The guest on The Daily Show tonight was a loon. Please.

She was saying that teachers grade in "lavender" instead of red, because red is too harmful to the kid's self-esteem. She said kids aren't allowed to play tag. That Little League teams don't keep score, so no one's feelings get hurt.

Her point about dodge ball was that feelings get hurt. Uh, no, it was probably NEVER a good idea to give sixth graders a ball and say here, hit each other with it. I saw kids with glasses get them broken and their faces cut by them (the broken glasses). It wasn't FEELINGS that got hurt in dodge ball.

What a bunch of bullshit. Everytime he asked her about specifics (he asked her what school districts banned using red ink) she didn't answer. She just went on talking in sweeping generalizations.

The audience literally laughed at her (when she wasn't making a joke) and Jon didn't seem to take her very seriously.

And I'm SO glad he brought up inner-city and poorer schools. First of all, there WAS a trend toward grading in non-red ink about 10-15 YEARS AGO, but that's long gone. Secondly, what I've witnessed in schools is quite the opposite: teachers and administrators screaming right in kids' faces, being nasty and belligerant to them, insulting them, humiliating them (especially in front of other kids, that seenms to be a favorite). Now not ALL teachers and administrators do that kind of stuff, but I don't know WHAT districts the woman on TDS has been to, but I sure as hell don't see that around here.

It seems the more teaching conditions worsen, the more things are taken out on kids. That's not good for anyone. But this woman is living in some world where kids are just given some kind of soft, free ride?

Oh, the stories I could tell her. Oh and she said self-esteem has nothing to do with achievement or being a good person.

:wtf: :crazy:

He had a true nut on tonight.

was the best thing about grade school

and playing 4 square

:evilgrin:

to play

I'm being sincere, I'm really wondering what made it fun for you. I'm not trying to debate, just want to know.

can't really tell you, it was over 20 years ago

And I was NOT one of the stronger kids. I usually was out in the first couple of minutes, then got to sit on the sidelines with my friends.

Of course, my school may have had a couple of bullies, but it was nothing like what people make dodgeball out to be today. I didn't know one person who was physically targetted regularly.

Another thing that I loved in our gym class was the beanbag tied to the string. Our gym teacher would whip it around in circles, faster and faster, and we'd have to jump over it until we were the last one standing. People DID get hurt during that!

Mainly due to the fact that I was a gymnast. It really pissed off the jocks and I got lots of applause from everyone else.

and i walk slow most of the time, but i get NEO on the dodgeball field

it was a sport that was fun and playful...I didnt see people "throwing it at people they hated", people dodged, and most kids that age cannot throw the ball very hard at all.

Here we played dodge ball all the way through the eighth grade. Kids can throw pretty hard by that age.

couldn't hurt a fly with them..I loved it too...we all played at home as well in the neighborhood against garage doors. Why do they take kid's wholesome fun away?

but we had British Bulldogs, which was basically a tackling game, after a while it was banned officially and we were told not to play it during break times, everyone did anyway because it was fun.

I broke my arm twice, dislocated a few fingers and had an endless gallery of skinned knees to show off thanks to it but it didn't have any detrimental effect in the long run.

To be honest, even though I'm sure the women you're referring to was speaking in broad generalisations I have to agree that it really seems people wont let their kids take ANY risks now.

There are no more peadophiles around now than there was 20 years ago when I was in primary (elementary) school yet hardly anyone lets their kids walk to school anymore, I very rarely have to slow the car down to give kids time to remove rubbish bin "wickets" from the road because their parents wont even let them play in their suburban streets, schools are petrified of ANY physical activity because god forbid a kid hurts themselves.

I dunno maybe I've just reached that "when I was your age" stage too early!

And in the afternoon, there are such large clumps of them walking home, they slow up traffic.

Being younger and smaller than everyone else in your class is a recipe for misery when it comes to Physical Education (and dodge ball in particular.)

but I do think it was smart for adults to say hey, maybe this isn't SUCH a good idea after all.

