It's beyond insidious. There are things all over the floor, the remnants of some project or other, and where is that kid? Out with a friend? They walk through the door, you ask where all that stuff comes from, and she gives you a lovely smile and announces, "I love you."Or you ask her to do homework, but notice she's downstairs watching American Idol. When you ask why she's doing that before homework, it's, "I love you" all over again.
Your mind flashes back to pre-K, when she wanted something or other and gave you this pouty face that looked like one of those awful paintings with those big-eyed children from days of yore. You asked her where she got that from and she announced, "My friend told me that whenever your father doesn't give you what you want, you could give him the pouty face and he'd change his mind."
And where do they learn these awful practices? In school, of course. And no, not from those horrible public school teachers, the ones President Barack Obama wants to fire. They learn them from one another. It's true--kids actually mimic the behavior of other kids! What's more is they regularly use this technique in the ongoing battle against their junior high teachers. Judging from its frequent repetition around the NYC Educator household by several of them, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they've deemed it quite effective.
I'm telling you this on the QT, of course. I wouldn't want the President to find out, because then he'd probably want to remove all the kids from the schools. He just loved it when they removed all the teachers. After all, kids only get one chance for an education, and you have to remove all the bad influences to make sure nothing negative ever happens. That way, under this President's expansive worldview, they can grow up and be fired en masse just like those Rhode Island teachers.
I have a feeling the President may regret this in 2012, when we fire him and all the people in his White House. Call me pessimistic, but I have a sneaking suspicion that even after we do so, bad things will still find some way to happen.
Maybe someone should clue him in.
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