What are liberals doing to our children?
The Coddling of America
What are we doing to our children?
“What is your most lofty aspiration? Death for the sake of Allah!”
That is the charming verse kindergarteners in a Hamas classroom chanted last week during their graduation ceremony. The girls dressed in butterfly costumes. The boys donned camouflage, black masks, green bandanas, and toy semi-automatic rifles. The video aired by the Middle East Media Research Institute features the children wielding swords and guns while mimicking paramilitary exercises.
And how are we preparing the children of the West to defend themselves against these little soldiers of Allah?
Scene 1: In New York City, one nursery school dragged three-year-old toddlers to the office of Rep. Eliot Engel (D., Bronx/Westchester/Rockland), where they sang “It’s a Small World” around a 12-foot “Tree of Peace.” The New York Press reported last week: “The handmade tree, crafted by 17 children during pre-school class time, was a statement against American troops remaining in Iraq, and a call to pursue peaceful paths to end all world conflicts. This gift, however, seemed more like a Trojan horse, designed to gain an invitation inside so that the children’s far-left leaning parents could rail against the war and the congressman’s initial vote in support of it.”
The children’s teacher, Valerie Coleman-Palansky, defended the stunt thusly: “I think it’s appropriate for 3-year-olds to know that the world needs to be a peaceful place for everybody to live in and a safe place for everybody to live in.”
Perhaps it’s time for Ms. Coleman-Palansky to acquaint herself with the Palestinian Mickey Mouse. The chant of the little jihadists drowns out the Disneyfied reverie: “What is your most lofty aspiration? Death for the sake of Allah!”
Scene 2: I have a pet peeve. It goes beyond the antiwar indoctrination rampant in American schools. At the playground and at the mall, I see 5-, 6,- and 7-year-olds walking around with pacifiers in their mouths. Kids old enough to feed and dress themselves. Kids old enough to figure out the remote control and cell phone. Standing upright, suckling on brightly colored binkies.
Where are the parents to yank the rubber from their mouths and force them to grow up? When did child pacification usurp the responsibility of child-rearing?
Scene 3: America is not alone in immersing its future generations in the culture of coddling. British educators have now determined that “asking pupils to put their hands up when they think they know the answer to a question in class could make quiet children fall behind,” according to the London Telegraph. To spare students from this awful terror, the British Department of Education is now recommending that children be given 30 seconds of “thinking time” before being asked to answer or told to discuss questions in pairs before answering. Instead of teaching students to conquer their shyness and stand up for themselves, educators will be encouraged to pamper them in emotional bubble wrap.
On a separate front, British schools will be administering “happiness tests” to children as young as four to ensure high self-esteem. The Telegraph reports that the government has spent 20 million pounds on an “emotional literacy initiative” that promotes activities such as “worry boxes,” where pupils write down their anxieties and post them into a box, and “emotional barometers,” which pupils can use to show classmates the strength of their feeling about a subject.
I return to the video of the Hamas kindergarten class. Their “emotional barometers” break through the roof as one toddler with plenty of self-esteem leads the rest in a bloodthirsty call and refrain: “What is your path? Jihad!”
“What is your path? Jihad!”
Back in London, the tots are taking their mental-health quizzes. Teacher asks: “How do you feel?” The sheeple answer: “I’ve been feeling optimistic about the future.”
Pardon me while I go fill my worry box. It’s a small world, after all.
Hey Great American. I vote ganjaman for best answer!
I agree that too many of our children today are being brought up in an extreme PC world, and that parents have given the rearing over.
The government should not be allowed to raise our children, which they are doing via the public schools. Wherein the teachers are predominately liberal and pass their "political" morals on to our children, and can, since no one has labeled it "religion." I submit that it has earmarks of religious fervor, and say further that it is more insidious.
Peace is all well and good, it is a notion worth striving toward. It is not, however, realistic in all circumstances.
Children should be allowed to be children without the worries of the world impeding their development.
Teachers should worry more over whether our children have a good handle of the three "R’s" and less about socializing our children.
Parents need to resume parenting. Parenting does and must include using the emotions of guilt, fear, remorse and even defeat. Not doing so, is a complete disservice to them, and does not prepare them for the real world.
that was a great read, thank you.
this goes with my theory that the Virginia Tech incident of one person killing 32+ people is purely a problem with hippie liberals shaping our children’s minds to the point of jello for brains and explains why the students didn’t fight back. They performed like good little victims and stood in a line to get shot or pretended to be dead while their friends really died around them. Why wasn’t there just 5 students and teachers that rushed the guy at once?… i imagine its because "its a small world after all…"
I’m sorry all i saw was blah blah blah…
It is not just liberals. Repubs are worse. In fact, a Repub family that I know thinks it is proper for the 11 year old son to sleep with his mother while the father is relegated to another bedroom. Nothing emotionally, mentally, or physically wrong with the child. Just the parents.