Ah the good old days:

"Hey, let's go to PE and get smacked in the face and all over our body with a rubber ball thrown as hard as possible by my enemies! Yay!!!!"

Or:

"Hey, let's go to PE where I can SLAM that ball into the faces of the smaller kids I HATE! YAY!!!"

All in all, probably not such a great thing.

weakling kid for being weak. He made the kid stand on one side, had every other kid on the other side, and ordered them to "aim for his head and nuts".

(I wasn't in that class, but I had friends who were). over half the kids refused, but about half followed the orders. The target's parents complained (good for them), and the coach was gone within a week.

That's my recollection of dodgeball.

That's pretty sick :grr:

I wasn't younger but I was the shortest kid in the class. Oy. But you can't be soft to kids all the time. They have to learn and grow and learn how to handle the real world. What are they going to be like when they get a job?

hurling large balls at them then, either.

There are FAR better ways of helping kids handle the real world than letting their peers pummel them on a regular basis. Or HAVING them pummel their peers on a regular basis.

It was a stupid game to begin with.

all the time and so does the rest of life. It's just that they're not round and fairly soft.

I was a fat kid, so dodgeball was the one game I could play that put me on a level field with the other kids. I can't recall a game where the kids played it with malice, I didn't.

Sitting here thinking about it... the lessons learned playing dodgeball may have been good experience for dodging some of the harder balls in life.

I could have done without the dodgeball experience!

:P

and even i remember playing tackle football on a big dirt field of a playground, and playing on the giant splintered wooden jungle gym

kids today aren't allowed to have fun

That lady is nuts. Kids aren't put in bubble wrap and treated with kid gloves around here.

i'm not just talking about this, i'm talking about the complete coddling of kids today

all over the country they're ending recess (or certain parts of it) and kids aren't allowed (or don't know how) to just play; everything has to be planned and organized and lame

i know this isn't true of everywhere, but damn, one instance is too many

i feel bad for kids today

Some places are ending recess mostly because they can take more time to do test prep for high stakes testing, thanks to NCLB.

I don't understand the "kids don't know how to play" stuff. All I see around me are kids who are very capable of playing and do it every day.

:shrug:

It's making me look at everyone's profiles to see where they are. I know where I'm living can't be stuck in a time warp or something.

Here's something: I can't TELL you the last time I saw a kid riding a bike with a bike helmet on. NONE of them wear them around here.

there is no spontaneous play around here. no tag, no kick ball, no bike riding without parents, no digging worms or wading in the stream. all the kids i know do "play dates"-nice, clean, orderly scheduled events where no one gets dirty or banged up.

Kids run and scream all over this street so much it gets annoying at times.

They fall out of trees, they play basketball in one driveway until it gets dark, the older ones hang out and talk, they make improvised bike and skateboard ramps, they pet the outdoor cats, ride (and fall off) their bikes, rollerblade, etc.

They're not even allowed to do cartwheels. I remember reading a story either earlier this year or late last year a girl did a cartwheel and she got suspended. :crazy:

Seriously WHERE ARE these places?

It's like I'm living in some kind of parallel universe or something. Where is this Bizarro Land?

Also, are these just isolated things or true trends? If they were true trends, you'd think we'd see it here.

that he and his friends lost 10 minutes of recess time for playing tag! Surely,says I, there must be more to it. Nope, he says... the playground monitor says we shouldn't be trying to grab each other while running...someone could fall down. Hubby called school; I was shocked into speechlessness. What can you do? tell the children to ignore the teacher? Lunacy.

she was doing cartwheels in the lunch room, and she was told to stop and did not

I can see that. I thought she was just doing a cartwheel outside and got suspended.

Same deal with tag. It turns into 'tackle' and on an asphalt or concrete playground, it ain't pretty.

or you tell them if you tackle each other, there will be no tag for a while.

But this lady said they play "A Circle of Friends" instead of tag and she didn't describe the game. I've never even heard of that and I have a kid in elementary school. At recess they climb all over that playground, they chase each other, scream and yell, do all the same stuff I did (except dodge ball).

