I talk about this with Buz Mayo around the 19:00-minute mark in this podcast:
When our kids were little, one of the things we probably did a pretty good job of – and partly because we were busy – is we didn’t watch television much. And when they really wanted to, they had to earn it. We tried a million different ways; they had to earn tickets to watch a half hour show, etc..but it was not the center of our home.
I don’t want the TV to be the center of the home. Pretty much every home I’ve been to – MINE INCLUDED – has the TV up on the wall in the living room and all of the seating facing directly at it.
If aliens came and saw this, they would conclude that this appliance is without a doubt the most important thing in our lives. “The humans can’t FUNCTION without it!”
But that’s a lie.
One my friends (who I don’t think uncoincidentally grew up on a farm) has a TV, but it’s stored on a wheeled cart in a closet. If he wants to watch it, he has to wheel it out and plug it all in. Just making it 38 seconds more difficult to watch cuts TV watching to nearly nothing. It goes from being the default activity to something you need to actively do.
For me, with it on the wall, the numbed-out world of TV-land is a click of a button away. But I want Jack to know that the amazing world of outside is just a few steps away!
What’s your parental view of television? I want your advice. And if you allow TV in your house, how to do you make proper boundaries? Please leave your answer in the comments
ps, We talked about this with Buz right after talking about cell phone addiction. It’s the same problem. I don’t want my kids thinking that joy = TV, or relaxation = TV, or family time = TV.
What wound does cell phone [and TV] addiction create?
Let’s just go to the inner dialogue of a child who is perhaps 4, 5, or 6. If they had the vocabulary, it might go something like this, “Hmmm, that seems to be worth a lot to daddy, to be connected to these invisible people I can’t see. I think that I’m worth LESS than who he is talking to. I think I’m worthless.” That’s a pretty deep wound.
My son already sees the phone as an important thing. I want him grabbing books and grabbing the Bible, “That is what dad carries around all the time. That is where dad goes for joy. That is where dad goes to relax. That is the center of our family’s life.
In the last ten years, only 91 teachers out of about 300,000 (.003 percent) who have attained permanence lost their jobs in California. Of those, only 19 (.0007 percent) have been dismissed for poor performance.
You’re telling me that out of 300,00 teachers, only TWO a year are fired for poor performance? Imagine how bad these two must be. And imagine how many other bad teachers never get fired.
Never forget, LA Unified had to pay $40,000 TO THE TEACHER who fed spoonfuls of his semen to 3rd graders. The district had to pay HIM to go away.
Which is why I predict this guy get a promotion. It’s easier for districts to promote bad teachers into the district office than it is to fire them
***UPDATE: He’s been placed on administrative leave TWICE before. ***
You may say, “This is how kids talk these days. It’s important to relate to them and speak their language.” Nope. It’s important to be a ROLE model and set an example for HOW kids should talk and behave, not to sink down to their level in this effort to relate. Because you’re not relating, you look like a fool who is trying too hard.
Ben Sasse’s book “The Vanishing American Adult” [which I link to all the time and is on sale] write about how one of the main goals of the modern public school system- developed around 1900 by John Dewey – was to transform the center of the kids social universe. For all of history, the center of a kids life is the home, Most of their interaction was with their parents or other adults and this gave them a constant source of aspiration; a vision of the man or woman they WANT to grow up to become. The public school made the SCHOOL the social center of the kids’ life. And not only that, but the school became the place where kids, for the first time ever, looked for advice and insight and wisdom…from other kids.
When you have 16 year olds guiding other 16 year olds through the trials and tribulations of life, it’s not going to go well. You need ADULTS to help guide kids into adulthood.
Teachers shouldn’t swear. They shouldn’t “talk the kids language” because their goal isn’t to be a kid. The goal should be to help the kids become adults. YOU be the model. You be the adult; not a grown up 16 year old.
And if you’re going to swear and make pathetic arguments like, “[Marines are] not like, high-level thinkers.” Don’t be surprised when your students write a report, “Like, Geoge Washington was like mean.”
Back to the main point, remember in 2006 when Senator John Kerry said, ‘”You make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
This man went on to become the Secretary of State! (That doesn’t sounds like a slip of the tongue, does it?)
This is the same elitist perspective on the military: that they’re a bunch of uneducated, desperate losers. If they were “smart like me” then they would go to college!
It’s not even worth the time to rebuke his premise, we can sit here all day and point out people we know in the military who are brilliant and who didn’t join as a last resort, but joined because they know that there are things in life worth fighting for. And this country and the VALUES we believe in this country is one of those things.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse… A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
This teacher is kept free by men BETTER THAN HIMSELF!
There is a confusion between education and schooling. This teacher is only focused on SCHOOLING, “Go to college! Get more schooling.” But joining the military gives you an education. Education is life experience.
IT’s like the scene from Good Will Hunting, when Robin Williams character tells Matt Damon: [LANGUAGE WARNING]
When you get a lot of schooling, you tend to look down on people who don’t have as much as you. Yyou tend to get closed minded. When you have an education, you have more perspective and empathy. And you can smell ignorance from a mile away.
I’ll end here, one fo the schools in the district is Obregon. It’s K-12 and named after Eugene Obregon. Eugene was born in LA, joined the marines at 17 and deployed to Korea during the Korean War.
