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December 2001
While adults dither and diddle, make a different: December 19, 2001 -
As bad as sexual exploitation has gotten in the west under the uncivil influence of pop feminists, in the primitive parts of the world it is the worst parts of the Old Testament writ large:
"Stories of this depraved industry are devastating and crushingly familiar. ... The traffickers move children on well-worn paths - from Africa to Europe, from Asia to the United States, or within countries to satisfy tourists."
In years past documentaries have asked why families would sell their children into sexual bondage, and the answers are horrifying to our western sensibilities. In Thailand, for example, often girls are sold to brothels to pay for their brothers or sisters to go to college: the Thai student sitting next to you in college next year could be there compliments of a prostituted sibling. Of course there are efforts to stop this, but they are largely ineffective:
"UNICEF's executive director, Carol Bellamy, calls on countries to ratify and enforce international laws such as the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. ... The first word, optional, shows how tough it can be to sway leaders."
What will it take to stop this, and what can you do?
"Children are also protected when schools and health care systems are strong and parents have economic opportunities."
There's probably not much western students can do, but the one thing you can do is to reach out to the young people your age in these cultures. Not in a meddlesome way. But think about what conditions cause people to do this to their children, brainstorm solutions, ways to implement them, and then figure out how to put those solutions and the means to implement them into the hands of the people who need them.
The child sex trade is a problem. The purpose of thinking is to solve problems. So get busy! You have a lot of thinking to do.
- Boston Globe.
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October 2001
Mary Mitchell - Daddy's little girl? October 28, 2001 -
For decades, pop feminists have assured us children would be better off without fathers because some men are abusive, but after 30 years of increasing institutionalized discrimination against fathers, now daughters are coming forward to tell a different story:
"Writer Jonetta Rose Barras explores the impact of fatherlessness on black women in her intimate book Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl? It is a thoroughly researched look at the topic."
Nobody has ever denied some men are mean SOBs, but which is worse, for a relatively few girls to be traumatized by abusive fathers, or for millions of girls to be traumatized by the absence of their father? The answer may surprise some:
"Barras, who shares her own story about growing up without a father, believes fatherless girls are just as likely to grow up emotionally wounded and spend much of their adult lives trying to find a father's love."
For the sake of their hatred of men, the new rage women have deprived generations of girls of the most important man in their lives. What will this bring?
"The fatherless daughter is a font of unexplained anger and rage."
The pop feminists greatest hope is that this rage will be directed at men, and at fathers. But indications are their greatest fear will be realized: that these deeply wounded young women will discover the truth, and backlash against the anti-male bigots.
- Chicago Sun-Times.
Charles Murray - Still no room for Daddy: October 30, 2001 -
Since the late 1990s, more children are growing up in 2-parent households:
"Single parenthood is declining, with welfare reform probably playing a significant role in the shift."
While this is good, the news is mixed:
"In the latter half of the 1990s, the proportion of children living with a single mother declined significantly, but the proportion of children living with married parents remained statistically flat."
The problem with this is that a very high proportion of these unmarried mothers are living with boyfriends rather than the father of their children:
"For the substantial proportion of cohabitations that represent boyfriends, often serial boyfriends, cohabitation is almost certainly worse than lone motherhood. The evidence regarding child abuse by boyfriends is especially alarming."
This is bad news for kids. Experts agree, the best home for kids is the intact family:
"The best results, whether the measure is academic performance, drug use, criminality, income as adults or just about anything else, are produced by married biological parents."
Since it doesn't look like parents are going to make this happen, maybe it's time for kids to demand that their parents grow up and take responsibility.
- Washington Post.
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September 2001
Andrea Peyser - Bully, bullied, or both? September 8, 2001 - Toddler Emmanuel Barima is dead, killed by an 8-year-old who shows no sorrow or remorse. "Somewhere, these children learned there are no consequences for bullying." Who's to blame? Video games? School? A parent who refuses to take responsibility? "Parents abdicate their responsibility." New York Post.
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August 2001
Tom DeWeese - America's drug war on kids: August 27, 2001 - Recipe for insanity: make drug abuse by children mandatory but illegal for adults. In plain English, that's what America is doing: "(T)welve percent of all American boys between six and 14 have been diagnosed with 'attention deficit' syndrome. They all take medications that share the same characteristics as methamphetamine and cocaine. They and others add up to an estimated seven million school children who are doped up to the eyeballs in this manner." Among the most common is Ritalin, but many others abound. For example, "Eric Harris of Columbine High School fame was taking Luvoc, an antidepressant." Want to do something about it? Parents who do often find themselves charged with educational neglect and face losing their children. Individual resistance isn't the answer. To get our schools back on track will require political action. Too Good Reports.