:shrug:

and love it. They also like Change Bases. And I taught my kids 4 Square and they really like that game. The littler kids play freeze tag but I try to discourage any chasing and touching games with the older kids I teach.

I have never heard of A Circle of Friends. Sounds like a Christian school game.

all we had in 3-6th grade was 4 square, and had you put US in an olympic stadium 4-square event, team USA would have won the gold, i swear, we could launch those dodgeballs at 500mph, stop them, and land the ball smack inside the boundaries of a 3x3 square occupied by a person

Sounds more like a strategy to prevent playground bullying than an actual game:

Circle of Friends

* Identify students who are targets of bullying behaviours.
* Select students with strong communication and problem solving skills to become their circle of friends.
* The victim may or may not know they are being supported by the students. (This could be done anonymously)
* The circle of friends may stay with the student, or just keep watch over them.
* The victim may begin to feel more accepted by peers and learn better problem solving and communication skills through observation.
* The friends don’t need to know each other. They are often part of a circle of friends for many students on the playground.


on edit: oops forgot the link
http://www.region.peel.on.ca/health/shp/issues/3fall2002/fall-2002-3.htm

Oh wait. Yer a liberal, ain't ya. Well don't you know you libruls are supposed to be worrying about little Johnny's feelings! What are ye tryin' to do, become a Republican or something and expect the kid to learn from the school of hard knocks?

People like Rush try to sell the above loon as being representative of all of us. She's not of course.

And she wrote that book a while back about how feminism destroys little boys.

:eyes:

and then stand there like an idiot. I couldn't throw very well, and I didn't want to give them any ammo.

I was LOUSY in gym class but loved dodge ball!!! I could dodge pretty well and eventually I'd end up with the balls on my side. heh heh.

on the floor). But you don't so much as have to throw hard as you have to aim the ball right where there feet are going (when they run away and stop looking at you). I think I volunteered to go to the end most of the time, you know.. I'd start out in the end where all the others on your team would end up once they were hit and then I'd get called out as soon as someone caught a ball (Meanwhile I would catch a ball that came to the end and immediately launch it gently on someone 3 feet from me). Also, if you just hide behind the heard in the first few rounds, you don't so much need to worry about getting hit. You just keep a crowd between you and the balls (we only every played with one or two). I also used to catch the balls that were nailed at me. I accepted a certain amount of pain in order to gain the advantage. If someone nails you, and you catch their ball, they will not try and hit you again.

I loved dodge ball.

I think she had a few valid points. For one, I think it is important to teach about competitiveness and sportsmanship. I have seen instances, although rare, where score wasn't kept because it might "hurt someone's feelings." That is just ridiculous! And, it is true, that today's children, sometimes called Millennials, could be considered over-protected. Many of these students, when they arrive at college (which is where I worked), had zero comprising skills and when something didn't go their way, mommy and daddy got involved.

I do believe it is VERY important to teach children to be empathic and sympathetic, but to shelter them from all of life's 'downs' is twisted!

I had never heard about the "red ink" thing as being bad for self-esteem, but I did have a teacher that refused to use it and didn't allow us to use red ink because it was symbolic of the blood of Christ. :eyes:

I didn't know she was the author of that "feminism hurts boys" POS. What people really need to learn is coping skills, understanding, dealing with loss, and anger management. If we taught these things in school as well as other things, we might see a more balanced society. As it is now, we have people who cannot control anger, they either lash out or suppress it, neither is healthy. We have people who cannot accept responsibility, always looking for someone to blame, which has made us a VERY litigious society. We have people who cannot express their differences without being ridiculed. There is a comprise between the "bully" and the "wimp!"

Why?? Because the BOYS "needed" the gym, so WE had to play outside in January in teensy shorts and white cotton blouses..:grr:..

If it was snowing or sleeting, we could "use" the mat room upstairs.. It reeked of SWEATY wrestling mats..

This was pre-Title 9..:(

They made us wear bloomers. I HATE that game.

