The story of Chinese diver Wu Minxia, who was not told of her grandparents' death or her mother's breast cancer until after she won the gold medal in this year's Olympics, revealed a truth about Chinese culture and its attitude towards children. The Vancouver Sun reported that the athlete's father Wu Jeuming said,
"We even kept the news that her grandparents died from her. When grandma died, [Wu] seemed almost like she had a premonition, and she called us asking if she was okay. We had to lie; we told her, 'everything's okay.'"Minxia started swimming at age 6 and joined the nation's Project 119 which specifically seeks to identify children as young as 5 to train to be Olympic athletes. By 16 she had moved away from her family to a training compound where the work was intense. The goal - to glorify the state by winning Olympic gold. It is no secret that the Chinese officials have only contacted the gold medal winners to congratulate them. The rest, the silver and bronze winners, have not lived up to the state's investment in them and deserve no attention.
"It's been like this for so many years. We long ago realized that our daughter doesn't belong to us completely. Enjoying the company of family? I don't think about it. I don't dare think about it."
Dr. Keith Ablow, a licensed psychiatrist and FOX contributor, commented on this sad story stating that we Americans were lucky we didn't live in a society that believed our children belong to the state.
Not yet, Dr. Ablow, but soon they may be. The writing is on the wall.
At a recent DESE conference, this presentation was made on the state's Early Learning Campaign. Page 2 of the presentation said bluntly,
We must EDUCATE, GRADUATE, TRAIN every potential child born in Missouri to ensure the workforce needed in Missouri to attract companies.Our own state has referred repeatedly to our children as human capital. Here they come right out and say something that could be in the Chinese Project 119 mission statement. The goal is to train children to be the capital needed to attract business to the state. Your child is bait.
Where are the pro-lifers on this issue? The statement refers to every "potential" child born in MO. They are looking at the unborn and they are making a claim on them before they are born. Once they are born they will be tool of the state, not a spiritual being or a sacred life. You cannot be pro-life AND accept this view of children entering the world.
Page three might well have been written by Karl Marx.
High-quality early childhood programs allow parents to go to work confident their children are in safe, nurturing environments.Your job, parents, is to go to work. The state will provide daycare. You provide the raw materials for its needs.
The state says it is investing in education. Actually it is investing in human capital. They have reduced humans to the equivalence of iron ore or factories. Decisions about education will be based on return on investment, not parent or student satisfaction with the education delivered.
Read through the rest of the presentation, if you can stomach it. However well intentioned at reducing the "achievement gap," the state is going to force these programs on parents and infants because, economist Dr. James Heckman says, "Investing $6,000 per child [in an intensive 2 year early childhood program for infants and toddlers] has a “lifetime societal benefit” of up to $69,000. A ROI greater than 10:1." Isn't that great?
Watch for the catch phrase "Now For Later" cropping up in newspapers,
banner ads on the web, business journals and direct mailers and remember it stands for (investing Now For a productive workforce Later)
The presentation, given to DESE on July 29-31, was presented by Tom Rose, Columbia Board of Education and George Lombardi, Missouri Department of Corrections. Would it be fair to say that the state only sees two paths for children, school or prison? Either way, they are laying a claim on your children. Someone needs to tell Dr. Ablow.
"Page three might well have been written by Karl Marx.
ReplyDelete'High-quality early childhood programs allow parents to go to work confident their children are in safe, nurturing environments.'
Your job, parents, is to go to work. The state will provide daycare. You provide the raw materials for its needs."
Angie you're on a roll this week.
It's worth pointing out that Marx took his ideas from Hegel & Rousseau, which is where our modern system of education (the one that supplanted the 'system' of education that our Founders developed from), came from as well. It misses the point a little bit when we say that many in our schools, or designing their course-ware, or managing the schools, seem to have Marxist ideals - though often true, the more dangerous point is that our system of education is based upon the very same ideas as those which enabled Marx to become Marx in the first place.
There are two general tracks in educational purpose:
The 1st is designed to communicate to a student the essential knowledge needed for developing the internal means and ability to govern themselves in pursuit of a life worth living.
The 2nd is designed to fit the student with those skills, which those in charge, deem most useful for the purposes of those in power.
The 1st has no trouble accomodating and enabling the pursuit of useful skills - many times over. The 2nd cannot tolerate, except in the most shallow of bromides, examining what makes a life worth living - that risks letting ideas into students heads that might conflict with the plans that have been made by those in power. The 1st leads to an understanding of Individual Rights, Law and Liberty, enabling individuals to live their own lives. The 2nd favors centralizing and enlarging power, in order to arrange the lives of others so as to more efficiently distribute what wealth they manage to produce, as deemed most useful by those in power.
Our modern system of education is designed with the aims and powers of the Chinese system as its goal and justification - they are the ideas that made the Chinese system possible.
And what could possibly be wrong with that? Or... maybe better put, what could the person, who has never been taught those ideas central to a life worth living, possibly see as being wrong with that?