Are kids today more spoiled? July 30, 2001 - "Five hundred years ago I slogged 18 miles across burning desert sands, pelted by wind, rain, sleet, hail and freezing snow, to school. And I was grateful!" Isn't that the tale every generation tells? Don't look now, because here it comes again: "Eighty percent of Americans surveyed say children are more spoiled today than a decade ago, and two-thirds of parents say their youngsters are very or somewhat spoiled, Time magazine said in an opinion poll released on Sunday." Yes, it's true. Never mind the multitude of single-mom households or, in two-parent families, latch-key kids because, thanks to sixties social movements gone awry coupled with the evolution of multinational corporations that export more and more jobs overseas, both parents are forced to work. Yes, previous generations of kids may have enjoyed the benefits of a stay-at-home mom, home-cooked meals, evenings and weekends with the entire family together and many other family activities, but today's kids are spoiled. Too much permissiveness, too much TV, not enough real parenting. Question is, whose responsible for that? Excite News.
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July 2001
Ben Domenech - Kudos for MADD: July 27, 2001 - A 1999 Associated Press survey indicates nearly half of all high school students had consumed alcohol in the previous month. Why, then, has the number of driving fatalities involving teen drivers who were drunk gone down by 63 percent since 1982? "According to many academic studies, the real reason for the decline in teen drunk driving isn't due to the 1987 limits, but the efforts of groups like MADD and a vast increase in state-level anti-drunk-driving initiatives." National Review.
Larry Clark - Bully: July 20, 2001 - Why do parents want to hide from teen age reality? "There's that thing in this country where we just want our kids to be happy, and there's the tendency to avoid confrontation." But the wish to avoid confrontation - so much a part of the culture of political correctness - can lead to a bad end. "They're all in the penitentiary. And once you're in the penitentiary for seven or eight years, you change so much. You're just trying to get out." - Salon.
Fear of retaliation, biased questions, characterized study of boys: July 2001 - Was the Belmont Hill School study of boys conducted by William Pollack, author of Real Boys, biased? According to some, the questions were of the "Are you still beating your wife" variety: "I was asked to answer how often I thought about killing myself - not if I did - how much I did. I was given the choice between once a year, once a month, once a week, or once a day." Such questions suggest Dr. Pollack was not so much interested in the truth as in obtaining data to back up his prejudices. - Massachusetts News.
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June 2001
Teen forced to deal with abusive parent alone is dead: June 8, 2001 - Fathers are least likely to abuse their children, but whether it's an abusive mother or father doesn't matter to a murdered child. "(Sonyé Herrera's) desperate last minutes became clearer six weeks ago after a judge ordered the city to release the 911 records. The family learned for the first time that Sonyé was hiding in the bathroom. That her father had already assaulted her. That the 911 operator assured her that "we'll be sending the police out" and then left her waiting, terrified, for 28 minutes." - Washington Post.
Kathleen Parker - Dirty dancing, or obscene freaking? June 6, 2001 - Are we being overrun with white trash sensibilities? Take freaking, for example, the way kids dance these days, where boys raised without fathers pound their gonads against the behinds of bent-over girls who were raised without fathers. "If I'm beginning to sound elitist, by all means haul out the trumpets. What the world needs now is a whole lot of elitism rather than what we currently have, which is...everybody's acting like white trash." - Orlando Sentinel.
Rural teen does ground breaking DNA study: June 2, 2001 - Centralia High School senior Inga Nelson was curious about genetic differences between wild salmon and hatchery salmon. So, using genetic DNA fingerprinting equipment at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, she compared samples from wild and fisheries stock. "Her findings - that the two fish carry different DNA - not only surprised her and her high school science teacher, but also researchers at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Marine Fisheries Service." - Olympian.
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May 2001
Cyring bullets: May 24, 2001 - Zero tolerance anti-bullying programs do more harm than good, according to William S. Pollock, an adviser to the federal government's Safe Schools Initiative. "In his influential book Real Boys, Pollock decried the societal straitjacket that prevents boys from acknowledging their sensitivity and emotions. He said this 'boy code' stunts their emotional growth, forces them to hide behind a mask of stoicism and creates a society of boys who cry bullets instead of tears." - Seattle P-I.
Using candy to hook children on nicotine: May 6, 2001 - In response to smoke free work environments, tobacco companies are about to launch a mint candy that is 60% tobacco. While this will be a boon to many smokers, it may also prove a threat to children. According to Amanda Sandford of Action on Smoking and Health, "You could also be encouraging children and young people to use a product containing nicotine." - Sunday Times.