I liked the response from ganjaman415. Libs carry this to adulthood. Diebold machines were rigged! All the votes weren’t counted! Republicans lied, blah, blah, blah. Not their fault they lost, voters are stupid, they say. Liberals teach our children that self esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it. They teach them political correctness is more important than accuracy. They teach them complaining is more important than coming up with a solution. Essentially, they teach them hypocrisy.
I wholeheartedly agree with "scene 2". However, that is not an exclusively liberal thing. Parents everywhere of most pursuasions coddle their children entirely too much. My sister-in-law is a fine example. She and her husband are staunch Republicans that live in a nice, upper middle class neighborhood. Her daughter had plastic surgery at the age of 5 because kids in her kindergarten class were making fun of her ears. No joke, no exaggeration. Mom said it was no big deal…After all, she worked for a plastic surgeon.
Growing up, I was friends with two girls living in an over-protective, religious, conservative household. Everything they did was closely monitored. Even though we lived in a very nice neighborhood, these girls were given nearly everything they wanted to coax them into staying inside so they couldn’t get snatched or wander off. As adults, both girls are complete failures, unfortunately.
No particular Western demographic is exempt from cushy parenting.
As for the general sentiment of the editorial, that Muslims are raising little warriors while Westerners are raising little lambs, I wouldn’t fill your worry box quite yet. Some conservatives would have us fighting endless wars. They justify it with talk of human nature (the more tangible version of "God’s will", mind you). "We’ll never escape it, so why bother trying to?"
Some people, however, are able to see the bigger picture. They see how the actions of the Western world help to provoke such behavior from our Middle Eastern counterparts. Our lambs will grow up to be wise rams that will view Western military presence internationally for what it has come to be – an irritant. Limit or extract the irritant, pain and swelling will subside. Terrorism will eventually become the anamoly it once was.
A bit too optimistic? Perhaps, but endless wars is a troublesome prospect.
Wow, quite a dissertation! The problem with our children lies everywhere! I don’t call no child left behind a glowing success and drugging up the kids with Ritalin makes my blood boil. There are examples of successes in schools by inspired teachers, These templates are short lived or a movie is made of them, then the end. To bad there is no real initiative to do the right thing and just let education rot like everything else now days.
For lack of a better word…STUPID!
No, they aren’t doing this to OUR children. They are doing it to theirs. OUR children will probably get to die protecting theirs. And get to fight them to be able to do it.
And that is the way it is, United States, 2007.
Destroying their morals and ethics and teaching them that nobody needs to be responsible for their actions or their own lives.
ugh please!! get another hobby
Liberals like to turn everything that is black and white into grey. If you are a boy they will tell you that your body is that of a boy but you reallly could be a girl trapped in a boys body.
Why do people say 9-11 is inside job?
What happened to Anthrax nvestigation.
The problem is amoung yourself.
Doing what they always do, trying to destroy this country from the inside. They are stepping it up by now trying to poison the next generation.
liberals and their laws enacted have allowed people to eschew any form of personal responsibility in their lives and instead blame it on the "wealthy", "big business" and many other scapegoats.
Let’s see if I understand the state of personal responsibility in the America of the 1990s & 2000s thanks to the Liberals.
If a woman burns her thighs on the hot coffee she was holding in her lap while driving, she blames the restaurant.
If your teenage son kills himself, you blame the rock ‘n’ roll musician he liked.
If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family blames the Tobacco Company.
If your daughter gets pregnant by the football captain, you blame the school for poor sex education.
If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, you blame the bartender.
If your cousin gets AIDS because the needle he used to shoot heroin was dirty, you blame the government for not providing clean ones.
If your grandchildren are brats without manners, you blame television.
And, if your friend is shot by a deranged madman, you blame the gun manufacturer.
Is it any wonder that our children think they are allowed to do whatever they please and never face consequences for bad decisions?
God Bless America, Land Of The Free, Home Of The Blame.
so… you want to go into the classrooms and have all the students chant "death to Muslims"…
start your own little "Bush Youth" gangs?
and one of your examples is in England… another is just a random citeless observation (that I haven’t personally noticed?) and the other sounds extremely bias with no citation…
pretty sad attempt at proving a point…
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