They keep score. My son referees football and basketball, they keep score. I coached t-ball, kept score. This woman doesn't know what she's talking about. I do remember complaining to a red ink teacher though. One of my kids, I forget which one, was getting discouraged by it. Not to stop using the red ink, but maybe to try to find something nice to say once in a while. She did.

I was a very short, very skinny kid. After about the fourth time the dodge ball actually knocked me over, the gym teacher let me sit out the games.

Tucker

old. It's hard to imagine a 1st grader being that small.

When I was little, I could literally count my ribs and could see my heartbeat in my chest. I ate plenty, just ran it all off immediately!

Tucker

Having high self-esteem doesn't necessarily make one a good person, in the sense of being kind and compassionate, working for the greater good, and so on. I have worked with total nutjobs whose impenetrable self-esteem made them believe they could do no wrong, in the process destroying workplaces, client relationships, and in several instances an entire business, throwing dozens of people out of work. I've also known well-grounded individuals whose high self-esteem only enhanced the work they did. But they weren't pyschopaths.

Regardless, Christina Hoff Sommers is a swine who is a "resident scholar" of the American Enterprise Institute. Another shill paid to trash traditional liberal values. Here's a link to a critique of her work:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/hoffsommers.htm

Her whole point about liberals being not competitive is pretty stupid and generalizing. You probably couldn't find anyone who has broken more things after they lost than me. I really can't believe that things could have changed that much since I was a lad(I'm 18, so I like saying that). I recall some of the games I played while in grade school...

Gladiators- Two kids on the monkey bars, only one survives. Kicks to the face were probably the major method of attack.

Cowboys and Indians- The "Cowboys"(popular kids) had to chase and get the "Indians"(not so popular kids).

And of course, "Smear the Queer"- Basically everyone runs and tries to tackle the "queer". Not sure the about the context in which queer is meant, though.

Me at 18 looks back at those games and cringes(especially the last two games, I mean "Smear the Queer", are you kidding me?). But sadly, when I was 8 I wasn't quite so socially conscious and they were fun. There has to be a middle ground in this argument. Kids shouldn't play games where they can degrade each other but also should be able to have a competitive nature. Just another thing to blame those dang liberals for though.

And that was over damn 16 years ago back around 4th grader ish. One person would get the football(became 'the queer') and run around till everyone else could tackle them to the ground then someone else would grab it. Lol you voluntarily grabbed the football so you would be beat up. Of course I never grabbed it they would have killed me.

anymore haven't REALLY been observing kids very closely.

Because kids still do very rough and tumble stuff and I am just NOT seeing this coddling bullshit she was talking about.

But you are right--it was a thinly veiled attempt to bash the left. What pisses me off is WE DON'T DO THOSE THINGS.

Her assertions were mostly lies. Broad generalizations not grounded in reality.

I'd love for her to come here and really observe the kids around here up close and personal.

Every time they screwed up, they'd look at me blankly and say, "I did my best". They didn't seem to understand or care that they had just cost the agency money. They didn't promise to be more careful next time. Because they had been taught their whole lives that they were special regardless, and that their own self-esteem was what was really important.

I asked about those kinds of people in a different thread.

Those people don't have TRUE self-esteem, they have this narcissistic front that's very different from real self-esteem seen in emotionally healthy people.

Schools blacklist red ink
      WASHINGTON — Of all the things that can make a person see red, school principal Gail Karwoski was not expecting parents to get huffy about, well, seeing red.
      At Daniels Farm Elementary School in Trumbull, Conn., Karwoski's teachers grade papers by giving examples of better answers for those students who make mistakes. But that approach meant the kids often found their work covered in red, the color that teachers long have used to grade work.
      Parents objected. Red writing, they said, was "stressful." The principal said teachers were just giving constructive advice and the color of ink used to convey that message should not matter. But some parents could not let it go.
      So the school put red on the blacklist. Blue and other colors are in.
      "It's not an argument we want to have at this point because what we need is the parents' understanding," Karwoski said. "The color of the message should not be the issue."
      In many other schools, it's black and white when it comes to red. The color has become so symbolic of negativity that some principals and teachers will not touch it.
      "You could hold up a paper that says 'Great work!' and it won't even matter if it's written in red," said Joseph Foriska, principal of Thaddeus Stevens Elementary in Pittsburgh.
      He has instructed his teachers to grade with colors featuring more "pleasant-feeling tones" so that their instructional messages do not come across as derogatory or demeaning.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600123469,00.html

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you think she was a nut. Her comments on self-esteem reflect--I think--recent research. We've made a cult of "self-esteem" that probably has little to do with it's importance in mental health.

