This has been going on for a long time. Boys get in more trouble because they have a harder time sitting still. Like over 100 years. Ha ha
I went to a public school but it was in large rural central school districts with many good teachers who had their own independent streaks.
I rebelled, but only intellectually. For instance, if we were given an assignment to explain why X character was a hero, I would write a paper on why the character was not a hero. 😇😈
they didn’t seem to care because I wasn’t disrupting the classroom. I usually got A’s because they were no doubt board to tears with the rest of the papers
Actually, I didn’t get a lot of attempted thought control in school. I actually got more of that at home.
It took me a little longer to start making bigger waves.
years ago, I made friends with an Amish guy about my age, who was so isolated from the outside world because his father had pulled them away even from other members of the Amish community. The way that he learned about the outside world is that his father would get old magazines for mulch for the vegetables. He would sneak the most interesting of the magazines and hide them and read them. He ran away from home in his teens.
Of course I am sure that he inherited some of his rebellious spirit genetically from his father, but the intention backfired.
amazing individual.
Even in places like North Korea, some human minds still want to be free.
i met an amish farmer who gave the best, most concise and comprehensible explanation of the 2008 financial collapse i had ever heard. out there on his farm with his wife, 10 wonderful children and all his animals and with no radio, television, internet or electricity, he seemed to be as up on current events as anyone
There are many different types of Amish people. Some can be extremely isolated, including secluding themselves from the wider local Amish community itself because they feel it’s too worldly. Others use technology pretty heavily. It’s definitely not a monolith: your experience bears witness.
i stayed with a different amish family over night and slept out on the porch (it was VERY hot inside) with their daughters on little mattresses. the mother said that the boys didn't mind the heat and slept inside. a massive storm blew in and one by one, the daughters picked up their bedding and went in. one came back out to fetch me but i wouldn't have missed that storm for all the world!
the next day, neighboring farmers came over and sought me out. "we heard you slept on the porch during the storm; you're very brave" they would say.
i was helping them prepare for a big lunch of their Weston Price food co-op members from NYC and had gotten there the night before. when you are doing something, the children will size you up and see how they can help. without a word, they join in and you form a little assembly line, you and a 5 year old.
they appear in the barn at milking time, by magic they are in the farm store when you are ready to purchase. the eggs get collected. when the farmer asks you to put the chairs away, you turn and a little 7 year old girl is right behind you to help. when you are chopping celery for the salad, a 4 year old boy is there to hand you the next stalk and his older (not by much) sister is out in the garden gathering more.
they have cast off toys- incongruous things like toy trucks and toy telephones!
at the end of the event, a couple of young girls got in their buggy to go home. my boyfriend, himself the father of daughters and concerned for these two managing a horse drawn buggy by themselves, asked the farmer's wife if they got licenses from the State to drive those things. "no parent would give their child more than they knew the child could handle" she answered.
the greatest amish experience i ever had was on 21st St in NYC. we were packing up after a food delivery. the driver had gone upstairs to collect the checks and i was standing out on the street so as not to leave Raymond, a 16 year old amish boy, alone.
the driver of a sleek car started cursing at Raymond for parking the delivery truck too close to his precious vehicle. the truck was parked in the delivery lane as it should have been. the irate driver was parked a foot and a half away from the curb, which did put him close to the truck.
"sir, please calm down" i said. "this is an amish boy; he is not the driver." more profanity. "sir! if you hadn't parked your car so far from the curb, you'd have plenty of room. please stop cursing."
the man sputtered, got in his car and easily pulled away.
Raymond looked at me with a wisdom well beyond his years and said "that man has too much pride in his car." i still tear up when i think of this moment.
months later, our food group took a trip to his family's farm and Raymond expertly drove a hay wagon full of us city slickers, navigating hills and sharp turns.
when we run out of oil or when the grid goes down, our social justice gender non-conforming internet addicted kids won't have a clue. Raymond and his people know how to coax food from the ground; they are better educated than all of us.
I love all the stories on this thread! Thank you for writing them out. I have long harbored a deep admiration of the Amish, as well as the European Roma. Why over complicate life when you already know what really matters?
