The second-most striking detail.

Wutchasee izwutcha git.

https://tylerpaper.com/ap/lifestyles/living-with-children-what-is-covid-parenting/article_5a19931c-bf3d-5481-a254-5f96f1aff4d1.html

Here's the whole column:

What, pray tell, is COVID parenting? I need to know because over the past few months, several journalists have asked if I have any COVID-parenting suggestions. I went online and, sure enough, a fair number of so-called “parenting experts” are advising parents on how to “survive” shutdowns, as if having children in the home as opposed to attending school is life-threatening. Since when does day-to-day of living with children require a unique set of parenting skills?

After doing some research, I realized that I may well have experienced COVID parenting as a child. There were, after all, days when for one reason or another I was confined indoors. It was raining cats and dogs, for example. Mind you, it had to be cats and dogs for me to be indoors. If merely kittens and puppies, my mother would send me outside. One of her favorite COVID parenting aphorisms was “Water never hurt anybody.”

When I was confined indoors, Mom’s primary COVID parenting rule was, “If you don’t find something to do, I’ll find something for you to do!” I was not allowed to be bored or bother her for any unnecessary reason, which pretty much covered everything. It was easy to not be bored back then. My only electronic device was a record player, so I learned to entertain myself with nothing more than the weird stuff that normally goes on in a child’s head.

The summer of 1952 required maximum COVID parenting only the disease wasn’t COVID; it was poliomyelitis. That was the summer of the nationwide polio scare.

No one really knew how polio was contracted and all sorts of rumors flew, including the notion that polio loved hot, humid weather. My mother and I – she was a single parent in those days – lived in what is now called the “historic district” of hot, humid Charleston, South Carolina, only it wasn’t historic back then. Not, that is, unless rundown and falling into ruin is historic. Our flat (on the second floor of a now-historic home with a Bentley parked in the courtyard) was plumbed for cold water only. Anyway, anyone who’s experienced a Charleston summer will appreciate that I was indoors most of that summer, being POLIO-parented.

I really don’t get this “survive” stuff, but of course, childrearing has become a soap opera since I was a kid. Mom never seemed the least bit ruffled by me being confined indoors. I left her alone and she reciprocated by leaving me alone. It was an unspoken arrangement that had no downside for either of us. Mom did not think it was her responsibility to entertain me; therefore, I learned to entertain myself. Believe it or not, children can actually do that.

I think I’ve figured it out. COVID parenting, in the modern sense of the term, is what a mother thinks she has to do when children are underfoot because she has never informed them, in no uncertain terms, that she is not their playmate or personal go-fer and insisted that they entertain and fend for themselves. Today’s moms, to their discredit, think that ignoring their children is bad mommying. So, they don’t ignore and their kids end up thinking mommy is akin to a multi-purpose app one downloads into one’s life and taps into action at whim.

It is the paradox to end all paradox that so many women, supposedly liberated, have enslaved themselves to their kids. I have to believe that allowing children to run your life is the most demeaning of all forms of submission. But then, what do I know?
______________________________________

Other things he said, maybe as many as 20 years ago:

"The modern woman wouldn't dream of making her husband a sandwich on command, but she'll jump up and draw a glass of water for an able-bodied 4-year-old."

So, he went on to say, until mothers start demanding that kids work for them and not the other way around, women will never shake their image as a sex that LIKES being enslaved by one age group or another. "What's that I hear? Screaming and gnashing of teeth? Well ladies, all ya gotta do is prove me wrong."

Oh, and here's an example of how well-meaning, modern parents are raising kids to be as helpless and incompetent as Pu Yi.

As in, seventh graders who don't even know how to use a kitchen knife safely - or walk a dog.

https://www.facebook.com/SIParent/videos/122984633089665

I heard about this elsewhere. Trouble is, I can't even see a preview. If someone with Facebook access would tell me some key phrases to search for (assuming I can find the piece somewhere else), I'd be very grateful, thank you.

Lenona, you care more about children — in a general, conversational, dialectic-forging way — than anyone I know.