Obregon was an ammunition carrier for a machine gun squad. During one battle, he saw one of his fellow marines shot and fall into the line of fire. With only his pistol, he ran out to grab him. He gabbed him with one arm and began pulling him back, firing with his other arm. They made it to cover and Eugene stated bandaging the man up. The enemy approached. Eugene took the guy’s rifle, and while shielding him, started firing at the approaching enemy! He was shot and killed. The man he rescued survived, recovered and stayed in the military in honor fo the man ho saved his life.
This school is named after this medal of honor recipient. I would argue to this teacher that schooling is fine. You can read some books and learn some things. But you can’t learn certain aspects of life unless you’re in situations like that.
Not all of us could handle a moment like that. I’m glad some of us can.
The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order…And however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a failure if it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta.
In other words, each ship must be seaworthy and all the ships must work well together, but in the end, this only has value if all the ships in the fleet sail to the same location. Unity.
As Guatemalan columnist Claudia Nunez wrote on Trump in the Guatemalan newspaper Siglio 21: “The epithets he uses to describe certain groups are unfortunate and exemplify the decadence of the current political scene. But he has also said things that are true, for example, that it is we citizens of migration countries who have accommodated ourselves to the need to export people, as we have calmly allowed excessive levels of corruption to grow for decades.
President of Uganda, “I love Trump because he tells Africans frankly. The Africans need to solve their problems. The Africans are weak.”
The BEST ARTICLE I’ve read on Trumps S-hole comment is this one by Rod Dreher. First, I value people wrestling with their thoughts, but also because the insights from his readers who served in the Peace Corps are amazing. Read it, read it, read it. Then come back here.
Now, back to Prager:
Though many wonderful immigrants come from the world’s worst places, there is some connection between the moral state of an immigrant’s country and the immigrant’s contribution to America. According to data from the Center for Immigration Studies, 73 percent of households headed by Central American and Mexican immigrants use one or more welfare programs, as do 51 percent of Caribbean immigrants and 48 percent of African immigrants. Contrast that with 32 percent of East Asians and 26 percent of Europeans.
What I’m about to write is extremely important. THIS IS NOT RACIAL. This is cultural. I bet if you did a deeper study, you’d find immigrants from certain parts of Europe who use more welfare. Or you’d find certain Central American immigrants who use less than other immigrants from other part of Central America. I bet you can go even deeper, and find that Mexican immigrants from different PARTS of Mexico use more or less welfare. It’s not RACE, it’s CULTURE, CULTURE, CULTURE.
Please read the amazing “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” by Thomas Sowell. It will change your perspective on all of this race fetish we have in America
Now, here’s the big question. You hear all the time, “Diversity is our strength.” You’ve heard it. You may have said it. You’ve at least passively gone along with it. But let’s question it. What if Diversity is NOT our strength?
Now, WAIT! Judge how defensive you get. Stop and take an assessment of how you feel when I say that.
Try this one on, “Diversity is our weakness.”
How do you feel about that? Maybe you feel AGER at me. Why? Because your brain is PREDICTING the argument you think I’m going to make. Your brain has decided that the argument I‘m going to make is that white people are better than brown people, and the more brown people we let in, the weaker our country becomes.
If I say, “Diversity is our weakness.” and you make it a racial issue, then you’ll get angry. But that’s not my augment.
Let me make a more positive statement. Judge how you feel when I say this, “Unity is our strength”
There’s a growing body of evidence that even if diversity— the kind that results from immigration — once made America stronger, it may not be doing so anymore. Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist at Harvard, found that increased diversity corrodes civil society by eroding shared values, customs and institutions. People tend to “hunker down” and retreat from civil society, at least in the short and medium term.
His argument is that the problem isn’t immigration per se. It’s this movement against ASSIMILATION. It’s the movement against Americanism. The University of California system officially consider the term “melting pot” offensive and triggering. We’re in the midst of an anti-assimilation movement. In the name of diversity, we’re separating ourselves more than ever, and that makes us weaker.
Let’s move away from imagination. I go to a church that has people of many different ethnic backgrounds. Does that make us stronger? Not really.
What makes us strong is what unites us: Following Jesus. Once we have a uniting force, well then sure, diversity of gifts, talents, callings and abilities to relate to different people, these are all good, but only if we’re all in it for the same mission. Our church wouldn’t be stronger if we had a diverse mix of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and atheists. That is not a strong Christian church.
Similarly, in America, what are we uniting behind? What are we striving towards? If we don’t know, then diversity makes us weaker. If we can unite over a common objective, then diversity of experience and insight and talents and gifts is good. The color of skin means nothing.
Marines are strong individuals, but useless without a mission. They’re dangerous if you give each and every Marine a different and conflicting mission. The Marines strength is in their unity FIRST, and only then are their unique talents of any use at all.
The progressive movement has for too long put Diversity as the first and foremost priority.
So where are the things that unite us? First, it has to be more than a lot of people watch the Super Bowl. It can’t be surface level, pop culture things. The things that unite us must be credal. We are a credal nation, the only nation EVER founded based on an idea. So we have to be united in these funding ideas.
Nationwide, 8th graders, 18% proficient in US history, 27% proficient in geography, 23% proficient in civics. Only 49% of Millennials say they’re patriotic. The other 51%, combined with their historical and civic ignorance. No Bueno
Next time you hear someone say, “Diversity is our strength.” Ask them, “Is it? Maybe diversity is our weakness. Unity is our strength.” Unity in what? “Unity in our Amerian Crede: A nation founded on the confidence of a free and virtuous people.
Our quest is to always get closer to that ideal. More freedom. And more virtue.
SUBSCRIBE TO CHRISTIAN PARENTING PODCAST ON ITUNES