I agree that it has been happening for years, but I believe early on, it was seen as normal behavior. A boy who can't sit still in class is not something that needs to be drugged or treated necessarily, but coping skills should be taught to address it. I'm not saying that all behavior is normal, but i will say that drugs have been over-prescribed.
I had this problem as well and instead of being drugged (we had a student that was hyperactive at the time and attended SLD class and took Ritalin) I learned to entertain myself when I had "downtime."
The great thing about English papers is that there is a lot of latitude in answering a topic. For instance, you could argue that Lenny in "Of Mice and Men" was the hero or a villain of the story, and it wouldn't take much to support either opinion. The thing is, you weren't rebelling, you were actually answering the spirit of what the paper would tell the teacher: that you read the book and comprehended it. Now, sure there are teachers out there that are very legalistic in their handling of topics, but I think most of them would have loved your independent thinking streak. But what do i know, you're the one with the PhD.
As far as thought control, I don't think I had much of that either. School was more of a malaise for me. It was more about memorizing dates and facts, terminology, and vocabulary. There was no critical thinking going on in elementary school, and not much more going on in high school. I didn't get schooled in critical thinking until I attended college. School intellectually was a low-grade fever. The few standout moments I had were I got to paint a "fireplace" for the school play one year and a teacher in fourth grade took an interest in my artistic skill/talent.
That doesn't mean I didn't think indepdently though. I could have burned a ton of calories in high school and probably could have become popular, but for whatever reason, I did not. I enjoyed being the passively non conforming kid I was that enjoyed D&D, artistic endeavors, and viewed himself as an artist/writer even then. My parents were concerned for my socialization and had me "tutored" by a child psychologist. One of the things he told me was that a lot of bullying I faced was due to the fact that I was different and did not conform. I think that was part of the problem, another part was I just did what my parents told me and "ignored it and they will go away," That didn't work.
I never made friends with the Amish, but my Uncle employed one to work on his house renovations. He was a very hard and skilled worker from what I remember.
I do think that most poeple's minds want to be free, but we have ways of coping with it that either sublimate or otherwise placate that desire.
This has been going on for a long time. Boys get in more trouble because they have a harder time sitting still. Like over 100 years. Ha ha
I went to a public school but it was in large rural central school districts with many good teachers who had their own independent streaks.
I rebelled, but only intellectually. For instance, if we were given an assignment to explain why X character was a hero, I would write a paper on why the character was not a hero. 😇😈
they didn’t seem to care because I wasn’t disrupting the classroom. I usually got A’s because they were no doubt board to tears with the rest of the papers
Actually, I didn’t get a lot of attempted thought control in school. I actually got more of that at home.
It took me a little longer to start making bigger waves.
years ago, I made friends with an Amish guy about my age, who was so isolated from the outside world because his father had pulled them away even from other members of the Amish community. The way that he learned about the outside world is that his father would get old magazines for mulch for the vegetables. He would sneak the most interesting of the magazines and hide them and read them. He ran away from home in his teens.
Of course I am sure that he inherited some of his rebellious spirit genetically from his father, but the intention backfired.
amazing individual.
Even in places like North Korea, some human minds still want to be free.
i met an amish farmer who gave the best, most concise and comprehensible explanation of the 2008 financial collapse i had ever heard. out there on his farm with his wife, 10 wonderful children and all his animals and with no radio, television, internet or electricity, he seemed to be as up on current events as anyone
There are many different types of Amish people. Some can be extremely isolated, including secluding themselves from the wider local Amish community itself because they feel it’s too worldly. Others use technology pretty heavily. It’s definitely not a monolith: your experience bears witness.
i stayed with a different amish family over night and slept out on the porch (it was VERY hot inside) with their daughters on little mattresses. the mother said that the boys didn't mind the heat and slept inside. a massive storm blew in and one by one, the daughters picked up their bedding and went in. one came back out to fetch me but i wouldn't have missed that storm for all the world!
the next day, neighboring farmers came over and sought me out. "we heard you slept on the porch during the storm; you're very brave" they would say.
i was helping them prepare for a big lunch of their Weston Price food co-op members from NYC and had gotten there the night before. when you are doing something, the children will size you up and see how they can help. without a word, they join in and you form a little assembly line, you and a 5 year old.
