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Articles: Operation Oatmeal |
Posted by
bettie_x on Friday, April 12, 2002 - 04:03 AM PST
I've a question...
I had the oportunity to speak with a teacher the other day during a day long lull at work, and we got on the subject of children. She asked me if I felt music, movies, and video games were responsible for the violence in children, for hypersexual awareness and in general, behavior problems.
I flat out told her no, and she was sort of shocked that I was so blunt. I then said, to her in effect, that it's not the music, the movies, or the games that were destroying kids, it's the lack of guidance and supervision from their parents that makes them unable to distinguish between entertainment of any sort and real life. They grow up in daycare, then they're sat in front of the babysitter box, drop kicked to the mall's curb and bade "go play", and then they can't figure out why they're unhappy or violent or out of touch with reality, so blame the music and movie characters they associate more with mother and father than their own parents. So naturally when the kid does something wrong, of course it's not something they did, they didn't do ANYTHING...since the kid was born...it's because they did NOTHING.
She gave me the most astounded look I've ever seen anyone gave me in my LIFE. I'm assuming she'd never heard someone put it that bluntly...and coming out of the mouth of a five foot 22 year old with 1/2" stretched ears working retail.
I said I was sorry, that I'd probably said more than she wanted to hear, and she was just flabberghasted... said she knew exactly what I was talking about.... gave me her card, and said that if I ever wanted to know what it's like to be a teacher, to call her and I could sit in on some classes at the elementary. Wierd!
ANYWAY...
I also discussed with several kids during back to school about dresscodes. Do you know that in the schools in my area, tanktops on girls aren't allowed? That the straps must be four fingers wide to be acceptable, as the shoulder is considered "provocative"? I know *I* get all hot and bothered at the sight of a supple tender teenage shoulder....
That some kids aren't allowed to wear anything with studs on them, shaped or pointed? Or wallet chains at all?
I asked a lot of them why, and they said they were considered weapons. More and more schools are changing to dress codes to keep the cliques and peer violence/bullying down. They actually think it will eliminate it!
Take away the stimulus, extinguish the behavior, right?
W R O N G ! ! ! ! ! !
What you are doing is just that...eliminating the stimulus so the "symptom" of the behavioral problems don't bubble up and bother people. Not to mention that now these children are immersed in a homogenized mass the equivalent of orderly rice pudding..... and when they finally graduate and hit the "real world" they won't know how to handle people who perfer ambercrombie over the gap let ALONE *gasp* they run into a hippie...what's wrong with their hair?!
Chances are they'll graduate, step out into the real world, have the shock of their lives, have an aneurism and die on the spot.
Don't get me wrong... I have admiration for educators... I hope to be one some day. Most are fine people who care... some are hopeless unhappy hypocrites who don't even know what their job is anymore. They are expected to raise america's children, but aren't given the authority or the grounds to help the kids that need it... it's a tough job... give them some slack.
Anyhoo.... so, in their effort to deal with bullies and social picking and singling them out, they take away the fragile individually they are trying to establish, make the bullies and the victims invisible to each other, right?
Again, wrong. Bullies are bullies, victims are victims. Bullies will find something to pick on, if it's not how someone dresses, it's their hair color/style, it's their weight, it's their music tastes, how they talk, how they walk, how they eat, what they eat, where they sit and who they talk to etc. They'll find something, they'll find a victim to release their insecurities and hurt on, just as their parents put it on them by showing the child they don't care by not watching them, not talking to them, not caring...all pleasantly and nicely wrapped in the chant of "kids will be kids".
Of course, the only reason they're being picked on is their clothes, right? OF COURSE! *sarcasm*
So we'll force conformity on the only freedom they have, their dress, and they'll be happy cause they're not getting picked on for being the freak they are, right? Sure...keep telling yourself that.
People don't want kids anymore...they want orderly, obedient, miniature replicas of themselves that are content to sit and mimic and be quiet. Seen and not heard..... They don't want to deal with the behavior problems that they caused, they don't want to deal with their questions, their problems, their MINDS... after all, kids don't have minds, do they? What?
They don't want to empower the helpless and humble the viscious...they want them to just forget about it like they do... wrap it up in polo's and slacks, pat it on the head and say "there, isn't this much nicer? now go to the mall and play, mommy and daddy want to be alone."
I have fucking kids come to ME with questions! To ME with what they did at school.... to the black haired lady with the seahorse tattoo at the mall. Sad, isn't it? My coworkers and I are the ones telling them why they need a job, why they need to think of the future, listen to their stories and their awful jokes... sad, isn't it?
