Timothy Birdnow

A quick update on A Place 2 Grow snowflake academy. The owner was interviewed last night on Fox 2 and he (a middle aged man, which is vaguely creepy if you ask me) was quite angry about this. He said his school is a place to learn the ABC's and basic counting (the irony of the name he chose for the place - which mixes Arabic numerals with Roman letters as he substitutes 2 for the word to - seems to escape him) and that their job is no to teach gun safety. Well, nobody asked him to do that. But what he took upon himself was to demonize guns - which places them in a state which overshadows the three R's. Now all the kids in school are going to be more interested in firearms than in learning their letters.

The owner said he had to shut down the school's Facebook page because of the nasty commentary. He fails to realize that it was his nasty actions that caused that, not the mother and not those of us who have chronicled this. He said it's "hurtful" to be called a hater by so many people. (Isn't that a vintage liberal; he can be as mean and vicious as he wants but if he is called out on it he cries like a little baby.)

The fact of the matter is this man is a bully. He is trying to inculcate these children with his beliefs, and to do so he is willing to bully children who cannot defend themselves.

The owner complained that he isn't being treated fairly, that the child had "priors". What were those priors? Pointing his finger and saying "bang"! Pretending rulers and other objects were guns. I hate to tell this fellow but that is what children do - especially boys. Research has shown girls play with dolls - even when they have to make crude ones of their own, and boys play with guns, even if only their fingers.

this story in the Atlantic makes the point:

" The problem with Egalia and gender-neutral toy catalogs is that boys and girls, on average, do not have identical interests, propensities, or needs. Twenty years ago, Hasbro, a major American toy manufacturing company, tested a playhouse it hoped to market to both boys and girls. It soon emerged that girls and boys did not interact with the structure in the same way. The girls dressed the dolls, kissed them, and played house. The boys catapulted the toy baby carriage from the roof. A Hasbro manager came up with a novel explanation: "Boys and girls are different."

They are different, and nothing short of radical and sustained behavior modification could significantly change their elemental play preferences. Children, with few exceptions, are powerfully drawn to sex-stereotyped play. David Geary, a developmental psychologist at the University of Missouri, told me in an email this week, "One of the largest and most persistent differences between the sexes are children's play preferences." The female preference for nurturing play and the male propensity for rough-and-tumble hold cross-culturally and even cross-species (with a few exceptions—female spotted hyenas seem to be at least as aggressive as males). Among our close relatives such as vervet and rhesus monkeys, researchers have found that females play with dolls far more than their brothers, who prefer balls and toy cars. It seems unlikely that the monkeys were indoctrinated by stereotypes in a Top-Toy catalog. Something else is going on."

End excerpt.

But liberals like the A Place 2 Grow (sic) owner believe they can condition this out of children, make guns a taboo.

And guns in particular are a boy's natural inclination. This article makes that point:

"When my son Sam was a toddler, I banned toy guns and swords. I bought him a doll and a toy vacuum cleaner instead. Boys play aggressively, I believed, because they have so many aggressive-looking toys to play with. In my theory, a kid with fun and charming alternatives wouldn't miss the weapons, and he'd grow up to be a sweet and caring man to boot.

So I was surprised that Sam never once spontaneously cuddled his doll and only reluctantly joined me when I said brightly, "Let's give the baby a bottle!" And I was shocked when at ½, he picked up a cracker, bit off a corner, pointed the long end at me, and shouted, "Pow! You're dead!"

Many parents who think they've done all they can to make sure their children won't be shaped by gender stereotypes are mystified by such behavior. A friend who's a lawyer recalls when her 3-year-old daughter, in response to a "you can be anything you want" speech, said, "Then I'll be a princess, and you'll have to buy me lots of beautiful clothes."

End excerpt.

And as the author of this piece notes:

"And sometimes banning a toy can backfire, giving it a forbidden-fruit luster that makes it more appealing. Sam had amassed an arsenal fashioned from sticks -- a stick pistol, a stick rifle, a stick musket -- before I gave in and got him a six-shooter for his cowboy costume the Halloween he was 4. He played with that gun obsessively for six months, then ignored it except when other boys came over. His younger brothers, who are growing up in a house where guns are no longer anathema, have never shown much interest in them."

End excerpt.

See, it's NATURAL for boys to play gunfighting, or other rough-and-tumble games. Play is how children develop, and often play is how children work through things. Playing cowboys and Indians ( verboten these days, of course, as it is "culturally insensitive) doesn't mean a child will go out and shoot a native American, or scalp a white guy. Rather, it is a fantasy, and the children know it. They actually work through the violence and put it in it's proper place. I content that by restricting fantasy violence you encourage real violence in the growing adult. If you don't act it out as a child you will as an adult in real life.

So the owner's protestation rings false.

In fairness I will say that KTVI Fox2 in St. Louis has been guilty of some rather chippy efforts in the past. I know a fellow who was a foreign language teacher in high school. This guy is as straight an arrow as they come, but he made a big mistake. As a reward to his students for good work he would sometimes let them watch foreign language television for a few minutes at the end of class. He had tapes he would play for them. One time he put it on and left the room for a minute. to return to uproarious laughter. It seems the tape had a segment about naked skydivers. Embarrassed, he immediately turned it off. Unfortunately for him, an anchor at Fox2 had a child in the class who was struggling - and now it was a major news story! They tried to get this guy fired. He apologized and admitted it was wholly inappropriate, but it didn't matter. When the school's parents turned out in his defense the matter slowly died, but his reputation was tarnished and he had to endure endless stalking by the media. He was rather bitter about it.

So mischaracterization does happen. But given what we know in this case - and the news broadcasters interviewed the fellow in charge - I rather doubt this is being mischaracterized.

Liberals use bullying tactics to enforce silence in the service of promoting their beliefs. it is one of their prime tools. Unless we, the traditional Americans, fight back in kind we cannot hope to stem the tide of the radical left. This is clearly a less aggressive campaign against this preschool than, say, what was done to the pizza parlor where the employee, after saying they wouldn't cater ANY wedding, said they probably wouldn't cater a homosexual one. Remember that? They were driven out of business. It was a huge national news story. But I haven't heard a peep from any but the conservative media on the national scene with this.

Maybe A Place 2 Grow (sic) should issue an apology and admit their policy of zero "gun" tolerance is both unnatural and oppressive. That would be a good start.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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