Adriel Ickler

The Claim: Lack of Sleep Increases Weight

adriel — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:58:33 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/health/27real.html

Looking to lose a little weight? Portion size and exercise are crucial. But don’t forget about a good night’s rest.

Scientists have known for years that skimping on sleep is associated with weight gain. A good example was a study published in 2005, which looked at 8,000 adults over several years as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Sleeping fewer than seven hours a night corresponded with a greater risk of weight gain and obesity, and the risk increased for every hour of lost sleep.

More recent studies have taken a much closer look.

One published this year in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition took a small group of men and measured their food intake across two 48-hour periods, one in which they slept eight hours and another in which they slept only four. After the night of abbreviated sleep, the men consumed more than 500 extra calories (roughly 22 percent more) than they did after eight hours of sleep. A University of Chicago study last year had similar findings in both men and women: subjects took in significantly more calories from snacks and carbohydrates after five and a half hours of sleep than after eight and a half hours.

Some studies pin the blame on hormones, arguing that decreased sleep creates a spike in ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, and a reduction in leptin, which signals satiety. But more study is needed.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Losing sleep may increase appetite and, as a result, weight.

ANAHAD O’CONNOR scitimes@nytimes.com

Mice

adriel — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:17:04 +0000

Well I woke up this morning to scurrying. Rachel’s 3 mice got loose. Thankfully I have one of those humane mouse traps that just traps them and does not hurt them. I set it and started praying.

Update:

We caught them both. Without the traps. I found Sam, cornered him and caught him. Then when Seth woke up he saw Becca in the bathroom, then it went into my bedroom closet. I was pretty sure we were going to have to wait that one out, but Seth saw it, moved stuff, and caught it. Then it bit him and he let go, and I helped him and caught it.

Thank you Jesus for answering my prayer.

The New Intolerance

adriel — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:36:30 +0000

The New Intolerance

Fear mongering among elite atheists is not a pretty sight.

A Christianity Today editorial | posted 1/25/2007 08:32AM

Atheism is in trouble. You can tell because its most eloquent spokesmen are receiving icily critical reviews in the very mainstream press that Christians often dismiss for liberal bias.

Take, for example, the reviews of Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion that appeared in The New York Times, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s. No one would mistake those journals for members of the Evangelical Press Association, but the Times reviewer, science and philosophy writer Jim Holt, upbraided Dawkins for not fully appreciating the intellectual force of classical arguments for God, especially in light of the more sophisticated versions presented by today’s theistic philosophers: “Shirking the intellectual hard work,” Holt wrote, “Dawkins prefers to move on to parodic ‘proofs’ that he has found on the internet.”

“Those books really haven’t dealt with compelling evidence for the existence of God,” says Craig Hazen of Dawkins’s God Delusion and its close cousin, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation. Hazen, who directs Biola University’s M.A. program in Christian apologetics, told CT, “It’s a stronger form of fundamentalism than you can find anywhere.”

In the London Review of Books, Terry Eagleton complained that Dawkins reduces complex social problems to simplistic narratives in which religion is the villain. Take Northern Ireland. Dawkins thinks that “the ethno-political conflict” there “would evaporate if religion did.”

And Islamist terrorism? Dawkins apparently “holds, against a good deal of the available evidence, that Islamic terrorism is inspired by religion rather than by politics.”

But politically inspired Islamist terrorism provides the opening for this new antitheism, says Biola’s Hazen. “They are taking advantage of Islamic radicalism to tap into subterranean American fears about religion. There’s this notion that religious people will end up strapping dynamite to themselves, and this has got to be stopped.”

Reducing the wide spectrum of faiths to a single unfashionable color. Refusing to give the arguments for faith the respect they deserve. These are just the first in a litany of weaknesses in the current antitheism rhetoric.

Crowbar or baseball bat?

You can also tell that atheism is in trouble because it is becoming increasingly intolerant. In the past, atheists (or secular humanists or freethinkers) were often condescendingly tolerant of their less-enlightened fellow citizens. While they disdained religion, they treated their religious neighbors as good-hearted, if misguided.