Wrap them up in cute little outfits no different from their neighbor and solve their problems. Mask the bullies and bury the victims. Peace in indifference. Utopia in a polo. Seen and not heard.
Sound good to you?
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Operation Oatmeal | Login/Create an account | 34 Comments |
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True dat
by VampCourt (Morbidchic@hotmail.com)
on Apr 12, 2002 - 05:57 AM
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this made me think about when my friend and i were at this mall in OR and we saw a group of what looked to be a bunch of 13 yr olds. and they were all wearing your typical abercrombie/gap/tommy/whatever you wanna call it clothing.. The girls clothes were all tight and little and constricting. Tight little tops and tight tight pants. The boys however wore baggy clothes.. baggy pants, long comfy t-shirt.. big bulky shoes. IS there something wrong with this picture??
And also too.. when i was out there.. i saw a news report about two girls being abducted. they were of the ages 12 and 13. Sure. but if you saw the way they were dressed.. adorend with makeup and piercings and slut clothes. It made me angry. Who are these parents who think its cute that thier kids are dressing like adults. Sure its fun for dressup.. but tis scary when they want them to be a pedophiles dream. Get what i Mean??
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Re: Operation Oatmeal
by gothvail (vail@gothicamateur.com)
on Apr 12, 2002 - 08:36 AM
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I must say that I agree with you that music, movies, videogames, etc...aren't to blame for the problems kitds have. But I'd like to put a slightly different spin on it (you're not wrong, I just wanted to look at things from a different angle for a minute).
I grew up in a two-parent home where we had no video games. My sister and I were allowed one hour of TV each day, except on weekends when we could each choose a film to watch. My mother never allowed us to watch R-rated movies. Even now when I go home for vacations, she won't have them in the house. If any of our CDs had parental advisory warnings on them, she threw them out.
And how did I turn out? I like to think I am pretty normal and well-adjusted. I am also bisexual, polyamorous and run an erotic website. I live with my boyfriend, to whom I am *not* married, and he is not the only person I have ever had sex with. My mother never would have allowed material concerning any of these behaviours in the house while I was growing up. So I can only assume they came from within me. I never even thought about doing/being any of these things when I lived at home, but since I moved away 5 years ago, they have become so much a part of my life that when my mother calls and asks what I have been doing lately, I have to tell her "nothing".
Does anyone see what I am driving at here?
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Re: Operation Oatmeal
by Ironboots on Apr 12, 2002 - 04:23 PM
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I think, in a sort of oblique way, tv and related media -has- made kids like that... Before television and such, most children got their information from their parents (who controlled the flow) or miscellaneous sources. But now, they have the television, for which to become aware of the world. They have music, most of which is negatively charged (government sucks, love sucks, corporations suck). And they have the internet (which is just really cool. I'll leave the pretty 'net alone ;).
But this adds up to a lot of negative news... And they have to just sit and watch it, lacking the freedom to react. That's bound to twist someone into knots...
Just watching anything on tv destroys my moods... damn noisy flashy box...
And that is a very good point on uniforms... Covering up the spikes and such isn't going to make a 'good fer-nuthin punk' into a nice, well-kempt person. Its like when bad butchers simply dye the spoiled meat so it doesn't look bad to customers. At my school, we have uniforms. Doesn't mean we don't have assholes. There are at least five in one class... Don't tell me bullying is about clothes, g-man...
And don't get me started about whether single-sex schooling helps....
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Re: Operation Oatmeal
by darclight (an_impression_of_sound@yahoo.com)
on Apr 12, 2002 - 09:41 PM
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i can really only speak from my experience, but my mother teaches second grade and my father is a college professor. i'm 21, and having grown up in a household with two teachers for parents, hearing all the stories they've brought home over the years, i can honestly say kids are fucked up these days because of parental problems, not video games, music, or movies. media may perpetuate the problem, but it doesn't start the problem.
my mother teaches in a public school, and let me tell you she has had to deal with some seriously fucked up kids. one kid had to be watched constantly because he had a habit of running off to the bathroom to literally eat shit out of the toilet. his parents, knowing he did this all the time, had the response "oh, just put your hand on his forehead. if it's wet then you'll know he's been eating shit again." another family she's had to deal with lives in a small one-story house completely overrun with guinea pigs. hundreds of the animals live there, in the beds, on the couch, in the sinks, and everyone knows that all guinea pigs do is piss. but the mother sells them to local pet-shops, so supposedly it's all okay. she doesn't have them in cages, and when you drive past the house you can see the things crawling in the windows. a third family my mother has mentioned is really just a mother and a daughter. the mother owned a strip-joint downtown for one thing. for another, the daughter had really long blonde hair, and in that hair lived a colony of lice. the first time the girl came to school with lice in her hair, she was sent home, presumably to have the mother take care of the problem. it was obviously wrong to presume that, because the girl came back a week later still with lice. this time she infected half the school. after that settled down, a couple months later the girl had lice again.