George Lakoff calls it the "strong father" philosophy

It's very popular on the right because it places a high value on winning at all costs, ME, ME, ME, and anyone who falls behind is a whiner, etc, etc.

They like to make fun of any effort to make ANYTHING less competition-driven. They make fun of feelings and self-esteem.

This world view is pervasive on the right, and is even found on the left, too.

Books like the one this woman wrote are very popular, becasue they reinforce selfishness and say that bullying is okay.

It really does have a very punitive look, so I use green, blue, or purple.

... for why classic liberalism failed miserably. Bullshit is bullshit, and everyone knows it. The GOP does a pretty good job of selling bullshit because they are selling it about things ordinary folks don't know much about, the workings of the economy and the intricacies of foreign policy.

But when you start telling Joe and Jan six-pack that red marks on their school work is damaging their self esteem, well, they know bullshit like that when they hear it. And so do I.

Christina Hoff Sommers is, I think, who the guest was. Her last book was "The War Against Boys," all about how young girls have it easy and young boys are the ones who are really oppressed (by feminists, of course). :eyes:

And I thought I was the only person who was ever seriously injured in a game of dodge ball.

it was interesting that she never came up with an answer to Stewart's questions about specifically where these things were happening. made me believe she was generalizing or presenting anecdotal evidence, but i agreed with her point about coddling kids.

i know many people who go to great lengths to make sure there is never any conflict, trauma, trouble, hardship of any kind for their children. i believe it makes for adults who have never dealt with anything on their own and get into the real world lacking tools to deal with adversity.
sure it sucks if you aren't any good at dodgeball, but the ability to survive the adverse conditions makes for better coping down the road.

if a child never gets any bumps and bruises and hurt feelings growing up then what training do they have for real life. this is the type of attitude that has college professors arguing with parents about the grades of 22 yr old students. the real world doesn't coddle or protect, and it doesn't care what your mom thinks.

my brothers competed in tournament karate for several years, i drove and coached and helped out at the tourneys. his sensei decided to stop competing in tournaments after the last one we went to. there were hundreds of people competing in a dozen weight classes. during the trophy presentations there was a commotion around the judges table concerning the 5-6 year olds. some soccer mom was screaming and making a big stink because her 10 yr old had taken 2nd in her category and her 5 yr old didn't. she was actually screaming "HOW DO YOU SEND HOME TWO SISTERS WITH ONE TROPHY?! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT DOES TO A KID?!" to shut her up they gave both girls a trophy. the 5 yr old went home with a trophy from the adult superheavy division because there were no participants in that group. that created a rush on the trophy table. those who wanted trophies were given the leftovers - trophies that weren't awarded because there were no entries.

i was dumbfounded. why put your kid into a karate tournament if you don't want to involve them in competition? we're not talking about a play date here, a karate tourney is going to have winners and losers.

it may have to do with my upbringing. my family never had much, we had lots of very hard times. it sucked, we cried, we did without, and i feel it made me a better person. i learned how to handle adversity at a young age. i remember being in college and watching roommates and people in the dorm panic over situations that were far from disastrous, but they had never dealt with anything on their own. mom and dad had always provided and protected and many of them never developed any kind of survival skills.

i don't know who the author on the daily show is, and there was obviously some rhetoric there, but i didn't see her appearance as wildly provocative or full of crazy nonsense.

While I applaud the effort to get bullying out of schools -- and never liked dodgeball myself -- I think the guest had some valid points.

