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Friday, May 25, 2012

School Discipline at Home and Abroad

This would work...

Dear J,

The implicit takeaway from the video clips in your email is that Americans warm to "violence as a solution."

The interrelated message is that America should be more like "primitive" countries. 

This reversion to primitivism is part of an ongoing devolution in which American conservatives "think" they want to live in the 19th century when six-shooters ruled and humans lived half their lives with toothache (at least until 1850).

Notably absent in the clips you sent are any European views. Watch this clip - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm

We Americans do not want solutions as much as we want "shoot 'em ups."

What's more, we don't just like violence. We love violence! 

When The Guy In The White Hat does it, of course, we don't consider it violence. 

Rather we conceive our belligerence as Exceptional America smiting God's Enemies.

Still, facts remain what they are. 

We dropped two atomic bombs - both on civilian populations - in direct contradiction of Christianity's Just War tradition.  

Then we perpetrated a holocaust in Vietnam 

And a mini-holocaust in Iraq.

And a decade of havoc in Central America where -- as a percentage of population -- huge numbers of Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans were killed or maimed.

Keep in mind that these three examples are just in our lifetime!?! (And Iran's "on deck.")

So...

Shall we discuss the extermination of Native Americans? (In the 19th century, U.S. politicians actually called the practice "extermination" and were proud of the practice.)

Now consider the experience of a functioning civilization:

Germany’s aggregate police force fired 85 bullets in all of 2011. 

New York City police fired 84 shots at a single suspect in April, 2012. 

Source: The Atlantic

Bang. Bang. 

Bad guy's dead. 

Problem solved. 

Except...

We now have more people behind bars in absolute numbers -- and as a percentage of population -- that any nation in history, including the Soviet Union at the height of the Gulag. 

The Official Story -- and what's actually going down -- are wildly divergent accounts.

Pax

Alan

  1. Education in Finland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland
    Jump to Higher Education system restructuring‎: Since 2006 all institutions of highereducation have been sharing methods of cooperation. The total ...
  2. What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School ... - The Atlantic

    www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/...finlands-school.../250564/
    Dec 29, 2011 – finnish-kids.jpg. Sergey Ivanov/Flickr. Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of ...
  3. Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? | People & Places ...

    www.smithsonianmag.com/.../Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful....
    Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in ... The transformation of the Finns' education system began some 40 years ago as the ...
  4. 26 Amazing Facts About Finland's Unorthodox Education System ...

    www.businessinsider.com/finland-education-school-2011-12
    Dec 14, 2011 – Since it implemented huge education reforms 40 years ago, Finland's school system has consistently come at the top for the international ...
  5. How Finnish schools shine | Teacher Network Blog | guardian.co.uk

    www.guardian.co.uk › Professional › Teacher Network Blog
    Apr 9, 2012 – Teachers are respected, exams are shunned and league tables simply don't exist – but if the Finnish system is so good why is it so hard to ...
  6. How the Finnish school system outshines U.S. education

    news.stanford.edu/news/2012/.../finnish-schools-reform-012012.html
    Jan 20, 2012 – Educational philosophy in Finland is strikingly different than in the United States, but the students there outperform U.S. learners.
  7. Why do Finland's schools get the best results? - BBC News

    news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stmApr 7, 2010
    Finland's schools score consistently at the top of world rankings, yet the ... ''The Finnish system supports ...
  8. From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model - NYTimes.com

    www.nytimes.com/.../education/from-finland-an-intriguing-school-re...
    Dec 12, 2011 – “Thirty years ago, Finland's education system was a mess. It was quite mediocre, very inequitable. It had a lot of features our system has: very ...

2012/5/25 john tarantino <john_tarantino@bellsouth.net>

----- Original Message -----
From: FR
To: JL
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 9:12 PM
Subject: Fw: Çà c'est de l'éducation!!!! (physique!!!)




  Subject: Ã‡Ã  c'est de l'éducation!!!! (physique!!!)



Classroom discipline


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