EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

Ok. I know exactly zip about the cartoon universe of My Little Pony. Back when I was watching cartoons we had Woody Woodpecker, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry. I guess it’s aimed at little girls, but some boys like it too. Which leads to this story. And a lot of comments that blame the kid for bringing the gear, not the other way around. 

Lucky me, when I was in school we took our lunches in paper bags and the only clothes that had labels on them were Levi’s jeans. No Care Bears t shirts. No Spiderman. No Incredible Hulks. No Duck Dynasty. Man was I deprived. LOL

If there were tensions in town I wasn’t aware of them. But, I’m also pretty politically tone deaf so my impressions probably can’t really be trusted. This was a logging town. White collar were the guys running the mill, one or two lawyers, four doctors, several ministers, the teachers and school administrators. Everybody else pretty much worked the cutting crews, drove the trucks and worked at the mill.

The comments on this story ran heavy to kids pick on other kids and they always have. That may be true but I certainly don’t remember kicking, hitting or shoving. And I wonder how much of this behavior can be tracked back the rise of the media culture since, say the nineties.

I used to watch talk shows. I went through college with Mike Douglas, Phil Donahue and Dick Cavett. We occasionally watched Meet the Press; shows like that. But, the biggest difference I can think of is that guests were actually allowed to finish a sentence. Nobody shouted at each other. You were not only allowed to finish a sentence, you could even get through an entire paragraph.

I know it’s scripted but how many of us just said the hell with it as the current genre of talk shows gained traction. Hmmm. Shouting, interrupting, putting people down; sounds a lot like bullying to me. The great RL has made an entire career out of being a bully. Anne Coulter and her ilk aren’t any better. The last election cycle was damned embarrassing and the next one doesn’t look any better.

How many of these kids see bullying behavior at home. How many hours a week of so called entertainment models the kind of behavior that would have gotten me grounded until graduation if I didn’t clean up my act.  

Blaming the kid for bringing his lunch sack to school for his being bullied isn’t much better than telling a woman “if you hadn’t gone to that bar…” “if you hadn’t been in that part of town...” if you hadn’t had those drinks…”

Maybe that old saw about “everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten” really is true. At least from when I was a kid. We learned we didn’t shove people. We learned we didn’t hit  people. We learned we didn’t shout at people or call them names. So what the kids being taught now? And how much good does it do to teach them these things in kindergarten if the kid sees exactly the opposite at home.