the world’, Finland minds it’s own business and does it’s own thing. Come to find out, Finnish teenagers are way smarter than other teenagers of the world. This comes as an astonishing surprise to many people and has made news in the Wall Street Journal, that erstwhile chronicle of all things competitive.
High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don’t start school until age 7.
Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world’s C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they’re way ahead in math, science and reading — on track to keeping Finns among the world’s most productive workers.
What could it mean? How do they do it?
The academic prowess of Finland’s students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country’s secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. “We don’t have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have,†says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.
Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it’s done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.
But…but…but…but…..
Here’s the thing. Children are built from the inside out. Societies are built from the ground up. Here in America we use the outside in and top down models, and that’s why our people can’t string two thoughts together without assistance. That’s why our society is crumbling before our eyes. That’s why so many teenagers in American suffer from depression and stress. Americans are not allowed to BE.
There’s a little saying, and I don’t know where it comes from, but it goes something like this: Some people think they need to have what they want to have, so they can do what they want to do, so they can be who they want to be. In reality, you need to be who you want to be, and then you can do what you want to do, and then you will have what you want to have. The Finnish understand this, and they let their children develop from the inside out, and therefore they become intelligent, productive citizens. Viola!
In contrast, here in America and in many places around the world (in cultures competing with America), parents force ridiculous expectations onto their children to perform. They want their children to have resumes, to have experiences, to have skills, and to have knowledge, so they can get into the greatest colleges and grow up to be rich executives or movie stars. So the parents force all this activity onto their children, and the children are not allowed to be, to exist, to enjoy the holy freedom of childhood.
We don’t have time for freedom. We don’t have time for childhood. The ‘best’ Americans inculcate their children from early on to strive. Learn to strive and get used to it because you can look forward to a lifetime of competition.
Parenting is very difficult, but our culture makes it even more perilous than necessary. If we didn’t have such a cutthroat culture, perhaps we could let our children kick back a little. Perhaps we wouldn’t spend big chunks of our family budgets on their extracurricular activities. They could go outside and learn baseball with the kids in the neighborhood instead of us spending money on Little League. But in order for this to happen we have to have neighborhoods, and we have to let our kids play outside instead of scheduling their every waking moment. The parents who currently do things like this are looked askance at as ‘bad’ parents by the ‘good’ parents who provide their children sufficient (paid) extracurricular enhancements.
Here’s what happens if you let your kid play outside. Here’s what people really think in America. “What are you, poor? Too poor to sign your kid up for dance/soccer/gymnastics/guitar/singing/theater/football/hockey/la cross? You slacker. Get a third job so you can put your kids in activities. Because if you don’t, your kid will have no one to play with.†And that’s the truth. Middle class children will not have many friends unless their parents pay to put them in activities. That’s how you meet other kids. You don’t have to bother with working it out in the neighborhood anymore. You just find your people via paid activities, and that way you don’t have to deal with the others.
In America, kids belong in activities. That’s how we measure the quality of parenting. More is MORE.
But here’s the truth: less is more. Kids need to grow into themselves. Recreation is not always about playing a sport or learning in a structured environment. Kids need time to be outside, to play games (not video) with friends, to imagine, to be alone, to suffer through boredom and find things to do. By allowing our children to grow at their own pace instead of forcing the pressures of adulthood on them, we allow them to develop an actual personality. We allow them to be.
Sadly, we have a nation full of children whose growth has been deformed. Yes, children need to be pruned from time to time. If you know your children and pay attention to them, you can spot a wayward branch budding and pinch it off quickly. But so many people spend so much time making money to keep up their lifestyles that they don’t really know their children. Too many children are like topped trees. Their natural grown patterns have been cut off, and the growth that replaces it is vigorous and ugly.
The forces behind this dynamic cannot be summarized quickly. Families now need multiple jobs to make enough income to pay bills, and I am not here to cast aspersions on people trying to provide stability. We live it too. But as a people we need to stop striving to imitate the upper classes. It’s a bad deal for working people to work and work and work so much to provide a lifestyle for their children to the point that they no longer have time to parent. It would be better for us to scale back our expectations. Our children would be better off. In any case, the economy will take care of this problem soon enough. Many children will soon have more time on their hands as their parents just simply decide they can’t keep up, but some of them will not know what on earth to do with it.
Killing is a Choice
Feb 29
The Israelis continue to escalate their killing spree. They have been bombing Gaza indiscriminately this week, killing 33 people in a 24 hour span, including babies and children. Go here to see a video and read about one of the infants murdered.
From The Guardian:
Four Palestinian children were killed while playing football yesterday as Israel hit back at the Gaza Strip with more than 10 air strikes, after Hamas militants escalated their rocket fire into southern Israel. The deaths follow that of a six-month-old Palestinian baby, who was killed the previous evening when Israel intensified its attack on Gaza after a 47-year-old Israeli man was killed by a Hamas-fired rocket.
The surge in fighting began after Israel killed five Hamas rocket launchers, prompting the group that rules Gaza to more than double its missile attacks into Israel’s neighbouring towns.
While Wednesday’s Israeli fatality was the first in nine months, rockets fall on the southern Israeli town of Sderot almost daily. In February alone, three Israeli children have been severely wounded, including one who lost his leg.
