Bringing America to its Knees in One Generation?

As we wander around, distracted by the superficial and meaningless, in technocratic slumber, is it any wonder that zombies are so popular today?  Yet, as we're gradually transforming into a feudal state, a population of rote, wooden, listless automatons is exactly what the governing elite need.  It's very convenient.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 71% of all college graduates have an average student loan debt of $35,000 with very little prospect of secure full time employment.  Shouldn't young people and their parents be up in arms?  But they're not.  In fact, parents are still pushing their kids into this racketeering enterprise.  

Why? 

Perhaps because of the consuming, immediately gratifying Orwellian environment that "nurtured" them; public schools that indoctrinate and train  for the workplace, for the police state...where "wars" on terror and drugs escalate the problem instead of correcting it.    Are young people becoming increasingly ignorant, obedient, and conforming?   Do they have a choice?

Children of the American Police State: Just Another Brick in the Wall

By John W. Whitehead

We don’t need no education

We don’t need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone…

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

—Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall”

“The nation’s young people have been given front-row seats for an unfolding police drama that is rated R for profanity, violence and adult content.

In Arizona, a 7-year-old girl watched panic-stricken as a state trooper pointed his gun at her and her father during a traffic stop and reportedly threatened to shoot her father in the back (twice) based on the mistaken belief that they were driving a stolen rental car.

In Oklahoma, a 5-year-old boy watched as a police officer used a high-powered rifle to shoot his dog Opie multiple times in his family’s backyard while other children were also present. The police officer was mistakenly attempting to deliver a warrant on a 10-year-old case for someone who hadn’t lived at that address in a decade.

In Maryland, a 5-year-old boy was shot when police exchanged gunfire with the child’s mother—eventually killing her—over a dispute that began when Korryn Gaines refused to accept a traffic ticket for driving without a license plate on her car.

It’s difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the police state into the mix, it becomes near impossible to guard against the growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.

The lesson being taught to our youngest—and most impressionable—citizens is this: in the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (politician, police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).

Unfortunately, now that school is back in session, life is that much worse for the children of the American police state.

The nation’s public schools—extensions of the world beyond the schoolhouse gates, a world that is increasingly hostile to freedom—have become microcosms of the American police state, containing almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”

If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools with his individuality and freedoms intact, you should count yourself fortunate.

Most students are not so lucky.

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of

• draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
• overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
• school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
• standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
• politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
• and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

Clearly, instead of making the schools safer, we have managed to make them more authoritarian.

Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, weapons and terrorism, the schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

It used to be that if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school.

That is no longer the case.

Nowadays, students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.

For instance, a Virginia sixth grader, the son of two school teachers and a member of the school’s gifted program, was suspended for a year after school officials found a leaf (likely a maple leaf) in his backpack that they suspected was marijuana. Despite the fact that the leaf in question was not marijuana (a fact that officials knew almost immediately), the 11-year-old was still kicked out of school, charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court, enrolled in an alternative school away from his friends, subjected to twice-daily searches for drugs, and forced to be evaluated for substance abuse problems.

Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water.

Acts of kindness, concern or basic manners can also result in suspensions. One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

Consider that by the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested.

More than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from schools every year, often for minor misbehavior, such as “disruptive behavior” or “insubordination.” Black students are three times more likely than white students to face suspension and expulsion.

In South Carolina, where it’s against the law to disturb a school, more than a thousand students a year—some as young as 7 years old—“face criminal charges for not following directions, loitering, cursing, or the vague allegation of acting ‘obnoxiously.’ If charged as adults, they can be held in jail for up to 90 days.”

Moreover, just as militarized police who look, think and act like soldiers on a battlefield have made our communities less safe, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in environments in which it’s no longer safe for children to act like children.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in recent years. Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.

The horror stories are legion.

One school police officer was accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury. In Pennsylvania, a student was tasered after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.

Defending the use of handcuffs and pepper spray to subdue students, one Alabama police department reasoned that if they can employ such tactics on young people away from school, they should also be permitted to do so on campus.

Now advocates for such harsh police tactics and weaponry will tell you that school safety should be our first priority.

What they might fail to mention in their zeal to lock down the schools are the lucrative, multi-million dollar deals being cut with military contractors to equip school cops with tasers, tanks, rifles and $100,000 shooting detection systems.

Indeed, the militarization of the police has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team.

According to one law review article on the school-to-prison pipeline, “Many school districts have formed their own police departments, some so large they rival the forces of major United States cities in size. For example, the safety division in New York City’s public schools is so large that if it were a local police department, it would be the fifth-largest police force in the country.”

The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail.

What we’re grappling with, you see, is not merely a public school system that resembles a prison and is treating young people like prisoners but also a profit-driven system of incarceration has given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people.