> Since when does day-to-day of
> living with children require a
> unique set of parenting skills

Here's a sentence that goes on too long. Sorry, I'm from the Big Ten—

In a culture where so much of our private conduct is discussed so publicly (see Patrick's earnest judgments about minimum wage nearby), I'd bet a LOT of loving parents are learning new parenting skills in these years when their children are no longer going to the schools and unsupervised fields of play where they could learn their own path through life… By getting in a (hopefully single) fistfight with the kid from the wrong side of town, or getting punched in the stomach (hopefully just once) after kissing the pretty girl who doesn't like him/her that much, or figuring out how much bitching to do in a softball game where everyone says the hit was foul when it clearly was fair, etc.

Being indoors with Mom &/or Dad all the time shapes young minds. It's something to think about. It's one of the reasons the 'have-you-seen-this-child' pictures on milk cartons were such an atrocity. Generations of parents have been taught paranoia over stranger abduction and other lightning strikes.

Recent social science (the real stuff, the metric analysis) has demonstrated a few things conclusively:

(1.) Intelligence is as heritable as any human capacity, and it's the greatest single influence on life outcomes.

(2.)"Non-shared environment," the things a kid experiences and chooses to experience which siblings do not, is a very close second. [That's what's lost when kids can't explore the world.]

(3.) Differences is parenting ('styles') are nearly immaterial.

There will be effects on human development from this pandemic, and a parent thinking how best to manage them is not being melodramatic.




A few weeks ago, some internetter said that historically, our best novelists often had a long stretch of childhood in an isolating hospital or sanitarium, etc.

Of course I didn't save the link... That would have been too sensible.

Twitter is a pit of bitterness and filth, we are told. And it's true!

But when old people are needlessly caused to kill and maim each other by incompetent, rapacious authority, we can be grateful for those who keep track of who-said-what.

And speaking of Hermaphroditus—

I have shown that while male skin is darker than female skin, male eyes and lips are not much darker than female eyes and lips. The result is greater contrast in female faces between the eyes, mouth and the rest of the face. People use this sex difference in facial contrast to decide the sex of a face and how masculine or feminine it is…]

It is commonly assumed that shape is the dominant feature for face recognition, as is the case for most object classes. However, research that I have conducted with Ken Nakayama at Harvard, Pawan Sinha at MIT and Irving Biederman at the University of Southern California, and work by others (especially Alice O'Toole at the University of Texas at Dallas), has shown that surface reflectance and shape properties are about equally important for face recognition.

Can someone explain why Jennifer Aniston is described as an 'actor,' as if 'actress' were unflattering?

Maybe was unflattering, not were unflattering. Look, it's only noon here.



Meanwhile...

Second-world nations have certain elemental values: Do not fuck with pretty girls on the street. Just don't.

JUSTICE BY OWN HAND!

👇br>He stole a cell phone from a woman and was stolen by passers-by in Vila Velha, Espírito Santo, Brazil.

One rammed him without hesitation with his car, escaped, they followed him, and a few meters away the passers-by caught him to reduce him to blows.

Some kids behave like that too. I know a toddler who would non-stop cry and shout blood-curdling screams as the mother would put shoes/sandals/socks on his feet, then once she was done the little tike would stop altogether and then look at his footwear with abject fascination.

Taking the footwear off was also another round of high-pitched screaming.

https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1367619192271364100

@Crid,

There's something about Second World nations that simply just work.

In a First World nation you would see the people who helped catch the thief being doxxed and cancelled out of their jobs while the DA would arrest them.

And in a Third World nation, the people who helped catch the thief would eventually end up in pieces inside plastic bags on the side of the road. That petty cell phone thief was likely a member of a big crime family such as the MS-13.

Spot in the comments the dishonest, gaslighting furry:

https://twitter.com/bungarsargon/status/1367846801076871176

Honestly Six I don't think he is gaslighting or trying to be dishonest. I think he literally can't understand where and how he is wrong. Rabbi Joshua Stanton showed that he is a bigot and is incapable of some fairly basic logic. Unfortunately he is hardly unique.