But now key activists are urging a less civil approach. At a recent forum sponsored by the Science Network at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, the tone of intolerance reached such a peak that anthropologist Melvin J. Konner commented: “The viewpoints have run the gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?”

This newly aggressive mood (Dawkins calls religious education “brainwashing” and “child abuse”) is in danger of undermining civil society.

CT columnist David Aikman recently sounded a warning in a commentary for the Trinity Forum. Sam Harris, he noted, not only advocates a shift from viewing religion as harmless to treating it as dangerous, but he also wants to suppress religion. Aikman evoked images of Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia as the future of America—if liberals ever abandon true liberalism.

Make no mistake; it is that potential abandonment of liberalism that Harris and Dawkins are calling for. Dawkins told the forum in La Jolla, “I am utterly fed up with the respect that we—all of us, including the secular among us—are brainwashed into bestowing on religion.” In a blog post cited by Aikman, Harris wrote that he is as “wary” of his fellow liberals as he is of “demagogues on the Christian Right.”

If you plan to take on the system, you better get God to help.

adriel — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:26:20 +0000

http://www.alternet.org/story/146897/ex-cop_goes_rogue_on_the_drug_war,_tells_pot_smokers_how_to_outsmart_the_police/?page=entire

Ex-Cop Goes Rogue on the Drug War, Tells Pot Smokers How to Outsmart the Police

Police admired Barry Cooper when he lied to put drug dealers in prison. Then he flipped the game on them.

May 18, 2010 |

Barry Cooper should know better than anyone that you don’t mess with the police. He was once a cop, and a dirty one at that. But for the past three years, this former narcotics officer has been irritating the hell out of law enforcement, and he’s been steadily raising the stakes, damn the consequences.

It began in 2007, when Cooper gained some notoriety for releasing a self-produced DVD series called Never Get Busted Again. In it, Cooper shows pot smokers ways to outsmart the cops and their drug dogs. He says that if you have marijuana in the car, it’s a good idea to also bring along a cat, since that will distract even a drug dog. Got cops knocking on your door? Cooper says it’s best to lock it shut, and then tell them through a closed window that you won’t let them in without a warrant. The Never Get Busted DVDs have a low-budget charm, especially when Cooper uses footage taken from his own patrol-car camera to illustrate a point. Back then, in the mid ’90s, Cooper had short cropped hair. Cop mustache. He liked to lean into suspects and intimidate them until they did what he wanted. On his DVDs, Cooper will freeze the patrol-car video to point out the ways he got people to confess they were carrying drugs or money. (“Don’t ever touch your face when you are talking to a cop. It’s a sign that you’re lying.”)

Cooper dropped out of college at age 20 to join the police force in the small East Texas town of Gladewater, where he trained his own drug dog and started making big busts on the highway. Cooper was talented enough at seizing drugs that he was eventually hired by the Permian Basin Drug Task Force, a West Texas unit that became notorious for using unscrupulous tactics and was eventually shut down by the FBI in 1998. To Cooper, being on the task force was a great assignment; he learned all the ways to bend the law to rack up arrests and chase down suspects. Cooper was young, and he says the thing he loved most about being a cop was the adrenaline rush. One of his favorite things was to pull people over on the highway and then, just for kicks, incite a chase.

“They taught us at the academy that once we found drugs on someone, we should handcuff them immediately,” he says. “Instead, I would look at the suspect and say, ‘That’s some crack cocaine I found in your pocket. That’s a felony, you’re going to prison for life.’ And I would just turn around and walk to my patrol car to fill out my paperwork, giving the suspect time to run, and they often did. And then the foot chase would be on and the fight would ensue. And that would get my adrenaline fix.”

