Our past, the blood, sweat and tears of our forefathers, who only tried to "make a better life" for their children, us, has become our decadence. Technology, market and societal advancement (although I don't necessarily mean that as a positive), and work ethic, have led us to become tired, easy to manipulate, dismissive, and as such FAT and STUPID. Yes, FAT and STUPID.
Where are all the kids playing football in vacant lots? Where are all the kids playing street hockey? I don't see it in my bucolic little corner of the country. I'd gladly wait for the kids to get the net out of the way of my car as long as they were playing outside. No, their ears are glued to their stupid cellphones, walking up and down my neighborhood streets late at night coping feels of one-another, spewing filth and practicing the art of seduction at 13.
Why? Because for 40 years the democrats wanted to create a society of sheep who fall for their brainless manipulations and "require" government direction at every step in their lives? Well, yes, but, WHERE WERE YOU? How did you vote? Did you care? Did you say something, write a letter, perhaps, *gasp* PROTEST? Now we have to clean this mess up. But we can't yet, now we have China, Iran, N. Korea, and Russia, eyeing us up, calculating our weaknesses - Russia and China are fairly quiet, most likely the ones controlling the experiments against us, and there's NO QUESTION their pawns, Iraq and N. Korea, are the "media" being used to conduct these experiments on US. Right? Do we take of "terrorism" (and I'm not suggesting terrorism is not real or an immediate threat, but I AM suggesting that its present scope is not the product of its own momentum) and then take care of home?
NO! Ignoring the issues of our weaknesses as a society NOW will lead to a failure to prevail in ALL AREAS of our future survival as a nation. We must put more stock in the clarion calls an articles like this are. We must use this skill we've all developed to multi-task for pleasure and commerce to repair and fortify our society!
check out this article on AntiMullah about how we should wake up.
http://noiri.blogspot.com/2006/10/learn-america-learn-and-fast.html
I had the good fortune to be a kid in the 50's. Since we didn't have any goodies like computers and cell phones, we played outside all the time. You name it, and we probably played it.
I was only in the house to eat, sleep or to do homework. We were outside, even in the winter.
We got to know our neighbors and built strong relationships with other kids. We also learned the value of hard work and practice to improve one's sporting skills.
Probably caused my mom a headache cleaning all those clothes. Most moms didn't have to work in those days. She could stay around and keep an eye on us.
Since most kids don't get down in the dirt every day, their immune systems are probably suffering along with their self esteem and self worth.
With smaller families, the kid density in neighborhoods means fewer pick up games. People decry all of the organized sports kids are playing these days, but face it, it's gonna be organized to get enough kids together in one place to play some sports.
During the summer, my young adult sons regularly play pick up games of baseball (hardball) in the city, where they live. Basketball is the game of choice for most city kids these days.
Where are all the kids playing street hockey? I don't see it in my bucolic little corner of the country.
My sons played it some, as well as many other sports, both organized & pick up games.
As to the article, mention of binomial theorem, don't know about the rest of the nation's schools, but I know I had to relearn trinomials to help my sons with their homework. Then again, I had a recent conversation with one of my sons about converting numbers into various numeric bases. During the drive between my house & the store, I taught him how to convert numbers into base three, base eight & then some others which were higher than ten. Learning can & does take place outside of school...
I'm only on here for a minute, this morning, and ran into your post.
I hope you don't mind, I've put it on my homepage : )
The 1st organized leagues for children are hitting the ball off a tee...no outs recorded...no scores recorded.
You can be sure Albert Pujos and Alex Rodriquez didn't start there.
Ping!