Indeed, young people have become easy targets for the private prison industry, which profits from criminalizing childish behavior and jailing young people. Nearly 40 percent of young people who are arrested will serve time in a private prison, where the emphasis is on making profits for large megacorporations above all else.

It has been said that America’s schools are the training ground for future generations.

Instead of raising up a generation of freedom fighters, however, we seem to be busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who are being taught the hard way what it means to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s getting harder by the day to convince young people that we live in a nation that values freedom and which is governed by the rule of law.

With every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police.

The bottom line is this: if you want a nation of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals.

If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons.

But if you want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters, who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, then run the schools like freedom forums. Remove the metal detectors and surveillance cameras, re-assign the cops elsewhere, and start treating our nation’s young people like citizens of a republic and not inmates in a police state.

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”—C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

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America's Youngest Outcasts are Increasing

Child homelessness is up 33% in 3 years. One in 45 children in the USA — 1.6 million children — were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness.

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This Morning Was Different.

First thing every morning, I take my dog for a walk, and every morning, a boy (African American) about 11 or 12-years old walks to the bus stop at the same time. We always acknowledge each other, and then continue to walk along in silence until we reach the corner, where the school bus picks him up to take him to school, thus the place where we part ways. I don't even know his name.

This morning was different. Slightly ahead of me, he turned around and waved and I waved back. I looked back to make sure I closed my door, and the next thing I know, this boy was right beside me asking me how I felt about our new President. I told him I was very happy. I then asked him how he felt about Obama winning. He responded that he was also very happy, and then proceeded to give me a play-by-play of the electoral vote the night before, breaking it down, state-by-state. It didnt' occur to me until later that this young man was telling me that not only did Obama win, but that Obama remade the electoral map by dissolving the Republican hold in certain areas of our country.

I do know - unlike most of the kids in this neighborhood, who are mostly white, and shadowed by the constant, whirring chopper blades that accompany and probably annoy them, wherever they go - that this boy is a foster child, among many foster children, who live with an elderly African American couple, in a house on the corner, with an in-ground swimming pool in their backyard and a large church van parked in their driveway. I also know that this boy was taken away from an abusive mother and that this is not the boy's first foster home, and it may not be his last. However, despite this boy's less than perfect circumstances, he, and so many others like him will now carry with him/them, wherever he/they go, the inspiration that only the election of our first black President can provide.

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What About the Children? Obama? McCain?

Check out Louisiana.

OK, let's forget for a moment that allowing capital punishment for child rape is unconstitutional and "a disproportionately severe punishment for a crime where the victim is not killed", as the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision yesterday. Let's forget that the testimony of children has been found to be unreliable as children are easily persuaded by others and have not yet developed a strong enough sense of who they are to stand up for themselves or others who may be wrongly accused. Let's forget that state sanctioned execution is premeditated murder, pure and simple. Let's focus on the child.

Child rape is an egregious crime against innocence and no doubt, scars the child for life. The road to recovery for that child will be extremely challenging and a burden no one should have to carry into adulthood. Statistics show that the person most likely to commit this crime may be the child's parent, sibling, or another significant individual in the child's life. Now, not only is this child traumatized by someone violating the very essence of who he or she is, they will carry the oppressive "guilt" of feeling "responsible" for the death of another human being, if what those in favor of capital punishment for child rape develops a national consensus.
Not every child will feel guilty, however, it is well known that children oftentimes blame themselves for the behavior of adults or situations or events, they, in reality, have no control.

Nothing is more important than getting this type of crime reported and the crime of child rape is already underreported. If it is ruled that capital punishment is an option for people convicted of child rape, the reporting of child rape could all but disappear except in rare circumstances, putting children at a much higher risk of the perpetrator striking over and over again, possibly to the point of killing that child. Can you imagine how a child, just raped by someone he or she knows, and possibly loves, would feel knowing that that person could be put to death if he or she told someone? In addition, the adult responsible for the child may choose not to go to the authorities especially if the other adult responsible is a spouse, brother, sister, grandparent etc.

If everything aforementioned is true and it is, why do both presidential candidates disagree with the Supreme Court decision striking down the death penalty for child rapists? Do they really give a damn about the welfare of children or the Constitution? If anything both candidates, especially Obama, should be trying to curb the use of capital punishment as it has been proven over and over again not to deter crime, is more expensive and unfair, as it seems only to apply to people who can't afford justice, people of color being the main recipient. As Justice Kennedy pointed out the final analysis must be determined by the Supreme Court, "applying evolving standards of decency".

Republican John McCain called the ruling "an assault on law enforcement's efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime.” Democrat Barack Obama said there should be no blanket prohibition of the death penalty for the rape of children if states want to apply it in those cases.