My brother graduated from medical school not long ago, and he thanked my father for being tough with him while he was growing up. My father made him do chores, work hard around the farm (while his friends were out having fun) and at the time he bitterly resented it. But once he reached medical school, he realized Dad had done him a favor: he'd taught him how to work. He could buckle down, get his work done and then go on with his life. His classmates had spent most of their time playing video games and having fun, and the work in med school overwhelmed them.

My sister, one of the best moms I know, says one of the hardest things she has to do is let her kids fail. Her middle daughter tried out for the basketball team and camp. Her ball-handling skills have not developed yet and she was bumped down to junior varsity, meaning she will never play. Sis let her cry for a while, then offered her some alternatives -- this summer, she could do a few day camps to improve her ball skills. She believes she has to let the kids try things, make mistakes, fail and learn to deal with failure. I think she's right.

I was thinking the exact same thing while I was watching. I think the new approach of limiting abusive sports and limiting competition is an evolution in the right direction. Schools have got to do something about the bullying - it is getting way out of hand. Maybe they are going to extreme the other way (although I doubt it) but then we can find the middle ground.

by the by.

but she wasn't utterly wrong about what's happening "some places out there".

I taught in Utah for a few years and, while it wasn't prohibited, I actually got a lecture from an administrator about using red ink. I kept using it.

Dodge ball has been eliminated from our local school here in Oregon because it's too dangerous.

Teachers do heavily discourage many oldschool games because they are too rough or dangerous.

It has not been my impression that most of the instances of this I have seen are really about "liberalizing" anything...they've tended to be reactionary liability measures. If little Timmy jumps off a swing and gets hurt we'll get sued. So we won't let little Timmy jump anymore.

I am sure there are "well meaning" teachers out there doing lots of nutty things, but like Stewart said...these are anecdotal examples...NOT widespread trends at this point.

One example which is becoming more widespread though is Halloween. There is a holiday that's been completely restructed to "protect" the children.

I agree with another poster about a change in our children's play as well...we simply don't see the unsupervised (aka free) play we used to with the children in our neighborhood. Instead they are kept inside or taken (shuttled in SUV with DVD player) from scripted event to scripted event. I can't imagine that's good for us in the long run.

This woman looked more like a Samantha Bee interviewee than a Stewart Couch Guest.

too sweeping in her generalizations, and might have exaggerated, there is a lot of truth hidden in what she was saying. A lot of districts ARE now grading in purple ink or other ink besides red because parents and students complain that it's "damaging to self-esteem" to see red ink on papers knowing that it's meant to correct. Teachers are seeing many students who are demanding praise simply for showing up and not for actually doing anything, and too many kids simply cannot cope with even the slightest constructive criticism. My parents are retired teachers, and they saw the writing on the wall before they retired a few years ago.

This whole "self-esteem" movement is bullshit and is fucking up a whole generation of kids, we're going to start reaping the harvest of that in a few years when they hit the job world and discover that they actually have to do something before being praised and that they're always going to have to deal with criticism and people who hurt their little feelings, etc., etc. My parents are glad they retired when they did, because parents and students now run the schools and the administration is too scared of them so they just follow along. Teachers can't even give the grades that are deserved now without parents demanding that they change the grade because the kids "feelings and self-esteem will be hurt." What total bullshit.

most of my generation is exactly as you described

it wasn't that bad when i was in elementary school, but by the time middle school and high school rolled around it was terrible.

luckily my parents didn't fall for that bullshit and raised me right

the generation after mine? oh shit, i dont' even want to think about that (i'm 20, btw)

I also think more schools should have therapists/social workers - obviously at odds with her premise.

I always thought dodgeball was a spiteful way to get back at other kids or just another way of beating up on the small ones.
How do you feel about kids "picking" their own teams in PE?
Do they still do that?
A lot of people have no idea of how much it can hurt a child to be the last one picked for a team every time.
Just because we survived these things when we were in school doesn't mean that we should allow children to suffer unnecessarily now.

Thanks Bouncy,
Such a simple thing, is it really that much to ask?

students who are the last picked and such - could have their "competitive instincts" reduced - which is what the guest was arguing should NOT happen.