seriously, what the heck do some of these people think? i understand these are fairly radical cases, but my mother doesn't teach in that big of a town, probably only 30,000 people. on several instances, special ed kids (not just borderline cases, but rather severly limited children) have been forced into my mother's classes by will of their parents, because the parents don't want to think their child is any different. these people totally ignore the fact that not only are they hurting their child by doing so, but they're also poorly affecting other kids in the same class.
all of this doesn't even begin to touch on the problems the rest of you have mentioned. i mean think about it...in second grade a kid eats shit out of public toilets on a regular basis and his parents accept it as commonplace. you can't tell me he won't grow up to be some sort of psychopath.
and is my mother supposed to magically fix these issues, because she's a school teacher? she can't do a thing. teachers have no rights in schools these days. and do video games tell kids to eat shit out of toilets and do movies depict kids having fun while they pick lice out of their hair? i can understand to a degree the argument that televised violence may lead some kids to actual violence, but the tv is not the root of the problem. too many people are horrible fucking parents. they may be great lawyers, or whatnot, but they're just horrible parents.
it's a system that perpetuates itself in so many ways. it begins at home and then becomes multiplied via peer pressure, media-hype, chemical imbalances, etc, etc.
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Re: Operation Oatmeal
by Mara (maraisgod@yahoo.com)
on Apr 12, 2002 - 10:23 PM
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First off, I (as well as everyone else...i think) completely agree with you.... I just love to sit back and listen to mothers (yes mothers!)who rant and rave about the music and moive industry have to censor themselves to protect the youth of america and the only reason they`re running their mouths is because they bought little jimmy a new cd (that had the parental advisoray right on the front) and were soooo shocked when it said fuck after every other word or took little tiffany to the R movie and were disgusted by some random chick running around with her breast flapping in the air and fuck after everyother word.....this the point where i start screaming you fucking idoit u should be beaten to death with the stupid stick but I`ll save that for a better time.... Anyways on to dress codes .... this leads me in to an interesting little situation for a friend of mine daughter is in. She has just been suspended for 10 days(which got reduced to 3 by the power of angry mom) because she wore a bandana .... not cause she was in a gang and wanted to show her pride or did it have anything offensive on it. it was a plain bandana she wore because she didn`t have enough time to do her hair that morning which of course is such a good reason to suspend some one for 10 days (the school system at its best) and stories like that are just the tip of the ice burg of fucked up ways school has tried to screw people over....And whats their excuse (and i quote) "Its all done for the safety of the students". Well that what they told my mom when tried to suspend me for fighting back when a group of about 5 guys ganged up on me (I won of course) but since i was the "odd" child I`m the one who almost got punished (thank you power of angry mom) that kind of thing happens everyday and it never going to stop until gap starts selling corsets and leather pants ...... But then where would we all be... now thats a scary thought.
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Re: Operation Oatmeal
by oohp (oohp@gotik.nu)
on Apr 13, 2002 - 02:39 AM
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When I was in school they tried to put us in some kind of dorky uniforms, make all of us look like stupid marketing people. I know the next day I put on some antisocial clothing and my anarchy sign around the neck. And when they closed the school's doors during breaks (in order to make students not skip classes and not smoke?) there was some massive skipping going on. I, myself skiped a lot of classes just because they closed the damned doors. Well, in the end they gave up most of this bullshit.
But now, my girlfriend tells me similar stories. Uniforms, parents and so on. The sad thing is you are too right about this.
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Re: Operation Oatmeal
by kat_vamp (catvamp@msn.com)
on Apr 13, 2002 - 07:05 PM
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OH GOODIE! I get to rant about parenting too! :-)
I was the mother of three rugrats by the time I was 22. Being *so well raised* by my *normal, upstanding, Christian* parents (I left home when I was 13) I had plenty of skills (learned all from the streets) for raising kids. (Can you feel the sarcasm dripping?) I lost the first child (and went mad) and gave the other two up, for their own sakes (I simply was NOT capable of being a parent at that time.) So I know alot about how NOT to parent. I got spayed and said "Never Again." (As I played with my crayolas and wept.)