Which is why there is such a trend among conservatives against universities in the US. In no way is this a turn against education or intellectuals. It is the recognition that neither of those are provided at many (and perhaps most) universities. So the logical solution is to dispose of the broken organizations and replace them from the ground up with a brand new institution. Reform from within has already been tried and failed spectacularly. So replacement is the only option left.

Funny thing is that the easiest solution would be to turn the geese into food. But of course the animal rights acivists would oppose that.

https://twitter.com/SocialNomadRach/status/1367736229501022212

This is an annoying trend I've seen among biologists over the years. They don't want the unwashed masses to eat the pests for fear they might find them tasty.

They just don't want a repeat to what happened with Polynesians and invasive pigs where the Pacific islanders discovered that pork meat goes wonderfully well with their food and it became an integral part of their culture.

Can someone explain why Jennifer Aniston is described as an 'actor,' as if 'actress' were unflattering?
________________________________________

Maybe for the same reason we don't say "authoress" or "poetess" anymore. Or "Jewess," for that matter.

But...I wouldn't be too surprised if transpeople who act, in Hollywood, insisted on using "actor" and "actress" when referring to themselves. If I were trans, I probably would too.
________________________________________

Sixclaws, I can sort of understand why toddlers, at least, get so vocal. Especially when, say, one of them has a messy face and a parent approaches suddenly with a wet washcloth. It's an invasion of one's private space. Imagine some adult shoving that in YOUR face, as an adult, without so much as asking for your permission. At the least, you'd get mad and say "HEY! What do you think you're DOING?"

Trouble is, of course, even a parent who tries saying "you're a mess; here's the washcloth, wash your face" may not get the desired result, so a parent who's in a rush to take the toddler somewhere has to "act, not yak" as they say.

Sixclaws, I can't access Twitter for I don't know how long - what's wrong with learning to enjoy the taste of invasive species? What are biologists afraid of? What happened, regarding the pigs? Did the people start encouraging WILD pigs to thrive instead of taking them out of the wild and keeping their numbers under control, or what?

@Lenona,

The thing is, other toddlers within the same age don't react like that one. They look at their moms with curiosity when she tries new footwear on them, and in the rare case that she might be hurting them, they would keep on crying after she was done.

That kid might be autistic or something because he behaved exactly like the pug in that video.

"A few weeks ago, some internetter said that historically, our best novelists often had a long stretch of childhood in an isolating hospital or sanitarium, etc.

"Of course I didn't save the link... That would have been too sensible."
_________________________________

Was it by author Jon Winokur, perchance?

From pages 4-5 of The Portable Curmudgeon, 1987 (I think he has a blog too):

"The 'featured' curmudgeons in these pages are not necessarily typical. Indeed, curmudgeons are fierce individualists by definition. Nevertheless, an examination of the lives of W.C. Fields, Karl Kraus, George S. Kaufman, Oscar Levant, Dorothy Parker, and Groucho Marx, reveals common threads. Many of them had unhappy childhoods and grew into neurotic, reclusive, self-centered adults. Many remained shy and insecure in spite of their celebrity. An inordinate number were prone to alcoholism, drug addiction, insomnia, hypochondria, mysogyny (sic), even suicide.

"The contemporary curmudgeons I interviewed displayed none of those tendencies. They're all intelligent, articulate, and personable. Many are happily married or mated; as far as I could tell, none hates women, and they all appeared healthy and sober when we met. They were unanimous in their reluctance to characterize themselves as curmudgeons without the proviso that anybody who ISN'T a curmudgeon simply is not paying attention. They were invariably forthcoming and responsive to my questions, both pertinent and impertinent. I'm grateful to all of them for their uncurmudgeonly cooperation."
__________________________________

Who were those interviewees, you ask?

John Simon
Calvin Trillin
Quentin Crisp
Paul Fussell
Fran Lebowitz
Mike Royko
Ian Shoales
Roy Blount, Jr.

Sixclaws, I couldn't watch the video.

Crid, for what it's worth, here's what I posted elsewhere:

...even if a parent is too busy with housework to read aloud GOOD books to kids at certain times of the day, that should NOT be an excuse to let kids watch screens! Anyone knows that's only going to hurt their attention spans in school, later.

