I was just going to add this as an update to the post below until I read the whole thing. It's one for the FFO thread tomorrow.
Parents could be forced to go to special classes to learn to sing their children nursery rhymes, a minister said.
Those who fail to read stories or sing to their youngsters threaten their children's future and the state must put them right, Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said.
Their children's well-being is at risk 'unless we act', she declared.No doubt "support" = "gaol".And Mrs Hughes said the state would train a new 'parenting workforce' to ensure parents who fail to do their duty with nursery rhymes are found and 'supported'.
Mrs Hughes has established a national curriculum to set down how babies are taught to speak in childcare from the age of three months.That statement is far more interesting when juxtaposed with this part much farther down [All editing problems are in the original]:Her efforts have gone alongside a push by other ministers to determine exactly how parents treat their children down to how they should brush their teeth.
Tony Blair has backed the idea of 'fasbos' - efforts to identify and correct the lives of children who are likely to fail even before they are born - and new laws to compel parents to attend parenting classes are on the way.
[...]
The threat of action against parents who fail to sing nursery rhymes was unveiled by Mrs Hughes as she gave the first details of Mr Blair's 'national parenting academy', a body that will train teachers, psychologists and social workers to intervene in the lives of families and become the 'parenting workforce'.
[...]
Mrs Hughes condemned the way governments before 1997 thought they had no role in the upbringing of children, which it 'regarded as the entirely private arrangements families make.'
She praised the Government's record of pouring billions into state benefits for single parents, into providing subsidies for childcare, into pushing mothers into work, and into the 'Sure Start' children's centres.
Her speech to the National Family and Parenting Institute - an organisation set up by Labour eight years ago to further its family agenda - ignored the question of two-parent families which has begun feature in left-wing debate.In other words, the government caused and subsidized the problems it supposedly wants to fix.Mr Blair's Government has long declared that all families are equal. However, in recent weeks Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has acknowledged that children with two natural
Last week the Blairite think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, also acknowledged that children brought up by single parents are more likely to end up without jobs and on state benefits.
The decline of Britain is nothing short of appalling and I can't resist quoting a "Mad Magazine" item from many years ago. It was a poem called "Rudyard Kipling by Gunga Din". The last verse went like this:
No shit, GD. Posted by Ken S at November 16, 2006 08:51 AM | TrackBack (0) |Now we do the best we can,
Twice we've conquered Pakistan,
While the glories that were Britain's have grown fewer.
And while it may seem harsh and crude,
All this leads me to conclude,
Rudyard Kipling, I'm a better man than you were.
Jeebus H. Krispy Kreme, for all of this current crop of nanny, touchy-feely bullshit about protecting and properly teaching children, the little shits just keep getting fatter and dumber.
THERE IS A FUCKING CORRELATION, PEOPLE.
Posted by: Emily at November 16, 2006 08:59 AMI can hear it now (thick German accent on):
"No, you dumkoff! It's 'Mares eat oats and DOES eat oats and little lambs eat ivy!'" (slams riding crop on desk) "You vill stay after school and write it 100 times until you LEARN IT! Don't you understand? Your child's life is at stake!" (thick German accent off)
please tell me that this story is from the Onion. If not, someone needs to be kicked square in the nuts for their stupidity.
Posted by: KG at November 16, 2006 10:28 AMJulie - and soon, it's "Little lambs eat ivy because the mares and does are evil capitalists who, by their greed, drive the price of oats too high for the lambs, who are undocumented visitors to this pasture exploited for their cheap wool."
And if you think that's satire, wait fifteen minutes or so and it will be pending legislation.
Posted by: Nightfly at November 16, 2006 10:34 AMJulie - HAHAHA!!
Posted by: red at November 16, 2006 11:08 AMNursery Rhymes? Seriously? THIS is the big failing of parents?
Well that just explains everything. Jeez!
Posted by: Shannon C. at November 16, 2006 11:22 AMMy parents never read me any nursery rhimes when I was a kid, but they sure did gimme a good spanking when I was bad.
Posted by: Val Prieto at November 16, 2006 11:37 AMYeah, like nursery rhymes are so freakin comforting:
"Rockabye baby, on the tree top
When the wind blows the cradle will rock
If the bough breaks the cradle will fall
And down will come baby, cradle and all."
Yeah, I'm sure babies rest easy knowing that they might fall out of a tree top.
Then there's the old "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down"one, which was about The Plague.
Maybe we better stick with the one about Jack who fractured his skull (we don't know what happened to Jill).
Geez, were these written by the Brothers Grimm??
"Sing" nursery rhymes? If my mother had sung me nursery rhymes I'd have probably been in jail by the age of 5 - for murder.
I can clear a room by singing - my mother can clear a whole house... sheesh.
Posted by: Kathy K at November 16, 2006 12:14 PMLast time I sang it brought people to tears. Also some bleeding ears and a possible hemorrhagic stroke.
Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at November 16, 2006 12:23 PMI have no words for this.
I am all in favor of reading to children - I was read to as a child and I think it went a long way to making me the intelligent, curious, and verbose person I am today. But. If parent's aren't gonna do it on their own, for freak's sake, do not use tax dollars to haul these idiots in for "parenting" classes.
I mean, as much as I rail about unprepared students in my classes...this idea just creeps the hell out of me.
The other thing about 3 year olds being taught to speak? Not all kids speak that early. Even some brilliant kids. Are the parents going to be clapped in the pokey 'cos their kid's slow to speak?
"Identify and correct the lives of kids who are likely to fail even before they are born." Hell, if they have that kind of ESP, they should be applying it to finding bin Ladin and getting rid of the terrorists.
I know this is Britain, but I just gotta say: yet another reason why I'm glad I never spawned.
Posted by: ricki at November 16, 2006 02:51 PMRicki, it's ok to spawn and leave for better pastures. This is Orwell writ Large, no doubt the Central Committee will convene to approve an official taxpayer-funded State Nursery Rhyme book...
Posted by: DirtCrashr at November 16, 2006 05:15 PMIs it a coincidence that Nanny Police State and Nancy Pelosi Speaker have the same initials?
Conservatives should make up their own politically incorrect nursery rhymes.
Posted by: Alan K. Henderson, Disgruntled Republican at November 16, 2006 10:23 PMKen, the only thing proven to be more universe-shattering than the banjo is your voice.
I could have sworn you had received the letter from Congress. Santions will be taken.
Posted by: Cullen at November 17, 2006 04:23 AM