Just when I was starting to feel good about supporting Obama...

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Children's Drawings of Darfur Crisis:

Children draw Darfur as they see it:

“The Janjaweed came on camels and horses, very fast. Sometimes two on one camel, with guns. Many soldiers, with guns. This one is a machine gun. They were shooting us.”
In the same exercise book, Jamil had drawn a man with a radio transmitter, drawn larger than the man: “We needed help. There was no one to protect us.” -- Jamil, Age 12

“In the afternoon we returned from school and saw the planes. We were all looking, not imagining about bombing. Then they began the bombing. The first bomb [landed] in our garden, then four bombs at once in the garden. The bombs killed six people, including a young boy, a boy carried by his mother, and a girl. In another place in the garden a women was carrying her baby son—she was killed, not him. Now my nights are hard because I feel frightened. We became homeless. I cannot forget the bad images of the burning houses and fleeing at night because our village was burned…” -- Taha, Age 13 or 14

Like many other children, Ala‘ witnessed conflict between rebel groups and the Janjaweed. This drawing depicts a rebel soldier first shot in the arm, then executed by gunshots to the groin. Ali, a teacher in a refugee camp, said the rebels are killed this way to emasculate them. “They [the Janjaweed] know what they are doing,” he said. “They are doing it with purpose.” -- Ala‘, Age 13

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Using Children to Forward Our Own Agendas.

I didn't write this. A friend, who in her own words identifies herself as a baby-boomer "soccer mom" who hates soccer, asked me to post this. She said, in response to my suggestion that she set up her own blog, "I don't see why anyone would want to read what I have to write every day. She obviously does not have the narcissism required to blog.

Children. What are they good for?

They cost a hell of a lot of money, can be a huge obstacle to reaching our goals, complicate our lives and can be totally irrational. In other words, children are a burden on society, yet without them, the future would be non-existent.

Children were not always the burden they are now. Not long ago, the more children, the more farm hands or able bodies there were to pitch in, bettering the family’s chance of maintaining a decent standard of living. Of course, like everything else, it's not as simple as I'm making it sound. Keeping that in mind, children definitely contributed and had to sacrifice for the sake of the family and society, unfortunately, in some cases, to the extent of sacrificing their childhood. The sad part is as much as we have tried to change this aspect of childrearing, the more it’s stayed the same or perhaps, gotten worse.

Back in the day that children “were seen and not heard”, in order to get children to cooperate, what would have been considered child abuse today, was not only tolerated, it was encouraged and children were vulnerable to whatever cruel and unusual treatment their parents chose to inflict upon them. However, instead of doing a 180° to correct the wrongs of raising children in past generations, we did a 360° and discarded the real gold with the fool's gold. In addition to eliminating the concept of sacrifice, selflessness, “teamwork” – unless it’s their soccer, football, baseball team - we have encouraged them to believe that any material item they desire can be theirs without lifting a finger. In this society of “bigger is better” and “who we are depends on what we have or can afford”, we are raising our children to be bottomless pits, who will always try to fill the voids in life with material possessions instead of opportunities to better themselves and society.

With a vast knowledge of child psychology at our fingertips, we try to do what’s best for our children, instead of what’s easiest for us. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to put the fear of God in our children by beating them to a pulp than to “democratize” the family unit, and respect children as real human beings. Child psychology made us scrutinize the way we raise our children. We no longer tolerate child abuse and realize children are not our possessions to treat as we wish but human beings who have rights. However, rather than stop there, we’ve taken the “all or nothing” approach and cast aside valuable lessons from past generations such as teaching children the value of a dollar, the importance of supporting the family unit, selflessness, the meaning of respect etc. Parents, who are able, instill an unprecedented sense of entitlement instead of preparing them for the reality that the world does not revolve around them and that they are entitled to very little.

Both parents normally work full-time to meet a standard of living that affords them not only everything they want, but everything their children want or think they want as well. These kids raised in "soccer mom" suburbia , grow up with no expectations of having to earn anything until they graduate college. Not only do they cost a fortune but all their materialistic wants and desires are met before their even aware of them, half the time.

One has to wonder what’s in it for these parents of these children? After all, the current generations of parents are not exactly known for depriving themselves. Baby-boomer parents (those born from approx. 1946-1964), the first generation of children in the US to cost more than they could ever contribute, and the first generation to experience the over-indulgence that post-WWII conditions made possible, creatively found the solution to lessening the “burden” of this expensive task, because we all know “baby-boomers”, couldn't fathom doing something for nothing, even raising their own children. There had to be something in it for them.