Even three-year-olds can play at washing floors. Yes, small kids who "help" with chores make the chores last much longer, but at least they're spending time with their parents when no playmates or babysitters are available; they're slowly learning how to do the chores efficiently, and most importantly, they're learning that they are NOT entitled to passive entertainment - or even work evasion - after the age of two or so! Besides, there are library books on rainy-day projects featuring common household materials, so keeping kids away from screens doesn't have to take a lot of money or effort. (But learning to enjoy active self-entertainment does take practice.)

Bottom line: Once kids are over six, or old enough to read on their own once their chores are done, they need to be able to ENJOY reading, and that takes a lot of reading aloud by the parent, in advance. Otherwise, parents are setting themselves up for all sorts of fights over screen time.

Also, the inconvenient truth about independent reading is that, unlike video games, it typically takes time away from one's peers. Not to mention exercise. So kids really have to learn to love it - and to spend even less time on screens so as to have more time for exercise. However, Jim Trelease (author of the perennial The Read-Aloud Handbook) said that while reading is just as essential as exercise or toothbrushing, it's important not to make books appear to be displacing screen time. Example: "No screens after 8 pm. If you want a bedtime story, fine. If not, that's OK too. But no screens after 8."

@Lenona,

The fear is that the the invasive specie would be liked too much by the locals to the point that it would integrate to the culture.

This is what happened to pork and Polynesian cuisine. You just can't separate it from the culture anymore.

Well, that was the original idea. With Biology being the first of the STEM branches that turned woke, I believe now it's a vegan/animal rights activist thing.

@Lenona,

The video shows a young woman trimming her pug's nails, the pug lets out very high-pitched scream when it gets its nails trimmed and when the lady is done the dog goes silent and looks at her with a "Why did you stopped?" look on its face.

Honestly Six I don't think he is gaslighting or trying to be dishonest. I think he literally can't understand where and how he is wrong. Rabbi Joshua Stanton showed that he is a bigot and is incapable of some fairly basic logic. Unfortunately he is hardly unique.

After re-reading it I was wrong with using Gaslighting. I think the correct term is Sealioning. The two overlap but the way he phrase his questions makes his intent obvious from the beginning.

> Maybe for the same reason
> we don't…

I remember reading "negress" once, for reals, in a James Bond by Flemming. No other word of the text is recalled. (And this afternoon, spellcheck flags it.)

Yeah, it's all over the internets.

After re-reading it I was wrong with using Gaslighting. I think the correct term is Sealioning. The two overlap but the way he phrase his questions makes his intent obvious from the beginning.Sixclaws at March 5, 2021 12:13 PM

Six, I had to look up "sealioning," but I've encountered many like that and now have a term to use in calling them out on that behavior.

Last time things got so weird, I had to have Coney explain it, but this one is comprehensible even to a coach potato.

(…Because the throw to first was to tag out the runner who was by then at second, right?)

> Anyone knows that's only going
> to hurt their attention spans
> in school, later.

Bzzt… Cite! I don't believe it.

In this very moment a friend is texting with tales about an annoying schoolteacher who's bungling things with the friend's daughter. I think the idea that "attention span" is this single-digit quality of human nature which can be stretched & shaped as desired (by others) is delusional. It's also presumptuously feminine— 'Let's reach right down into those kid's heads and fuck with their feelings! …For their own good!'

People of any age who really care about stuff give it the attention they want to give.

Kids shouldn't be allowed to blow their brains out on social media (or television or fashion or drugs etc.)… But their attention spans are not readily, or decently, manipulable.

Imagine being so insecure about your looks that you feel threatened by boobs on a rabbit

https://twitter.com/M_Jensen23/status/1367612317056131072

I don't think it is even sealioning. The man is really that messed up.

Go to the north-west US. Seattle is plagued by people like this who have multiple degrees and yet are completely incompetent in both the technical and philosophical fields. I don't know how many I've come across who can't understand that a conversation requires consent of all parties involved. The typical response I get when I say you can't force someone else to talk with you is 'But I don't like that.' And that is the limit of the thinking involved.

I don't care what paper Stanton has behind him. He has been trained to be retarded. He is intentionally ignorant.