I always had to remind my son that as adults - it's NOT how well one does in sports that is going to make a difference (for most people) - it's what you know and what you can do with it, etc.

It's like these stupid studies that show that the supposedly more attractive people and the taller men are more successful. If our society really wanted to be more competitive we wouldn't be rewarding people for things that don't matter.

I remember reading a LTE years ago from a woman who was disgusted by the fact that her kid's school discontinued allowing kids to pick their own teams. She said she didn't think it was a big deal if it was hurtful and unfair, life was unfair.
WTF?
Life's unfair so it's okay to emotionally harm a child?
I don't necessarily believe in herculean measures to protect children from life's lessons but to me this was such a simple thing to do, why would anyone protest?

When I taught, I would sometimes correct using other colors, but it had nothing to do with the childrens' self-esteem. I just enjoyed color, and I would use a variety of pens.

But, if we used lavender regularly, then THAT color, in a generation, would be offensive to the children's self-esteem. The little league without score keeping?

We can not protect our children's feelings forever. We have to allow them to fall down in this world. We coddle them for too long, and they believe that the world revolves around them.

I recently had a friend visit, and she still breast feeds her 2 and her 4 1/2 year old children. She does so because she feels that they should not feel any stress. They should decide when they are ready to not be breast fed anymore. This world is filled with stress. We need to learn, and the only thing constant coddling will do is to reinforce the idea that the world revolves around us. It's a dangerous precedent to make for our children.

(This is all my opinion, of course.)

That anti-feminist HACK has been spewing her idiocy for years. Here's the book that first put her on my radar:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684801566/qid=1114704069/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-7960136-9523016?v=glance&s=books

And this one was stupid, too:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684849577/qid=1114704069/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7960136-9523016?v=glance&s=books

And I was agreeing that she was spewing idiocy.

And I know you're agreeing. The reason for my post was just to register my surprise that so many here seemed unfamiliar with Hoff Sommers' "work."

In my mind, she's to be grouped with the likes of Camille Paglia, a faux intellectual out for maximum sensationalism. And the righties just eat it up.

was verbalizing the psychologist's views, not hers. :shrug:

Why is using purple or blue so offensive to some people?

I didn't see the show last night, but knowing Sommers I'm sure I agree with your assessment.

My mom taught school, and she didn't always use red pens. She did use red, but she also used blue or whatever else might be available. (Anything but black, since it's hard to distinguish teacher and student marks that way.) My teachers from elementary school through college also used a great big rainbow of colors.

So if the comments in purple are the same as the comments in red, why should it bother folks like CHS?

Because they hate self esteem. And if self esteem is given as a reason for something, then in their minds it must be a bad idea. It's absurd.

So there. :)

you took one too many to the head as a kid. :P

I hated gym class, but bombardment was some good times. For me, playing basketball was more humiliating and degrading than the dodgeball-esque games.

She works for the frigging American Enterprise Institute, for heaven's sake - she's a master of claiming that these behaviors - which are egregiously stupid - are widespread in academia. Then when pressed for specifics (as Stewart, bless his heart, did repeatedly), she changes the subject.

This is a favorite wingnut tactic. Pick some incredibly stupid huggy-wuggy-woo-woo liberal claptrap being done by ONE idiot administrator in ONE school somewhere in East Armpit, and blow it totally out of proportion - claim that "school districts everywhere have banned all competitive games"! The right-wing websites and blogs pick it up and next thing you know, Liberals Hate Baseball is on the front page of the fucking New York Times.

The only good thing about her being on the Daily Show is that Stewart made her sound like the piss-poor excuse for a researcher that she actually is. Her books are complete backlash pop-culture crap, poorly researched, badly footnoted, and short on specifics. She's just another example of a rightwing robo-Barbie - another skinny bleach blonde that gets trotted out for an "expert opinion" on TV shows.

and thought her book was satire, lol.
Glad to know these things.

Political Correctness run amok.


No score in Little League? No red ink?


Give
Me
A
FUCKING
Break!