What makes parenting in "soccer mom" suburbia all worth it? For one, a second chance for Mom and Dad to vicariously achieve what they could not, temporarily finding a reprieve from growing old, the baby-boomer’s biggest fear. By over scheduling the childhood of their offspring away in all sorts of extra curricular activities, in order to show them off like prized race horses, today’s parents do not altruistically sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children. Not to say parents do not love their children just as much, if not more than generations of parents before them, but that their expectations are often very self-serving and not in the true best interest of their child even though it appears as if it is.

In the end, it all comes down to what’s in it for the parents. Are two parents working beneficial to the children if the second parent only works for more square footage, better vacations, and designer clothes? Or does the child benefit more from living in a smaller house, transported around in no-status cars, going on low cost vacations, shopping at Value City in an attempt to spend as much time as possible with him or her?

When we schedule every minute of our child’s time, is it because we truly believe this is the best thing for them? Or are we trying to do over our own childhood in an attempt to do the things we could not, were not very good at, or did so well that we want to relive the experience?

The answer is not always obvious, however, when you find yourself so involved in your child’s activities that you start to enjoy them more than your children, that’s always a clue that perhaps you may be using your child to forward your own agenda.

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ALSC: Exceptional Web Sites for Children

The Association for Library Service to Children ALSC announced the most exceptional websites for children.

"To make the cut and appear on the Great Web sites for Kids, a site must demonstrate commendable quality and reflect and encourage young people's interests in exemplary ways. Sites are put through a rigorous evaluation and voting process by the committee before being deemed "great" and added to the GWS page."

ALSC's GWS Committee voted to add the following sites in 2007:

Adoption Clubhouse - The Adoption Clubhouse is a program of the National Adoption Center, whose mission it is to expand adoption opportunities throughout the United States, particularly for children with special needs and those from minority cultures.

Afro-America Kids’ Zone -

Bookwink - Through podcasting and web video, Bookwink hopes to connect kids in Grades 3 - 8 with books that will make them excited about reading.

Bradshaw Foundation - Winner of many awards for anthropology and paleontology, this website explores the Journey of Mankind in a flash-based online exhibit presenting 160,000 years of human prehistory, tracing the exodus of our early ancestors from Africa and their migration across the globe. Its animated and interactive map with a timeline that shows the human migration out of Africa and onto other continents. It also clearly shows how some climate changes in the past had a profound impact on the human geography.

The Bubblesphere - The complex math chemistry, physics and anything else you want to find out about bubbles.

Sharon Creech’s Web site - Sharon Creech’s Web site has five main sections: Meet Sharon, Picture Books, Novels, What’s New, and Teach Creech. The site is easy to navigate and provides a great deal of information.

Diane deGroat’s Official Site - This website will connect you to information about Diane deGroat, her books, school visits and fun stuff to download.

Get Set 4 Kindergarten - Everything you want to know about preparing your child and yourself for Kindergarten.

International Digital Children’s Library

Just One More Book - Just One More Book is a thrice-weekly podcast which promotes and celebrates literacy and great children’s books and a lively, interactive community linking children’s book authors, illustrators, readers (children, parents, educators and librarians) and publishers.

Kids Boogaloo

Little Critter

Marc’s Observatory -

Math Playground - an action-packed site for elementary and middle school students. Practice your math skills, play a logic game and have some fun.

Math Slice

The Mint - Kids can discover all kinds of tips about what to do with your money.

Mr. Young’s Bouncy “A” - Nicely organized homework website with subjects including art, science, social studies, math, language, spelling, reading, misc.

My First Garden - A guide to the world of fun and clever gardening.

My Kids Corner - Kids Stories, Kids Rhymes, Kids Puzzles and Kids Games. Plus, new for 2007, an interactive story section where you and maybe a friend or brother or sister, can be a part of the story.

National Geographic My Wonderful World: Maps - Tools for Adventure -

Noggin - An online extension of the virtually commercial-free educational television channel dedicated solely to the pre-K set.

Pagina Junior

Planet Esme

Play Sports TV -

Professor Garfield -

Readergirlz - All about inspiring girls to read and experience what they read.

Savings Quest - A savings game where kids get a chance to save for they things they want while paying for they things you need.

Science Bob

Science Buddies - Fair science fair project ideas, answers and tools for serious students

Sur La Lune Storytime - A children's librarian shares all her resources on the web in conjunction with her long-lived fairy tales site.

Tox Town - Environmental health concerns and toxic chemicals for where you live, work and play.

TVO Kids

Chris Van Allsburg’s Web site - Author Chris Van Allsburg's website about him, his books, interactive features and a story writing contest.

World Almanac for Kids

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The Bush Principle

..."may simply deserve only the amount of care they can afford."

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Stolen Childhood

Giving voice to silent shreiks of little angels.

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