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April 2001
Bullying is rampant in America's schools: April 25, 2001 - About 30 percent of sixth through tenth graders are victims or perpetrators of bullying, according to a recent study. "The research, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, found that ... boys are more likely to be bullied--and that bullying by boys was of a more physical nature--while girl bullies tended to be more verbal or emotional." - Chicago Sun-Times.
Does daycare teach bad manners? April 22, 2001 - A recently concluded study indicates children who spend more than 30 hours per week in daycare are three times more likely to have behavioral problems. According to Jay Belsky, professor of psychology at Birkbeck College, London, "There is a constant relationship between time in care and problems of behaviour, especially those involving aggression." - Sunday Times.
American education and utter disaster, no joke: April 11, 2001 - The news about American education just keeps getting worse, as more than one-third of children are "functionally illiterate or close to it, and for whom life holds at best the joyous prospects of bike-messengering, table-busing, weed-pulling, hamburger-flipping and broom-pushing - episodically relieved by unemployment and poverty." - Seattle Times.
Canadian children abusing Ritalin: April 8, 2001 - The prescription drug Ritalin provides a high similar to Cocaine. So we prescribe it to our children. The result: "Canadian children aren't just swallowing the Ritalin and Dexedrine tablets designed to combat their attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders, they're trafficking in them and being bullied into giving them up in what has become a burgeoning school-yard drug trade, a Globe and Mail investigation reveals." - Globe and Mail.
Bill and Carole Walsh fight a system that abuses abused children: April 5, 2001 - When he transfered to the Dallas police department's youth and family crimes division, Lieutenant Bill Walsh was troubled by how the justice system traumatized abused children. So he pushed for the creation of the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center, "a warm setting where police and prosecutors and social workers cooperate to make the process easier for children - and relentless for their abusers." To raise funds and support this effort, Carole Walsh has formed the Children's Advocacy Center League. - Dallas Morning News.
The idiot class: April 3, 2001 - Last year a national survey of teens indicated a wide array of problems were pervasive among high school students. And we believed them. "In light of the many well-known incidences of school violence, along with the widely reported proliferation of firearms in America, the results of the survey conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics seem to prove one irrefutable fact: Grown-ups are idiots." - Arizona Republic.
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March 2001
Notes From The Pansy Bed: March 27, 2001 - "The USSR put dissident adults in psychiatric wards and gave them drugs to control their behavior. Our educrats put our children in psychotherapy and give them drugs to control their behavior. And we let them. Why?" - Fred Reed.
"Boy code" to blame for violence? March 25, 2001 - William Pollack attributes the outbreaks of school violence to a "boy code" which forces boys to bottle up their emotions until they explode. "We've taken away their capacity for empathy and feeling, and trained them from birth onward that if they show any emotion, we will shame them. And then we're surprised when they finally explode." - Boston Herald.
Denise Hollinshed: March 25, 2001 - Despite years of documented neglect and abuse, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) failed to protect eleven of Virginia Williams' first 12 children, and they died in a house fire on Jan. 11, 1981 while she was away gambling with their public assistance money. The court sentenced her to one year probation. Since then, she has had 6 more children and reports of abuse and neglect continue, for which she served two years and nine months. And she continued to abuse her sons and neglect all her children. Their only escape, group homes, but never for long. "Each time the children were placed in group homes, the juvenile court -- on the recommendation of DCFS -- returned them to Williams. One advocate said Jeremy had been placed in at least 30 different homes, sometimes staying only a week." How can we expect these children to grow up to be happy, productive citizens when we are utterly failing to protect and nurture them? - St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Begin with bullies: March 18, 2001 - "By high school, the bully is harder to identify than his target. Pink hair or a pierced nose does not give him/her away. To the contrary, he comes not from the ranks of nonconformists, but from a school's majority culture. ... By adolescence, the bully is a master of subtle terrorism." - Boston Globe.
Reading, writing and Ritalin: March 19, 2001 - "One in every 36 boys in the latter years of primary school in NSW is taking stimulant medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), new Health Department figures show." - Sydney Morning Herald.
The biological destiny of bullying: March 14, 2001 - "Exposure to social abuse can re-engineer the brain. ... Brain researchers have shown that chronic social stress, particularly the misery visited on the lowly by the high-ranking, is just the sort of insult that hammers at the brain until it's a nervous wreck. ... When we are no longer blind to the consequences of teen cruelty, we might stop being blindsided by teen violence." - LA Times.
Home schooling answer to bullying? March 18, 2001 - Bullying is so pervasive, what's the value of school sociliazation? "Do you really want your kids socialized by other kids, or adults?" - New York Post.
