So I admit to being mildly attached to Pinterest. I am not addicted! I can stop anytime I want.
For the uninitiated, Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board where people "pin" everything from recipes to inspirational quotes to decorating ideas to beauty hints to crafting techniques to impossibly cute pictures of babies and puppies.
I like it because there's so much information and you can see it at a glance, and your eye is drawn to what appeals to you.
You weed out the nonsense by choosing to "follow" only the categorized pinboards of pinners whose tastes and interests reflect your own.
Like for example, I don't follow people who pin grotesque tattoo designs and proclaim them awesome.
Sometimes you get bogged down even in the pins you do follow, though.
I mean, for real, people. Do I truly need to know how to build a model of a molecule using only mini-marshmallows and toothpicks?
(Don't hit me Mari! You can't reach me from Michigan anyway.)
Or where to buy a green leather coin purse shaped like a hedgehog?
Or how to create ballerina tutu cupcakes?
For that matter, do I need to be bombarded with more cupcake recipes and designs than any one person could ever make or eat?
To be honest with you it has been nearly two years since I consumed a cupcake. It's probably been twenty years since I baked one. I don't miss them at all.
I can't even stand to watch Cupcake Wars on Food Network. Enough with the cupcakes already. As a society we are awash in cupcakes.
Let's move on. Just say no to the army of concept-themed, frosting-sludged cupcakes even now advancing on your consciousness.
In the pin featured above, I was reminded that I have exactly the same number of hours in a day as were awarded to the likes of Helen Keller, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo DaVinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
Which might mean something if I'd been born blind and deaf, possessed the ability to sculpt the human form out of marble, was a Catholic nun, could come close to the mind-bending erudition of the greatest statesman in American history, or otherwise enjoyed the kind of intelligence that comes along roughly once a century.
But unlike the author of this pithy pinned remonstrance, at least I know how to spell the names "Teresa" and "Michelangelo."
I'll take it.
Every now and then when I click on Pinterest from an icon on my toolbar, it takes me a moment to realize I've been logged out and I'm drifting along in the "everything" stream.
Which means, I am seeing the pins of people I don't follow and would never follow. You know. The tramp stamp tattoo artists.
Sometimes I look anyway, scrolling down and glancing at pins to see if there's anything important.
You never know when another recipe for coq au vin may come in handy.
I don't do this often because invariably at some point I begin to do a slow boil. Such was the case late last week when, sick in bed, I was gazing upon Pinterest more than I would usually do.
This is what angered me:
Could you read that? I didn't think so. Here's what it says:
A teacher was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stomp on it and really mess it up but be careful not to rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty is was. She then told them to tell it they're sorry. Now even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bully's another child, they may say they're sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home.
As far as I can tell, the only thing omitted from this treacly tale is the part where the students took turns petting the snow-white unicorn at recess, then stood in a circle holding hands and crooning I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.
People. Listen up.
If teachers devoted more classroom time to the actual teaching of subjects like reading, vocabulary, spelling, grammar, writing (both penmanship and composition), arithmetic, geography, science, world and American history, art, music, and physical fitness, and spent the balance of the school day supervising their charges, the opportunities for bullying would decrease dramatically.
Give kids enough to say grace over, plus firm and consistent punishment when bullying does occur, and soon you won't have so much of a problem.
Maybe then we wouldn't be faced with the pathetic sentence structure, sub-par usage, and poor judgment (tell the sheet of PAPER they're sorry? REALLY?) demonstrated in the crumpled-paper story.
How about learning to drop the Y and add IES when you're rendering the word BULLIES in the context of this piece of writing? How about proofreading so you don't commit a flagrant error such as look at how scarred and dirty is was? Just an idea.
Kids have too much time on their hands for which they're not held accountable, and nature abhors a vacuum. The academic bar has been dropped so low, a flea could jump it without breaking a sweat. Boundaries are being removed almost daily, causing kids to be frustrated and angry.
Both at home and in the classroom, children and young people -- adults too -- need to be held to a higher standard. One that honors academic excellence, firm discipline, faith in God, love of country, obedience to parents, and self-respect.
When that is done you won't have to waste precious class time "teaching" a class "about bullying."
Kids are committing suicide over "cyber-bullying" and the consequences of "sexting" and yet parents continue to put the fancy phones into their children's hands and send them off to school.
Where they are forbidden to pray but are required to be "tolerant."
They do nothing when their daughter leaves the house dressed like an adolescent hooker and their son resembles a melting Gumby doll.
It is madness. Wise up, folks. Teenagers do not need smart phones. Period. They're not even smart enough to know how to dress themselves properly. They need guidance and boundaries and discipline, not technology.
They don't need Facebook. They don't need texting. They need textbooks. And homework, and chores, and time spent with their family going on long walks to look at flowers and butterflies, or watching a John Wayne movie.
The liberal Kool-Aid administered by intravenous drip starts when kids are barely out of diapers. While doing research for this post, my eye fell on this pin:
Oh no. Make it stop.
People.
If you feel the need to paint I LOVE YOU on a chair your child is made to sit in when they've disobeyed, I seriously question your love for that child. I think who you really love is yourself.
If you love your child, they will know it. It's easier to hide a serving of broccoli in a glass of milk than to disguise your true love for someone.
And among the best ways to make your child secure in the knowledge that you love them is not to provide a time-out chair for when they've done wrong, but to spank them when they've done wrong.
(My parents would've been very amused at the concept of time out. They took time out to whip me when I misbehaved. Afterward, no apologies were offered or expected. I'm a better person for it.)
But before you have a case of the fantods over my having typed the "S" word, quick! Click out! Gallop back into the bosom of secular humanism where touchy-feely smarmfests rule the day and corporal punishment is on a par with using baby hamsters as hockey pucks!
Do it immediately, before -- God forbid! -- you become infected with old-fashioned traditional morality-based conservatism that regards children as unique individuals to be lovingly, prayerfully molded into conscientious adults, but which refuses to worship them.
After TG and I had spanked our children a few times -- properly, not in anger but in love -- we found we could pin them with not much more than a look or a well-placed syllable.
"No" worked well.
Nevertheless, sometimes just to stay in practice I still remind Andrew that I brought him into this world and I can take him right on out.
He always smiles. That's because he knows I love him.
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Monday, November 14, 2011 at 09:44AM 