So Abbott in Texas cut a lot of the covid restrictions. Now the local school has had time to review and see how they are going to implement that. Their response: no thanks. So nothing is changing no matter how nonsensical.

One of my kids got booted to remote learning due to 'someone somewhere has covid' letter. Yes it is as stupid as advertised. Kids don't even have to try to do the homework. About 1/3 of them can't due to school based technical failures so the teachers can't tell who is lying and who is telling the truth. So the teachers have more or less given up on that. And this is after over a year to get their shit together.

Top that off with we have a 'remote learning day' coming up. For those not familiar with the term this is when the school closes but still wants to get paid. Essentially your kid gets one page of easy homework with the threat that 'Your child will be absent if not returned.' Talk about the lying bullshit. The kid wasn't in school. Of course they were absent. To be even more obvious about the scam our school is offering in school remote learning. I.e. your kid will be warehoused in the cafeteria for the day. No teachers will be available.

This is full on newspeak bullshit.

(Ah, I missed the ground ball part. Here's another angle.)

Four minute nature film about the mantis crab. Is that link from someone here?

Hello, Crid.

Not here to antagonize, but if by my "earnest judgments about minimum wage" are referring to my stance that I think it's fair that minimum wage should have been designed to automatically keep pace with inflation, I think that's a fair and equitable way to do it.

If you think otherwise, I would be interesting to hear you views.

I was thinking about this a lot recently. I have a pension, so I can do without stimulus checks. But I found myself rather annoyed at the presumption of the various states who felt compelled to close down businesses during this pandemic, but didn't think themselves even slightly responsible for maintaining the population they forcefully rendered unemployed or under employed.

So instead, those of us in dire need have to beg the federal government for crumbs.

And now, the precedent has been set. We no longer the right to work, or even socialize. It is now a privilege that the government extends to us and can be revoked on a whim. And without compensation.

A friend of mine, a lawyer, suggested that this should be challenged with a creative application of the eminent domain provision in the Constitution.

Hello, Crid.

Not here to antagonize, but if by my "earnest judgments about minimum wage" are referring to my stance that I think it's fair that minimum wage should have been designed to automatically keep pace with inflation, I think that's a fair and equitable way to do it.

The big problem here is, How do you measure inflation? I’m convinced the real rate during the Obama years was way higher than the official rate.

Also, You simply cannot set a national minimum wage that is the same in Cheyenne Wyoming, as in New York City or LA for that matter.

> If you think otherwise

We can do another loop of this if you want.

In Amy's "what goes up" thread, you appear to regard American wealth as a single pool of virtue called "money." And because you're American, you think you deserve a slice of it, no matter what... As long as you show up, somewhere, to do something, whether you do it well or badly, you think your slice should maintain its proportion to the wealth actually created in America until the day you die.

Well, here's how human life on Earth works— Each of us, whether mighty or feeble, arrives to this planet naked and needy. In a capitalist understanding, you're supposed to figure out what you can do for other people so they'll pay you a little more than your costs.

Heartfelt whining about "fairness" is delusional infantilism in the context of capitalism… Which is the most grown-up force human affairs has ever known. Capitalism demands investigation of the surrounding culture, attunement to the needs of others (whether spoken or unarticulated), sociability, investment, lawfulness, sincerity, and occasional taxpaying. And courage.

Here's the thing: If you spend your time, or your LIFE, mewling But I can't find a (better) job!,' or 'I can't pay attention to the needs of others!' the rest of us will believe you. Eventually.

But it will be difficult to take your other twitchy opinions about the world around you very seriously… The price of your free seat is being ignored.

It would be much better for our country to roll back the minimum wage to the paucity of my teenage times… Or to freeze it such that, in an even-mildly inflationary environment, the MW would not intimidate employers… Such that it would not intimidate you when you figured out how to be so valuable to those around you that you needed help with the project.

Bzzt… Cite! I don't believe it.
_______________________________

Ask any pediatrician, for starters.