Some of Cooper’s former colleagues have become notorious. Cooper says one mentor was Barry Washington, who is named in a class-action lawsuit that’s been filed against the city of Tenaha, Texas. He’s accused of stopping dozens of black and Latino motorists, taking their cash and valuables and telling them to keep driving or face arrest. It’s an extreme version of asset seizure, a Texas law which allows police to take property they suspect was acquired illegally without charging anyone for a crime. In Tenaha, the city took more than $3 million in assets, and the DA is accused of giving $10,000 to Washington as a kickback for making the arrests, which is illegal. Cooper says Washington taught him all kinds of tricks to invent probable cause, like how to train a drug dog to false alert, as an excuse to search a vehicle.

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In a preview of the Never Get Busted Vol. 1: Traffic Stops DVD Canine section, Barry Cooper explains more about the habits & training of narcotic detector dogs. Check out more at www.nevergetbusted.com.

“I was the biggest asshole you would ever want to meet in a drug deal,” says Cooper. “I was doing illegal searches, such as making my dog false alert. Or I would say I had an informant to raid a house, when I never did. It’s called using a ‘ghost informant.’ It also includes stealing money. I never planted drugs, but I often threatened to, in order to scare citizens into becoming an informant.”

Cooper served eight years on the force, but after he was caught doing an overzealous search of a black man’s underwear, looking for drugs, his department was sued in federal court. The department settled, but Cooper left the force anyway, frustrated and angry that his superiors hadn’t defended him. He bounced around for a few years after that, opening several used-car lots, founding a church and even starting a cage-fighting business. But his life truly changed when he fell in love with his present wife, Candi, and began smoking the substance he’d spent years arresting people for.

“I literally spent the next year literally in her bedroom, her and I growing closer together, talking and smoking pot,” he says. “I’d never eaten a pizza in bed before in my life. We would order pizza and smoke marijuana, and the first thing I’d do was laugh and laugh and laugh. I couldn’t believe the joy I was feeling. Then that would turn into crying. Candi knew I had a lot of guilt. I would start talking to her about how bad I felt about the stuff I did to people for having this marijuana, which I was enjoying and was healing me. She would say, ‘Yeah. It’s rotten what you did, Barry. But you were doing what you thought was right. The important thing now is people can change, and people will forgive you.’?”

Cooper wanted to atone. So he created the Never Get Busted DVDs. He says he’s sold more than 50,000. But Cooper’s next big idea was even more outrageous. He decided he wanted to do more than just help potheads. He wanted to expose and punish the cops that put them in prison. And Cooper was just the guy to do it. He knew exactly how cops bend the law to put people in prison. So he decided to set up elaborate stings to catch cops doing illegal stuff, and film it for a reality TV show he wanted to create, called Kopbusters.

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Behind the scenes with Barry Cooper and Jello the pig.

In 2008, Cooper targeted cops in Odessa, where he once worked, for his first Kopbuster sting operation. He believed the cops were still corrupt there, and he had a plan to prove it. And Cooper had a secret weapon—an unlikely benefactor, one with deep pockets. His name was Raymond Madden, and he was a conservative middle-aged businessman who, for most of his life, trusted the police and voted tough on crime. Then his daughter Yolanda was arrested for having an ounce of methamphetamine and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Madden was sure the police had planted the drugs on her. He claims it was a botched attempt to frame a dealer known as the Ice Queen, who, like his daughter, had moved to Odessa from Fort Worth. Madden has evidence to show the police haven’t been straightforward, to say the least. They contended that when they stopped the car, Yolanda immediately started crying and told them where the drugs were. Raymond Madden was told a patrol-car video of the stop didn’t exist—but then, through his connections, Madden got a copy and it showed Yolanda had in fact denied she had drugs and did not give permission to search the car. Then, at her trial, a police informant testified that the police had made him plant the drugs on her.

Madden spent years trying to get activists and reporters interested in the case, to no avail. Then he came across Cooper on the Internet. “The first thing I saw of Cooper was his video,” says Madden. “I thought, ‘What a nut job this guy is!’ But I was desperate. I knew the truth, but I was running out of options.”

