Parents would have to volunteer at schools, under proposed legislation

A bill introduced in the Ohio legislature would require parents to donate at least 13 hours of time to their school district each year or pay the price. And, if parents failed to pay up, the fine could be deducted from their state income tax refunds.

School districts would report parents who didn’t volunteer to the Ohio Department of Education.

I’d like to say I have no words for something this stupid, but anyone who knows me knows I’m rarely without an opinion, even for this.

I can’t imagine the kind of moron who takes the statistics that support the idea that involved parents’ children do better in schools and extrapolates it to an idea forcing parents to be involved… with everyone else’s kids.  At best, one could make the argument that parents, by procreating, are tacitly agreeing to be involved with their own children.  But making a parent volunteer for all the other children, rather than letting a parent choose the manner and time in which they, you know, get involved with their child’s education?  That’s fucked.

And then you’d likely get someone like me who can do the math.  Let’s see… paying $100 to get out of 13 hours forced labor with a bunch of other kids towards whom I have no obligations?  Well, I make more than 4 times the equivalent hourly wage ($7.69 an hour), so I can’t say I’d suffer too much heartburn or guilt paying the fine each year and actually working those hours at a job that pays me more than $400 for 13 hours of my time, meanwhile spending time with my own children when and how I see fit.  I’d make sure my kids understood exactly why I made that choice, too.  Helping them to understand the value, both monetary and otherwise, of their time can’t be overestimated.

The idiots in charge could, I suppose, increase the fine to an amount that would remove the incentive to pay it and move on, but then they’d be overwhelmed with cries that this was unfair to poor families who can’t provide either money OR time because they’re busy working multiple minimum wage jobs to survive, and are less likely to have employers who’ll let them leave early for volunteer work.  (Actually, it’s likely that argument will come around anyway, if anyone starts taking this bill seriously.)

Come to think of it, if I was a teacher, I wouldn’t want my classroom flooded with “volunteers” who have no motivation other than escaping a $100 fine.  It’s no stretch to imagine some or even most wouldn’t be terribly motivated to actually do any good during those 13 hours, and many of them would ultimately have to be rubber-roomed so they could put in their 13 hours while simultaneously staying out of my way.

No wonder “bureaucrat” is an insult.

I’ve deliberately held off on commenting on the Virginia Tech shootings, mostly because the incident’s relation to gun control (both current and future), has been aptly covered by bloggers far more talented than me. I particularly enjoyed LawDog’s commentary on the fact that not only are we denying people the most effective weapons for self defense, but the very mind-set required for it. Excellent point, that.

But what really has me irritated in this and other deadly attacks is the time and energy devoted to public wallowing. People who can be linked to the victims only in some Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon way are plastered by photojournalists on every television, newspaper, and website, sobbing uncontrollably in shameful displays of psychologically conditioned sorrow. They’re rewarded by writers who quote them extensively, telling us all how they’ll NEVER be the same, never feel safe, never get past their grief. Strangers leave mountains of candles and teddy bears and flowers and signs as some sick, clichéd memorial. Students across the nation are encouraged to visit with grief counselors and hold vigils and talk about their feelings. What an effective way to trivialize the dead.

And next year, on April 16th, we’ll be inundated with the same vomitous bullshit all over again. Reopening wounds. Reminding the victims’ families of their absence (as if they need it). Public wailing and gnashing of teeth. Grief counselors. Vigils.

The media have conditioned this ridiculous over-the-top response to tragedy in much the same way faith healers condition their followers to fall down during the laying on of hands. Followers see that everyone else falls down, so they fall down when their turn to be healed comes. We see the overwhelming public grief, and we’re convinced that we must be hard-hearted and unhuman if we aren’t as incapacitated by undiluted grief as all these other folks. And when we’ve been summarily duped by our emotions, we’re paralized by inaction.

T.G. Browning of the Revised Devil’s Dictionary, writes:

It’s a peculiar, self-absorbed kind of mental masturbation to stand out in a courtyard with a bunch of people you don’t know, holding a candlelight vigil for the slain students of Virginia Tech. None of the people there know any of the slain personally. The odds are extremely good that not one bloody person in such a crowd knows anyone who actually knows any of the murdered students. The odds are darn good that only a handful of people, at most, know anyone who knows anyone who is acquainted with the dead. If you’re a betting person, it a good bet that no one there, does….

If there is one thing about the VT massacre that should stand out and be talked about, it’s this: There was one person there who knew tragedy first hand, having survived a true holocaust: Liviu Librescu, the teacher who was killed protecting his students’ backs, giving them time to escape. Like the passengers who prevented the terrorists from crashing their plane into their target, Librescu knew what he truly valued, in his case the students who depended upon him and looked to him for knowledge and leadership.

I can’t see that teaching kids to manufacture grief is likely to produce many Liviu Librescu. Nor is it likely that fear will. There are, after all, all too many reasons to fear as it is. Don’t weep for strangers for the sole purpose of grieving. Unless of course, you think reality shows on TV have any basis in reality whatsoever. If that’s the case, weep on, my friend, great times will surely be yours.

Very few people are taking the time, like lewlew and her husband, to talk to their kids about formulating a plan to deal with violence BEFORE it happens. To think about potential havens, possible weapons for defense, what scenarios might make hiding or playing dead more viable than fighting back. No, most folks are still so paralized by grief (and will remain so) that little will be learned from any of this. And that, to me, is the most offensive waste.

If you really want to honor the dead, shed a few tears if you must, but above all, utilize their deaths as a learning experience rather than a grief competition.

I’ve recently been enjoying a couple of blogs I’ve found, so I’m adding them to the roll over there on the side.

The first is To The People. The author(s) have a decidedly libertarian bent, and there’s some non-political human-interest type stuff in there, too. Worth a look.

The second is Last Free Voice (the name comes from the television series “Dark Angel”), which I stumbled upon while searching for any updated information on the still-defunct-and-silent Hammer of Truth. Specifically, I was searching for one of their writers, Michelle Shinghal, because I had enjoyed her posts at HoT and wondered if she’d simply moved on to greener pastures. Happily, I found her over at Last Free Voice along with a few other former contributors to HoT. There’s still a bit more coverage of Libertarian Party politics than I care to peruse, but the former HoT writers, along with some fresh blood, have much to say that isn’t LP-related and is well worth reading.

For example, today LFV provided a thought-provoking entry, a Defense of Plagiarism in public schools, exploring the suggestions that plagiarism is fraud, theft, or breach of contract, or that it’s otherwise negative because kids aren’t using or developing any creativity. This is the first of two posts on the subject, and I look forward to the second entry.

Private Seattle school tells kids: Property rights are bad, m’kay?

According to the article, the students had been building an elaborate “Legotown,” but it was accidentally demolished. The teachers decided its destruction was an opportunity to explore “the inequities of private ownership.” According to the teachers, “Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.”

The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown “their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys.” These assumptions “mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.”

They claimed as their role shaping the children’s “social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity … from a perspective of social justice.”

(emphasis mine)

It’s garbage like this that make me fantasize about having a child enrolled there just so I could give the school’s staff a good verbal lashing and pull my kid out of their manipulative hands. What communistic crap, and how despicable to indoctrinate children with it. Of course, they’ll be much more pliable taxpayers later.

This is even worse than “Why Mommy Is A Democrat“. And in my own back yard no less. I feel nauseated.