Maybe you find it hard to believe because pretty much ALL kids have access to hand-held screens these days, and so the overall standard has been lowered? Much in the same way that teachers didn't used to be expected to be entertainers, before 1980 or so, and now, such teachers are taken for granted, despite the fact that no subject can be made "fun" to every single student. Plus the fact that even if that WERE possible, kids would just lose their sense of perspective, so it's very important for them to learn to take pride in all sorts of activities that just AREN'T fun - and not just in school.

While it's true that one doesn't regularly see, in the media, doctors ranting, screaming, and pulling their hair out when it comes to kids' attention spans and brain development, maybe that's for the same reason doctors don't yell on TV - or even directly at their adult patients who would rather pour money into huge TVs and Barcaloungers than go jogging for free. It would only make those patients find other doctors. The only hope for doctors is to be very diplomatic - and hope that professional academic media scolds will do the job for them.

(Trouble is, of course, such scolds would likely be preaching to the choir.)

So, no cite? 'Ask a doctor' doesn't count.

> Maybe you find it hard to
> believe because pretty much
> ALL kids have access to hand-
> held screens

No, I find it hard to believe because there's a natural human variance in powers of concentration which offends those who dream of improving the human condition through punishing deployment of interpersonal authority. Keep your hands to yourself.

Lenona, go back two (three?) years, read every comment I've offered about Haidt, Lukianoff & Twenge. There are dozens. The reason it's so easy to blame social media "screens" for many problems is that those trends deserve the blame!

But a dream of coarse and mechanistic improvement in attention spans by eliminating screens isn't an expression of concern for the minds of children…

It's a fantasy of irresistible power.

And I don't think you should have it.

Should have said—

The price of your 'free' seat is that you'll be ignored.

It's kind of hard to remember any individual names when one has heard that Cassandra-style warning MANY times - and when the only adults who dare to contradict that warning are those who stand to make a profit by doing so.

While it's possible that screens aren't the only major source of instant, fast-paced gratification, aside from recorded music, it's hard to think of any others.

At any rate, it's been pointed out that even modern ADULT audiences have far less patience than they did a century ago. Example? In 1904, in London, Harry Houdini (who had already been famous for at least four years) took a whole hour, in front of an audience of thousands, to escape from the Mirror Handcuffs - and most of that act happened BEHIND the curtain!

Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, half a century ago, teachers used to take patient readers for granted, to the point where they even called kids "lazy readers" (if not to their faces) for "reading" books like The Guinness Book of World Records. Nowadays, they're under pressure to praise kids who read ANYTHING for fun, since they can't very well blame the kids for having parents who don't read much, if at all - or parents who watch screens all the time.

However, I can certainly name two - Rosemond, of course, plus Marie Winn, author of The Plug-In Drug.

> While it's possible that screens
> aren't the only major source of
> instant, fast-paced gratification,
> aside from recorded music, it's
> hard to think of any others.

Firstly, had you ever been a teenage boy, others would have come to mind.

Secondly, you don't have to think of any others: It's irrelevant. What does "instant, fast-paced gratification" have to do with anything? Notably, the examples which come first to your mind are entertainments. In my anecdotal but lifelong observation, people doing what they want in their work aren't using their showbiz tastes (or reading habits) as templates for the experience.

Wikipedia:

Winn is the author of The Plug-In Drug (1977), an often scathing critique of television's addictive influence on the young, Winn wrote, "The television experience allows the participant to blot out the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state." In 2002, she added new material to update the study as The Plug-In Drug: Television, Computers, and Family Life, published on the 25th anniversary of the original book.

And if you compel people to turn away from their preferred communications, and their attention spans don't go up, how will you compensate them for the pointless intrusion? What price will you pay for being a busybody?

Why invoke Cassandra when she offers no evidence?


You sincerely believe you can make kids smarter by giving them some precious environmental experience which they've never had before, at least not by the providence of government.

I don't believe that for a moment.

But you are not alone! In this crippled essay, Andrew Sullivan makes the point that aggressive testing of minority kids, blacks especially, is essential.

