It’s the first day of school for many local districts. It provides another one of those contrasts in how our societal view of children has changed. Our kids have been homeschooled for a long time so it isn’t really a big deal for us but we see it all around us.
For most parents, back to school has become this cartoonish celebration. Finally getting those annoying kids back to the holding pens where they belong so mom and/or dad can get back to normal life. Work or watching TV and drinking wine during the day or whatever they think parents do during the school year. In all things children are seen as a burden, a distraction and an expensive one. We get the obligatory news stories about how obscenely expensive back to school shopping is for parents. It has to sort of make kids feel like mom and dad don’t want them around and increases the separation between parents and children.
Overall the message is the same: children are an expensive burden, a hassle and an impediment to your personal happiness.
On the other hand, the Amish kids went back today too. The mood is quite different. Moms loving having their school age kids home because they are a huge help. Older girls especially can help with the wash and cleaning, cooking and gardening and of course with the younger kids. Older boys help dad with whatever he does for a living, on the work crew or on the farm. While the kids (at least the girls) are mostly excited to go back, their moms dread it. They want their kids around, they didn’t have children just so they could shovel them into daycare and then public school at the earliest opportunity.
It is a very different view of family life and the “English” view is deeply unhealthy. There are of course problems with the Amish family but in a lot of ways it is far better and explains why their families tend to be so close while English families tend to be fragmented. There is a lot many of us could learn from people who “only” have an 8th grade education.
I get the point being made but I always hate the use of “English”. Most of us “English Americans” (aka heritage Americans) are conservative it’s the “white ethnic” additions the past 150 years that all too often – but not exclusively seem to push the leftish crap they brought from their Eastern European homelands.
Especially those Eastern Europeans that weren't really from Eastern Europe. The ones whose descendants even today can't stop screeching about how evil Russia is because the Tsar pogromed/ deported their ancestors for no reason at all.
I'm one of those Eastern Europeans who showed up in the last 150 years and I'll put my political credentials against most of those WASP types in New England.
I'll add that as one of german and irish heritage, I find the political tendencies of my ancestors disgusting and shameful. Particularly the irish. One only need look at what their mass migration and settlement did sociopolitcally to Boston (which by dint of its geographical location would've ended up a leftist shithole anyway, but I digress) and I realize I am very much an outlier versus the prototypical "mick", at least at the time that side of my family arrived in the US.
My germanic forebears may not have been quite so bad as that – I don't have as good a read on their proclivities, but the political and social leaning of present day Germans is positively pukeworthy, even accounting for the ceaseless 80 year brainwashing campaign there.
If I'm being brutally honest, my distant relatives – at least those from Ireland – should never have been allowed entry to this country, given the hand they had in ruining the character and trajectory of it. One can still see irish Catholic morons who simply cannot get their minds right and stop voting for and enabling leftists. It is a psychological disease, and they are but one instrument of our destruction.
I knew that today was the first day of school because the school-marms started yappin' early:
"If you are hungry and have not had breakfast, go to the cafeteria. Have a nice day"
"If you don't have your books, go to the library. Have a nice day."
"If you don't have an I-Pad, go to the computer center. Have a nice day."
"If blah blah blahbity-blah, go to blahbatablah. Have a nice day."
'Round here, nobody even expects to be prepared for the first day of school.
"Have a nice day."
If
Just because YOU didn’t fall for the kool aid doesn’t mean that most of your brethren didn’t.
Is it just me, or do public schools seem to start earlier and earlier every year? It seems insane to make kids return to indoctrination centers… oops, I meant schools … on Aug. 10, when it's still very much summer, according to both calendar and thermometer.
And this ritualizing or celebration of back to school is another excuse for retailers to cash in.
So sad that parents look forward to this time to get a 'break' from their kids. Public schools are basically babysitters. Some people shouldn't own dogs, never mind have kids.
They are going back earlier for sure, there really isn't a reason for them to have a summer break at all anymore, it isn't like most of these kids are needed on the farm.