So Madden flew to East Texas with a suitcase full of papers related to the case. Cooper spent a few hours looking through them and became convinced that Yolanda had been framed. He told Madden that he couldn’t get Yolanda out of prison, but he could embarrass the police and get the press to look into her case. And, sure enough, an unlikely partnership was born. “Barry knew a lot of the players in this deal because he’d been involved in the Odessa scene,” says Raymond. “And he had a knowledge that I didn’t have. He knew how cops think. … I said, ‘Let’s do it.’?”

Observer original video of the Odessa Kopbuster sting.

Cooper’s plan went like this: He would set up a fake marijuana grow house and get the Odessa police to raid it illegally. Inside he’d put a single grow light over a couple of tiny Christmas trees—Cooper’s idea of a punch line. He’d invite local reporters along to catch the police looking like fools when they busted in. Madden spent more than $30,000 setting this all up. Cooper rented a house, wired it with four cameras, bought laptops to watch the video streaming live, hired a crew and a lawyer and put them all up in hotels while they set the trap. To bait the police, Cooper’s crew arranged for an anonymous letter to be sent to a local church, where they knew it would be promptly given to the police. The letter promised a house full of pot plants and $19,000 in drug money that would be gone by the next day. An anonymous tip alone is not enough for a search warrant; the police have to have hard evidence that something illegal is going on. Cooper was hoping they’d search the house illegally while he filmed everything.

So the letter went out. Fourteen hours later, Cooper and his team were sitting in the hotel room watching the webcams when the cops burst in the back door of the house with guns drawn. The police walked into the living room and stood in front of a poster Cooper hung on the wall that told them they’re on Kopbusters. They lowered their guns. One said, “We’ve been set up, huh.” Cooper jumped in the car to go confront the cops before they left. He was hyped up, swearing at traffic lights, clearly high on adrenaline, just like the old days. Finally, he and his camera crew arrived and jumped out of the car, yelling, “I’m Barry Cooper with Kopbusters. What are you doing in my house?”

Cooper ran into the street wearing a bright red T-shirt with “Free Yolanda” printed on it. He started hollering at the police about how they clearly lied to get a search warrant. A comical scene unfolded. At one point, the cop told him he would be arrested if he didn’t get out of the street, and said, “We’re cooperating here, we’re not trying to give no one no hassle.” To which Barry replied, “Yes you are! You planted drugs on Yolanda and she’s in prison because of it. That’s giving people a hassle!” Eventually, the local news crews arrived and the cops just left.

That night, the local TV news was full of coverage of the sting, with reporters examining whether it was legal to enter a home on such flimsy evidence. The police alienated even more residents when they threatened to subpoena the local paper, the Odessa American, to get the names of people posting anti-police comments on articles about the sting. An informal poll done by the paper found 79 percent thought the sting had exposed problems with the Odessa Police Department.

Raymond got the publicity he was after. A quarter-million people watched the raid on YouTube. Newspapers started covering the Yolanda Madden case. A year and a half later, a judge released Yolanda from prison, on the grounds that the prosecution had withheld documents that could have helped the defense. She’s now awaiting a retrial scheduled for July 26. For their part, the Odessa Police Department released a statement saying the house raid was a waste of law-enforcement time and taxpayer money. The police threatened to charge Cooper for staging the sting. But they never did.

After Odessa, Cooper went looking for more dirty cops to bust. Without Raymond’s money to spend, these were low-budget affairs. Cooper dressed up a duffel bag to look like something a drug dealer would tote around, including a crack pipe and $45 in cash, hoping cops would find it and take the money. He did this sting three times. In one case, the officer brought the bag to the station as he was required to. In another, Cooper put the bag on the edge of school grounds in Florence at midnight; the spot was in a clearing that was easy to film from a distance, but Cooper now acknowledges it wasn’t a good spot. He says the cop who found that bag treated it like a possible bomb, calling in backup and watching the bag for close to an hour.

The third time, Cooper shot video of a cop in Liberty Hill apparently taking the money and throwing the bag in a dumpster. He brought the video to the police chief, who seemed underwhelmed but did thank Cooper on camera for bringing it to his attention, adding that “watch groups are necessary.”