Since that time I have learned even more about how NOT to raise a child. I was a nanny for 10 years (the ol' mommy hormones were too strong for me to stay away.) I have seen some serious abuse and neglect of children (and reported what I could when I could.) I have done everything I can to learn parenting skills. What they teach you in those classes...*pftttttt* PLEASE. The best I learned is that kid's is peoples, and deserve the same respect as others; also, I got some really great teaching techniques! I do a great job at being a step-mommy to my GF's brats!
Now comes the BITCH.
I've studied childcare, and been a nanny FOREVER. I get with a chick who has three kids...kewl! NOT. What I did not expect was the mess I stumbled into. These children had been abused and neglected (by both parents) for 13 years before I came along and said :STOP! Well, stopping wasn't easy for her, but she did it! It took 2 years together for her to go into classes and therapy and get it...but she did it! I am sooooo proud of her!
Still, now we are dealing with 3 very messed up children. All of them have emotional/psychological disorders. Before I entered the picture, my partner had already lost her eldest son to CPS for his starting fires and going balistic. She's the one who called the cops on him. Good choice, now he's in a psych-facility for teens and doing great. He's still paranoid, and has behavioral/emotional problems, but at least he's in the right place to get help. I love him!
Enter child #2...a 7-year-old with a disorder called "reactive attachment disorder." It's nothing like it sounds...beleive me! She was totally incorrigible. I tried so hard to be her friend...but to her EVERYONE was the "enemy." Without going into it too deep, let me just say it got really bad, and my partner decided to let her live with the child's aunt...she's doing great now, too.
Child #3 is our developmentally disabled 11-year-old. She is our Angel! But I tell you what, it's still really hard. She's 11, and has the capacity of 18 months to about 3 years. She goes to school, and has been rapidly progressing. However, I must say that her tantrums are HELL.
I knew when I couldn't handle my children anymore. My partner got to the point where she knew she needed help, too. CPS is the Devil. But why can't people realize what their behavior is, and how their problems affect those around them (especially the impressionable ones?) What we have had to do in order to give our children the best we could has caused deep pain to us...a pain that never goes away. But the CHILDREN ALWAYS COME FIRST!!! I am constantly reminding my partner...I am constantly teaching her as well. She created the mess, I tell her, now she's the one who has to clean it up.
I wish more people would clean up their acts. I wish there were less children on the street (that is the roughest life for a kid in the world...but sometimes it's better than home can be.) I tell you what...CPS doesn't help a damned bit. They tear the families apart under the guise of "helping" the parents and kids. That causes trauma for both! I see our girls go through it each time they talk to their brother over the phone...one just cries and can't even talk, the other is apathetic and has no true emotions at all. You guess which is which...I'll bet you're wrong.
I d
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Re: Operation Oatmeal
by nocta on Apr 14, 2002 - 02:15 AM
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My belief is that tv, video games, music, etc. can cause some limited violent acts, like Bettie's nephew trying to emulate Smackdown because he didn't understand that it would actually hurt the other participant. But the kids that are fucked up to begin with, the ones that eat shit or do any number of goofy things, those are the ones that are very adversely affected by tv/video games/music. But it really isn't the boob tube or the Playstation or the Marilyn Manson that makes the kid go nuts; the kid is predisposed to that sort of thing and the television or game or cd is just the catalyst. What I'm saying is that normal, well-raised kids don't have much trouble with playing nice, and the mean kids will be mean whether they watch that tv show or play that game or listen to that cd or not.
I for one am all for mandatory, free birth control. I think everyone should not be allowed to have kids until they've taken a class or passed a test or something to prove that they won't mess up the next generation.
And high school dress codes can kiss my ass; when I was in high school, they made a no coats rule after the Columbine shootings. It wasn't very well enforced...except on me. I can recall standing in front of the office between classes, talking to the principal about why I should not have to take my (trench)coat off, while countless other kids wandered by us on their way to class wearing their Fubu, Adidas, etc. coats. That trench didn't even have any pockets, let alone places to stash guns. I mentioned this, and offered to sign a form saying the school could search me at any time if I were just allowed to wear my coat. I was denied and offered a suspension for my trouble. What really gets me is that nobody cared that I wore a spiky black leather collar and bracelet- also against the rules. They just cared about the coat, not the jewelry that I actually could have used as a weapon. I think that schools should deal with the students' problems rather than their clothes. If the Columbine boys had just gotten some help from their school (or anywhere else), they never would have progressed to the point of guns in the coats.
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