Which it is! If you really want to help blacks on an individual level, find the ones who can excel in higher ed and give them the path. But alas, Sullivan falls back to trite bromides that have inflated education costs by orders of magnitude, without consequence:

But why the racial differences? Here’s what the UC report blames: “systemic racial and class inequalities that precede admission: lower high school graduation rates for Under-Represented Minorities, lower rates of completion of the A-G courses required by UC and CSU, and lower application rates. The most significant contributor was … a result of failure to complete all required A-G courses with a C or better.”

In other words, the differences begin much earlier than college, and are hard to fix thereafter. If you want to increase black and Latino representation in higher education, tackle the real problems, not the fake ones. Insist on higher standards from the very beginning in our failing schools; find ways to strengthen the stable nuclear family among blacks and Latinos, which is by far the most significant advantage Asian-American kids have; challenge the street culture that tells minority kids that reading and studying is “acting white”; make the SAT mandatory for everyone, make it easier to take, and make it free....

No. School ain't the problem.

This makes a lot of sense

What made you think I was referring to schools?!

I was thinking of home environments.

Yes, there are teachers who are lazy and/or uncaring. But...their hands are far more likely to be tied than those of a parent, when it comes to setting a good example, at least.

Even poor families - namely, Jewish and Asian - have had a long tradition of getting a good education and a good work ethic by any means possible, with no excuses. This, of course, meant that parents had to read aloud, make good use of their local libraries, and set an example of actually ENJOYING useful, healthful activities over useless activities - such as playing video games. (Hint: like a high-calorie dessert, the more instantly addictive something is, the more likely it is to be bad for you.)

After all, since when has "do as I say, not as I do" ever worked? (As opposed to "yes, I used to be a criminal, but now I do everything I can to make up for that"?)

> I was thinking of home
> environments.

Fair enough, but it makes no difference: You can't teach kids to be smart. And presumably respect for boundaries to busybody manipulation would be even better-respected for homes than for schools.

> Even poor families - namely, Jewish
> and Asian - have had a long tradition
> of getting a good education and a
> good work ethic by any means possible,
> with no excuses.

Notably, you first mention the precise ethnicities known for preponderant candlepower:

"Though Jews make up a mere 0.25 percent of the world’s population and a mere 3 percent of the United States’, they account for 27 percent of all American Nobel Prize winners, 25 percent of all ACM Turing Award winners for computer science, and 50 percent of the globe’s chess champions. Cochran and Harpending also cite studies claiming that Ashkenazim have the highest IQ of any ethnic group for which there’s reliable data, perhaps as much as a full standard deviation above the general European average, which means, at the far end of the spectrum, that 23 per thousand Ashkenazim have an IQ over 140, as opposed to 4 per thousand Northern Europeans."

One conundrum of human biodiversity is the high mean IQ of East Asians, specifically Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. On average, they outclass all other human populations on IQ tests, which were originally designed by and for Europeans. This intellectual success is matched by the economic success not only of East Asian societies but also of their overseas communities, often in the face of severe discrimination.

If my kids were the kind with disproportionate intellectual gifts, I'd make them do their homework, too. And if they were graceful, athletic and extremely tall, I'd want them to play basketball in high school.

But there are things that can't be taught. Or learned.

"You can't teach kids to be smart."

Of course not. But kids can be ordered to do their best at all times, to learn to be competent in as many life skills as possible (both paid and unpaid skills) to be kind, and to give more to society than they take.

IIRC, Rosemond's mother didn't care what grades he got, so long as she could tell he REALLY was doing his best and not cheating or slacking.

He also once discussed something, about 12 years ago, that you don't hear about these days - self-respect as opposed to self-esteem.

http://www.parentingbythebook.com/Matthew-535.html
(yes, it's religious, but I try to ignore that - and I know you've seen it before, too)

"During the question/answer session of a talk I was giving at a church in Atlanta, a woman asked, 'Are you saying that low self-esteem is better than high-self esteem?'

"...Violent criminals, gang members, and spouse and/or child abusers have all been found, as a rule, to have not low (the PC myth), but high self-esteem. But this does not mean that low self-esteem is good, either.

"Not at all," I answered. "Low self-esteem is associated with drug and alcohol abuse, depression, suicide, chronic unemployment, homelessness, and other personal and social ills."