Or, to put it another way, the Qassam rockets have been falling on Sderot for a very long time, but they rarely cause injury. In the past month, they have severely wounded three Israeli children. As everyone knows, the rockets are ‘notoriously inaccurate’. That phrase has been linked to the Qassam rockets in perpetuity.
The Qassam rockets are notoriously inaccurate - Hamas launched 28 yesterday and only 10 landed in Israel - but there are growing fears that the militants are acquiring an arsenal with a longer range. Israel’s police said five foreign-made rockets similar to the kind that Hizbullah fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, triggering the 2006 war, landed in Ashkelon, a city north of Sderot. One of the rockets pierced the roof of an apartment building, but no one was hurt.
Just because Israel’s police ’said’ the rockets were ‘foreign-made’ and were ’similar’ to the ones that triggered the 2006 war with Lebanon, that doesn’t make it true. It also doesn’t justify Israel murdering innocent Palestinian civilians. Israel decided to start the war with Lebanon, and Israel decided to wage a completely asymmetrical war against the Palestinians. Our ‘Decider’, GWB, decided to start an illegal war against Iraq. Nations wage wars. It’s a decision. It doesn’t just ‘happen’.
So. What does Israel have to say for itself? Do they express any remorse for the innocent lives lost? No. They can only focus on their own deaths.
Public pressure is mounting on Israel’s government to stop the rockets, which have killed 13 since 2001. While visiting Sderot, the defence minister, Ehud Barak, said: “A solution to the Qassams will be found faster than what most people believe.” But Israel refuses to talk to Hamas, because the Islamist group refuses to acknowledge the Jewish state’s right to exist, will not renounce violence and refuses to adhere to previous peace agreements signed by Palestinian leaders.
Israel’s attempts to thwart the militants with an eight month-long blockade on Gaza has driven the population into deep poverty, but it has failed to stop the militants’ missile attacks. Pressure has been mounting for a harsher military response, yet the government is divided over how to improve the effectiveness of its military strikes. Some ministers are calling for a full scale invasion of Gaza.
“We must prepare for escalation. A large, significant and tangible ground operation. We won’t flinch,” Barak said in a closed meeting, according to the Associated Press. “Israel will reach those responsible, hit them in operations, and Hamas will pay the price for its activities.”
But the interior minister, Meir Sheetrit, opposed a large scale ground operation, arguing that it would not put an end to the rocket fire. “This is the wrong approach and it won’t lead us anywhere. We won’t just go in and suddenly everything will be OK,” he said, according to AP.
Instead, Sheetrit advocated an increase in the number of targeted killings of Hamas operatives. “We must not let anyone involved in the shooting stay alive.”
Whatever the hell that means. Kicking it up a notch or two, some Israelis have actually used the term ‘holocaust’ to describe what the Palestinians ‘could bring on themselves’. No I’m not kidding.
An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a “holocaust”.
“The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister, told army radio.
Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish Holocaust. It is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi extermination of Jews during the second world war, and many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other events.
One can only hope they are loath to commit holocausts.
The minister’s statement came after two days of tit-for-tat missile raids between Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army. At least 32 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed since the surge in violence on Wednesday.
…”It will be sad, and difficult, but we have no other choice,” Vilnai said, referring to the large-scale military operation he said Israel was preparing to bring a halt to the rocket fire.
“We’re getting close to using our full strength. Until now, we’ve used a small percentage of the army’s power because of the nature of the territory.”
The psychopath will always blame the victim for ‘making me do it’. Just so, Vilnai describes how Israel is reluctantly but inexorably being forced by the Palestinians to smash Gaza into smithereens. “We have no other choice.” Of course, they can wait for better weather. They’ll use that time to put the finishing touches on their plans. But remember, they have “no other choice”.
Israel would not launch a ground offensive in the next week or two, partly because the military would prefer to wait for better weather, defence sources said. But the army had completed its preparations and was awaiting the government’s order to move, officials said.
Seriously. Sderot is just a ratty little village, but Ashkelon is a whole other pail of worms. Ashkelon has great sports facilities and a beach, and a population of 120,000. Israel can’t allow rockets to fall on one of it’s cosmopolitan centers. That would be out of bounds.
Until now, the Palestinian rocket squads have largely targeted Sderot, a small town near Gaza. Ashkelon, a big population centre only 25 miles from Tel Aviv, was caught unprepared, its mayor said on Friday.
“It’s a city of 120,000 people, with large facilities – a huge soccer stadium, a basketball stadium and a beach. No one is ready for this,” Roni Mehatzri told Israel Radio.
Also please note the arrival of three US warships in the eastern Mediterranean, and a visit next week by the Princess of Darkness, Condoleeza Rice.
There were further indications that Israel was preparing for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who plans to visit the region next week.
“Israel is not keen on, and rushing for, an offensive, but Hamas is leaving us no choice,” the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, told the senior figures, according to Israel’s mass circulation daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.
Security sources were quoted by both Israel Radio and army radio as saying a big operation was being prepared but was not imminent.
Right. “Because they have no choice.” That, my friends, is what we call a Big Lie. Make no mistake. When they start the next war, it will be a war of choice. They will start it when they choose, they will kill whoever they choose, they will take whatever they choose, they will say whatever they choose, and so on.
But you, Citizen, you don’t have to believe them. You can choose to see the Truth.