Thought police hounding school children: March 18, 2001 - Despite overall decrease in school violence, authorities fearing more Columbine copycats are treating every potentially threatening utterance as serious: "Make a threat, and no matter how idle it seems, nobody's taking any chances. The police will be called." - Boston Globe.
Drugging away the pain of youth: March 12, 2001 - Emotional abuse can cause brain damage (or "deterioration in the architecture of the brain") in toddlers, but are drugs the answer? "In America, the number of prescriptions or recommendations for the anti-depressant Prozac for children under 12 rose 212 per cent between 1994 and 1997." - The Age.
Tormented teens: March 8, 2001 - The question is not, "Why do school shooting sprees happen?" The question is, given how cruel American teenagers are, "Why don't they happen more often?" - New York Post.
Preventing Teen Suicide: A recent study of 4,000 students in 58 high schools by the state Department of Public Health found that 10 percent of respondents reported at least one suicide attempt in the previous year. - Boston Globe.
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February 2001
Misguided zero-tolerance rules are ruining our children's lives: Horror stories from the front lines in a cultural war where kids get crucified rather than corrected. - Philadelphia Inquirer.
Parent behavior can curb teen drug use - Salon.
Freedom and the "Freak": The freak is simply simulated intercourse without even the pretense of dance. This cultural phenomenon has been making headlines across the country, pitting school administrators in an age-old battle against crusading youngsters who fashion themselves heroes for free expression and personal liberty. - Jewish World Review.
British Teens Trippin': Researchers found that 36% of boys and girls in Britain aged 15 and 16 took drugs at some time, mainly cannabis, but also LSD and ecstasy - Sunday Times.
D.A.R.E. Not! The anti-drug program is a bust - TIME.
Dress codes okay, but what about education? A stunning 30 per cent of Canadian boys fail to graduate from high school - Ottawa Citizen.
Sexual Suicide: Thirty-four per cent of 16-to-20 year-old teenagers have had unprotected sex with a new partner in the past 12 months - Globe And Mail.
Should sex ed address emotional issues? - Sunday Times.
When little girls wear make-up, they send out sexual signals: Children are not and never have been guileless, harmless or sexless little creatures. They are, however, immature and defenceless, and they do need protection - Daily Telegraph.
Stupid about boys: Teen mags normalise excessive materialism and grinding conformism in an age of anxious narcissism - Independent.
Crack down! In the Valley's first major crackdown at rave parties, Phoenix and Mesa police and Maricopa County sheriff's deputies spent the past five months attending raves to identify those selling illegal designer drugs - Arizona Republic.
William Raspberry: Much of President Bush's approach to education reform is based, I fear, on a persistent and misleading myth: That the people who run and staff our low-performing public schools could do a much better job if they wanted to - Washington Post.
Canada's scandal: We are increasingly confronted with the worsening plight of voiceless children and vulnerable families who are trying to survive in this wealthy country - Toronto Star.
Young people starving for sex education: A lack of sex education in China is leading to an increase in pre-marital sex - Muzi.
Ravers trade pot for Ecstasy: Use of club drug has doubled since 1995 - Globe and Mail.
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January 2001
How do we stop the bullying? I could not have imagined such hostility from other kids and such feelings of despair on my part - Globe and Mail.
Britney Brigade: The racy pop icon is now a style setter. Is it bad that millions of young girls, from post-toddlers to teens, want to look just like her? - TIME.
Top state officials announce bill to stop bullying in schools - Washington state.
Life in a broken home: Four children of divorce talk about how their parents' divorces played out in their lives - Daily Record.
Single-sex schools can offer better education - Sunday Times.
The disturbing apathy of youth - Irish Times.
Eighth-grade girl takes hit from zero-tolerance policy - Beacon News.
Sex talks help teens decide when the time is right: A significant minority of teenage girls feel they are not free to decide when to have sex or use contraceptives, and many end up pregnant as a result - theAge.com.
Girls under the knife - Globe And Mail.
Aunt let girl die bound and naked in the bath - Daily Telegraph.
Florida Prison a Last Chance for Girl Criminals - Fox News.
The virginity hoax: A federal study reveals the terrible failures inherent in teen vows to chastity - Salon.
Safe from the Start: Taking Action on Children Exposed to Violence - National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
Teen accused in school hostage incident faces 1st legal battle - Arizona Republic.
Evidence of increased use of steroids, ecstasy and other drugs - LA Times.
Boy faces jail for slapping girl's bottom - Telegraph.
Kids and Guns - Sierra Times.
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