Posted on 04/20/2002 7:55:47 AM PDT by pabianice
Michelle Malkin
See Dick and Jane weep
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Home-schooling is looking more and more like the only sane educational option these days.
The latest news of the weird in our public schools comes from Seattle. Last week, the Seattle Times reports, nearly 300 students from two middle schools were subjected to three long days of gut-spilling seminars aimed at "creating a safe school environment free of teasing and harassment."
Principals and teachers traded in phonics for histrionics. Children learned the Oprahfied alphabet -- A for apologies, B for blame, and C for crying. Uncontrollable crying. Kleenex must have made a killing. Here's how the Times reporter described the workshops:
"Sitting in small circles, their knees touching, students shared their own hurt and the pain they had inflicted on others. The tears flowed. In some groups, half the WashingtonMiddleSchool students were crying at once. Applause followed, as the seventh- and eighth-graders stepped up to roving microphones and declared what they would do to mend broken relationships with their schoolmates. Two boys shook hands after one apologized for making fun of the other, and said he hoped to be more supportive."
"A girl owned up to snubbing an old friend. 'I'm sorry that I've been very distant and that I've chosen other friends in school,' she said. 'I'm going to work on that, and I'm going to be a better friend.' The girls embraced."
All bounds of privacy and self-restraint were erased as seminar "facilitators" encouraged their young guinea pigs to confess whether they - or friends or family members -- had ever faced addiction problems, sadness over the death of loved ones, guilt over teasing others because of their weight, or thoughts of suicide. The public sniveling and sniffling ended with a "final exercise -- hugging as many people as possible in two minutes, to the theme from 'Rocky.'" One child, showing uncommon wisdom, dubbed the dolorous debacle a "psycho cry-fest."
It's only the beginning: This bizarre emotional circus may be coming to an unacceptably dry-eyed classroom near you.
Sponsored by a for-profit company called Resource Realizations in Scottsdale, Ariz., and run jointly by a nonprofit organization called Challenge Day, the chief operator of these weeping workshops says he smells a "a huge potential growth area" in the public schools. Seattle students received information packets from Resources Realizations founder David Gilcrease. "While Challenge Day is a critical first step, a one-day learning experience only goes so far," Gilcrease wrote in literature distributed to the children. "To create truly lasting transformation in their lives, most teens need more."
For starters, there's the company's three-day, $295 Teen Discovery seminar. Which leads to pricy summer camps, parent-child workshops, and retreats full of self-esteem-boosting babblers who teach participants such vital skills as learning "to interrupt unconscious mental and emotional cycles which tend to sabotage results." According to the Resources Realizations website, public seminars are also being run in San Diego, San Francisco, Dallas, Ft.Lauderdale, and Chicago.
Unbeknowst to Seattle school officials and parents who raved about the workshops, Resources Realizations has a dubious history. It is connected to a shady racket of companies peddling kiddie rehab programs with names such as "TranquilityBay" and "Paradise Cove" that have been accused of brainwashing youngsters. Yet, the Seattle schools superintendent, Joseph Olchefske, seemed only mildly perturbed that the company coaching Seattle schoolchildren to get all choked up - and then foisting their promotional flyers on the overwrought kids -- is also a defendant in several lawsuits involving claims of emotional abuse at its behavior-therapy facilities.
Where are all those anti-corporate lefties who protest the commercialization of the schools - you know, the ones always complaining about cafeteria junk food being stuffed down the throats of helpless students? These mindless p.c. workshops are junk food, too - completely devoid of academic calories.
Now, there may be legitimate private businesses out there that provide real help to families with emotional problems. But even so, they have no place in taxpayer-funded schools whose primary function is supposed to be filling students' heads - not emptying their lachrymal ducts.
Sick people running the Ed System.
FMCDH!
When I was in high school, I would have loved to hug certain girls. I'll bet there was a lot of that going on.
Don't you love the PSYCHO CRY FEST description?
We occasionally have similar garbage at work under the auspices of the diversity program. I call them exercises in "guided whining." What the whole situation really represents is a new kind of secular religion being foisted upon us. There's nothing that they tell kids that wasn't covered just as well under Christ's command to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Add a good dosage of other Bible verses such as I Corinthians 13, and you have a working prescription for most of the schools' problems. I agree that mistreating other students is wrong. It was wrong when I went to school, and it is wrong today. It should be treated as wrong and punished, but this kind of psycho garbage needs to end.
WFTR
Bill
I was briefly a part of our city's "Youth Council" back in the early 80's. The paltry funds we raised from putting on mild rock concerts were spent one year to send two of our number (all we could afford) to what can only be described as a "diversity training" camp for a week. When they returned, we were piously instructed in the right way to treat others. Before two weeks were gone, our annointed were back to the the usual name-calling and kid snobbery.
Perhaps they were invited to exercise their talents in another agency at an entry level before being released to pursue their life's dream.
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