they appear in the barn at milking time, by magic they are in the farm store when you are ready to purchase. the eggs get collected. when the farmer asks you to put the chairs away, you turn and a little 7 year old girl is right behind you to help. when you are chopping celery for the salad, a 4 year old boy is there to hand you the next stalk and his older (not by much) sister is out in the garden gathering more.
they have cast off toys- incongruous things like toy trucks and toy telephones!
at the end of the event, a couple of young girls got in their buggy to go home. my boyfriend, himself the father of daughters and concerned for these two managing a horse drawn buggy by themselves, asked the farmer's wife if they got licenses from the State to drive those things. "no parent would give their child more than they knew the child could handle" she answered.
the greatest amish experience i ever had was on 21st St in NYC. we were packing up after a food delivery. the driver had gone upstairs to collect the checks and i was standing out on the street so as not to leave Raymond, a 16 year old amish boy, alone.
the driver of a sleek car started cursing at Raymond for parking the delivery truck too close to his precious vehicle. the truck was parked in the delivery lane as it should have been. the irate driver was parked a foot and a half away from the curb, which did put him close to the truck.
"sir, please calm down" i said. "this is an amish boy; he is not the driver." more profanity. "sir! if you hadn't parked your car so far from the curb, you'd have plenty of room. please stop cursing."
the man sputtered, got in his car and easily pulled away.
Raymond looked at me with a wisdom well beyond his years and said "that man has too much pride in his car." i still tear up when i think of this moment.
months later, our food group took a trip to his family's farm and Raymond expertly drove a hay wagon full of us city slickers, navigating hills and sharp turns.
when we run out of oil or when the grid goes down, our social justice gender non-conforming internet addicted kids won't have a clue. Raymond and his people know how to coax food from the ground; they are better educated than all of us.
100%!
I love all the stories on this thread! Thank you for writing them out. I have long harbored a deep admiration of the Amish, as well as the European Roma. Why over complicate life when you already know what really matters?
I agree that it has been happening for years, but I believe early on, it was seen as normal behavior. A boy who can't sit still in class is not something that needs to be drugged or treated necessarily, but coping skills should be taught to address it. I'm not saying that all behavior is normal, but i will say that drugs have been over-prescribed.
I had this problem as well and instead of being drugged (we had a student that was hyperactive at the time and attended SLD class and took Ritalin) I learned to entertain myself when I had "downtime."
The great thing about English papers is that there is a lot of latitude in answering a topic. For instance, you could argue that Lenny in "Of Mice and Men" was the hero or a villain of the story, and it wouldn't take much to support either opinion. The thing is, you weren't rebelling, you were actually answering the spirit of what the paper would tell the teacher: that you read the book and comprehended it. Now, sure there are teachers out there that are very legalistic in their handling of topics, but I think most of them would have loved your independent thinking streak. But what do i know, you're the one with the PhD.
As far as thought control, I don't think I had much of that either. School was more of a malaise for me. It was more about memorizing dates and facts, terminology, and vocabulary. There was no critical thinking going on in elementary school, and not much more going on in high school. I didn't get schooled in critical thinking until I attended college. School intellectually was a low-grade fever. The few standout moments I had were I got to paint a "fireplace" for the school play one year and a teacher in fourth grade took an interest in my artistic skill/talent.
That doesn't mean I didn't think indepdently though. I could have burned a ton of calories in high school and probably could have become popular, but for whatever reason, I did not. I enjoyed being the passively non conforming kid I was that enjoyed D&D, artistic endeavors, and viewed himself as an artist/writer even then. My parents were concerned for my socialization and had me "tutored" by a child psychologist. One of the things he told me was that a lot of bullying I faced was due to the fact that I was different and did not conform. I think that was part of the problem, another part was I just did what my parents told me and "ignored it and they will go away," That didn't work.
I never made friends with the Amish, but my Uncle employed one to work on his house renovations. He was a very hard and skilled worker from what I remember.
I do think that most poeple's minds want to be free, but we have ways of coping with it that either sublimate or otherwise placate that desire.
*bored
(Monica-- you can edit it. Click on the three dots on the right.)
Not in the app, Unless I need to download an update.