'So, if both high and low self esteem are bad," she asked, 'what's good?'

"....Some well-meaning folks suggest that there are two types of high self-esteem: a 'false' self-esteem that is a function of people patting you on the back and telling you how wonderful you are, and a 'genuine' self-esteem that is the result of significant accomplishment. In the words of a colleague and good friend, 'Genuine self-esteem comes from achievement, such as studying hard and making good grades, or practicing hard and excelling in a sport.'

"So where, I ask, does that leave the child who studies hard and still makes no better than C's? Or the child who is a klutz? Or the disabled child who has neither the mental nor physical ability to succeed at doing much more than everyday self-help tasks? No, accomplishment-based self-esteem is no better than affirmation-based self-esteem. The former is highly prejudicial, the latter is sinful-a form of self-idolatry. And make no mistake about, if you have high regard for yourself because of your accomplishments, then you are likely to have less than high regard for those who's accomplishments are not as "worthy" as your own. In which case we are again talking about self-idolatry...

"...'So, John,' the impatient reader asks. 'Answer the question: (If 'self esteem' is bad) What's good?'

"What's good is self-respect. Because it is not a function of significant accomplishment, anyone can acquire self-respect, even the C-student, the klutz, and the disabled child. Self-respect, furthermore, is not idolatrous. It is acquired not because parents praise you (although they should-conservatively), but because they love you unconditionally (as does the Lord), hold you completely responsible for your behavior (but forgive you your sinfulness), and insist that you obey (respect their authority) and mind your manners at all times (show respect for others). It is, in fact, axiomatic that self-respect cannot exist without respect for others..."

(snip)

Btw, if my book of Jewish folklore is any indication, there has never been a shortage of foolish or backward people in Jewish society (such as the mythical Wise Men of Chelm) - they just tended to be the ones who were so poor they didn't have schools or libraries. I.e., peasants. Or immigrants descended from illiterate peasants. Their children were another matter, once they DID get access to schools.

Btw, if my book of Jewish folklore is any indication, there certainly HAVE been foolish or backward people in Jewish society (such as the mythical Wise Men of Chelm) - they just tended to be the ones who were so poor they didn't have schools or libraries. I.e., peasants. Or immigrants descended from illiterate peasants. Their children were another matter, once they DID get access to schools.

> But kids can be ordered to
> do their best at all times

You won't take the point.

There's a name for this

Wow Crid. Congrats on the open racism.

It's nothing, really

(PS— I hadn't taken you for a SJW… At least not on that side of the bitchfest....)

(Hi Lenona)

Crid, I can't access Twitter and I don't know if I'll be able to. (Browser problems - and this isn't my iPad.)

Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill · 21h

Can you be too smart for your own good? Apparently not. For most measures, greater intelligence in youth is associated with better outcomes later in life. And it's almost never associated with *worse* outcomes. (N = 48,558)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691620964122

Last time things got so weird, I had to have Coney explain it, but this one is comprehensible even to a coach potato. ~ Crid at March 5, 2021 2:41 PM

I had to watch this one a few times. The ball was hit and bounced to the third baseman. Since the bases were loaded, all runners had to advance. The third baseman threw the ball home to catch the runner from third. The catcher was able to simply tag the base (I think there's a rule about being able to do that without tagging the runner if there's a play to be made elsewhere). The catcher threw the ball to first to get the hitter out. The runner from second decided he could make it home and rounded third instead of stopping on third with two outs. The first baseman was able to throw the ball back to the catcher who tagged out the third runner.

It was a Spring Training game and most of the players involved will be heading back to the minors once the season starts, but they'll always have that to brag about - the time they made a triple play in the majors. The last time that particular sequence -- 5-2-3-2 -- was seen in a triple play, Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House.

This describes how the positions are numbered in baseball for play descriptions. 5 is the third baseman. 2 is the catcher. 3 is the first baseman.

Yeah, that bounce isn't so clear on the video, which pooched my math.

And yeah, it's kind of like being an extra or minor starlet in an important film, you'll always be able to talk about it at parties. (1997, after "Titanic": 'I was the *propeller* guy!')