What a wonderful sentiment! It is warm and fuzzy and conjures up visions of a Norman Rockwell town with a little red schoolhouse, smiling students and a teacher who, though stern, doles out smiles and hugs to her children.
In truth, a ‘village’ is, by legal definition, a municipality, the smallest designation for an entity with a controlling government and capable of taxing its inhabitants. Not so warm and fuzzy now. Still, it wouldn’t be harmful for a village to assist modern parents in the raising of their children, so long as that village is not in the USA. In stating that it takes a village to raise a child, our government is in effect saying that parents, alone, are incapable of raising their own children without government oversight and ‘assistance.’
The typical modus operandi of the federal government is to declare itself to be the cavalry riding to address a problem that the government itself has caused. Witness the ecologic crisis, housing crisis, the healthcare crisis, multiple financial crises. Curiously, these crises seem to have existed for a long time (always starting whenever the opposition political party was in power) but just now make it onto the radar screen. By blaming the opposing party, they (both political parties) get their lockstep voters behind them and the blame never gets levied on the true criminal, a monolithic bureaucracy.
The issue before us is raising a child. That means feeding, sheltering, teaching, disciplining. Let’s look at how the USA has managed. First, we were fed the baseless fiction that a single parent (father, mother, heterosexual or homosexual) could do as good a job of parenting as two parents. Now we see that is not true; children from single parent homes having more than twice the risk of psychological problems and substance abuse than children from two parent homes.
Then we were told competition hurts self-esteem. Everybody gets a trophy for participation. Nobody has to work harder to be better. Competition is viewed as the social equivalent of passing gas in an elevator. Schools invent ways to avoid using ‘F’ as a test score.
Psychological test scores show that narcissistic tendencies are vastly increasing among tested children. Narcissism begins with an opinion of oneself that is not supportable by fact. Children need a dose of humility (not humiliation) to help with growing up. We now have the total disconnect where USA children have the highest opinion of their self-assessed scholarship, coupled with the worst test scores of all westernized nations in standardized international math and science tests.
The student now exists for the government school, not vice versa. For legal and other reasons, they do away with gym, a physical activity that burns off energy, especially for boys. Then they are scandalized when (mostly) boys begin to manifest inattention and fidgeting. This also occurs to both sexes when the curriculum is so dumbed down that it neither stimulates nor challenges.
We now drug the fidgety children because this normal and predictable behavior is disruptive and can interfere with the development of a standardized student learning a standardized lesson plan in a standardized school. ‘No child left behind’ is easy to accomplish if the curriculum is dumbed down so much that no one is going anywhere. Perhaps the prevailing philosophy should be ‘All children left behind.’ Trust me, the teachers are not to blame.
The American parent is on the most endangered species list. When I was young, my parents’ ethics were reinforced by all teachers, policemen, firefighters, librarians, television parents, even trash collectors. Not so now. It is now clear that a parent who resorts to corporal punishment risks fine, imprisonment and/or loss of his children. There is no distinction between a swat on a kid’s booty by a loving parent and being beaten with metal pipes by a mom’s drunken boyfriend.
The same social engineers who tell us that any effective method of discouraging criminal behavior in the legal system constitutes ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ have persuaded parents that it is better to spare the rod and deal with the child’s sociopathic behavior later.
The obvious conclusion reflects the astonishing arrogance of our government: our government does not trust American parents enough to just leave them alone to raise their children. We have gotten rid of God and we watch Madison Avenue entice our children into behaviors that are not just age-inappropriate, they are just wrong.
Ever notice how most of the Disney programs aimed at adolescents hardly ever show adult involvement. If there is an adult, he is usually an idiot who is less mature than the children. The kids always show up where they need to be and have money despite not having jobs. Yeah, that’s reality TV.
Talk about manipulating children by suggesting they are adults: the political folks are now talking about having children ‘pre-register’ with the political party of their choice. Great psychology by the socialist party: Kids are used to spending their parents’ money, money they have not worked for. With which party do you think they will register? Even the conservative Winston Churchill said “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.”
Much of our current parental heartache can be traced back to a government and its bureaucracy, two entities that never admit error. It may take a Village to raise an idiot, but it takes an entire district to send him to Congress.
– Dennis Garvin
