From: dal3@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (dale.e.parson)
Subject: Re: Year-round prison (was Year-round schooling)
Keywords: year,round,school,schooling
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 22:09:39 GMT

In article <holly.224@mailhub.scf.lmsc.lockheed.com> holly@mailhub.scf.lmsc.lockheed.com (Holly Wise) writes:
>
>I think the biggest advantage of year-round schooling is that kids don't 
>forget what they learned the year before.  

I guess this is like the Willy Horton business. No revolving doors.
Lock 'em up & keep 'em locked up. They won't forget what they learned
the year before: sit still and shut up.

I keep thinking about most of the housing developments that have gone
up in eastern Pa. in recent years. Big houses, little to no yard, and maybe
a small collection of swings, slides etc. at the end of the development.
I never see kids on those swings or slides; I never see kids playing in
those yards.

Where are those kids? Watching TV? In some other jail when the legally
mandated ones are closed? I remember spending evenings & summers sledding
or softball playing or bicycling or fishing or reading or star gazing
or doing a million other things for which school only got in the way.
Is this country so out of imagination, curiosity, and compassion that it
quietly discusses locking its kids away for the whole freaking year as
though it were talking about auto inspections or something? Instead of
sending 'em off to internment for another 3 months, FIND SOME TIME & GO
DO SOMETHING INTERESTING WITH THEM! Might be educational for all involved.

The next step, folks, will be 24 hour internment. Don't think I'm joking.
A lot of people seem to want to blow off their offspring to the educational
bureaucrats as much as possible. I don't see why they even bother having
kids. I'm not slandering 2 career families, I'm blasting the notion that
kids' careers--how they spend their days--should be subordinate to the
whimsies & ego trips of a bunch of stupid adults. Educrats who promote
this stuff seem hell bent on creating a generation of kids who've never
had a real childhood, after which those of us who remember spending summer
days fishing & cycling & doing other worthwhile things will die off and any
chance of dissension will go away.

If you want to improve your kids' education, go read 'em Huck Finn.

I can just picture the people who think this is hot stuff. The kind of
lame people I just couldn't wait to get away from when I graduated
high school. I've worked my way through a BS, MS and PhD while working
full-time, so I've earned this little rant. Formal education does not hold
a monopoly on learning. If you want to enhance the prospects for learning
among youngsters in this country, take them somewhere & do something
with them. The schools are fresh out of good ideas for the summer.

This message reflects the sentiments of your's truly, and not any
organization that would have me as a member. Nor does it constitute a
diatribe against good teachers; they deserve the summer off, too.

 Dale Parson, dale@mhcnet.att.com

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|And they made good laws and kept the peace                             |
|and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down,                |
|and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, |
|and generally stopped busybodies and interferers                       |
|and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live.        |
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|Account of the post-coronation doings of Queens Susan and Lucy         |
|and Kings Peter and Edmund of Narnia, from C. S. Lewis' The Lion,      |
|the Witch and the Wardrobe, Book 1 in the Chronicles of Narnia.        |
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