On Feb. 25, Cooper posted the video of the Liberty Hill sting on YouTube, with the title Finders Keepers. Six days later, the cops struck back. Williamson County police arrested Cooper, and they did something police almost never do: raided his home on a misdemeanor charge. The charge was: “false report to a peace officer,” for a phone call made to police about the duffel bag left at the school. Cooper’s wife Candi, his 14-year-old daughter and his 8-year-old stepson were home during the raid. Cooper was in handcuffs, but he wasn’t broken. He was sure he knew what this was all about.

KopBusters Liberty Hill Sting–”Finders Keepers”

“I talked to those cops like they needed to be talked to,” Cooper says. “After they had pointed those guns at my wife, I said, ‘Before any of you motherfuckers are going to search any bit of my house, you are going to have to listen to me.’ One of them tried to quiet me down. And I said, ‘Motherfucker, are you kidding me? This is a misdemeanor raid, I’m in handcuffs, are you kidding me?’ So they stood down, and I went one by one, shaming every one of them … explaining to them that we were nonviolent, that this is activism, and we know this is retaliation.”

Cooper proved his point about what police are capable of, in a way he never hoped for. The raid squad included narcotics officers, who obviously hoped to find drugs in the house, but all they found was enough pot for a misdemeanor possession charge. On March 3, Cooper went to jail for two nights. The police also referred Cooper and Candi to Child Protective Services, saying they found a photo showing they were giving pot to their 17 year-old daughter who, Cooper says, is in college and not living at home. CPS dismissed the case after one visit, but the investigation took its toll. Two weeks ago, Zach, Cooper’s stepson, visited his father for spring break and hasn’t been able to return. Zach’s father heard about the raid and filed for custody.

At first, Cooper told me he would keep on stinging cops, just not with anonymous tips. But then he called to tell me he wanted to talk. As soon as we sat down for the interview, it was clear that the experience of losing Zach had stripped away his cocky, unstoppable gusto. “Our son being taken from us was so hard,” he said, choked up, tears flowing. “So for the safety of my family I’m not doing any more cop stings. I never would have done bag drops if I would have known it would have led to this. I’m looking forward to getting my son back. Getting him back. After that, I don’t know, we’ll see.”

Kopbusters was over. Cooper had thought his first-hand knowledge of the system would keep him a step ahead. But the cops didn’t need an elaborate ruse to sting Cooper. They didn’t need to plan for months and set a trap and get it all on video. They just needed a reason to come bursting in the front door.

How the public school system crushes souls

adriel — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:22:37 +0000

Recently I had a discussion with several parents who are fed up with the public school system, their experiences confirm what I found here:

http://steve-olson.com/how-the-public-school-system-crushes-souls/

“It has been said that whoever asks about our childhood wants to know something about our soul. Society must take time to inquire.” – Isa Helfield 2001

Let me bare my soul for you.

When you read about the problems with American education, you usually read statistics about literacy and dropout rates. But those statistics don’t do the subject justice because the problem with American education is a human story. Every dropout is a human being, every illiterate teenager is an individual, every teen that commits suicide was somebody’s baby, and every kid that’s doing 20 to life is a real breathing person – full of potential.

People are too quick to criticize parents, teachers, administrators, and students. The failure of government education isn’t theirs alone. It’s every American’s fault because we continue to allow the unrestrained growth of government schooling. Haven’t we learned anything from our own experiences in government schools?

At the end of this post, I will list some books on this subject, followed by a list of links about this subject. But before that, I will share some thoughts and stories that expose the American K-12 meat grinder.

The Girl Who Sat in a Bathroom Stall for a Year

My wife is a beautiful, capable, intelligent, self-confident, ambitious, entrepreneurial woman. She had all these qualities as a child as well. During her senior year of high school, she spent her lunch hour hiding in a bathroom stall. She didn’t eat lunch for a year. Why? Because no one sat with her in the lunchroom and sitting alone in a bathroom stall ashamed and frightened was better than public humiliation. Don’t think that she is an isolated case, she isn’t. I just stumbled across this last week.

For a significant percentage of kids in our government school system, survival is the only goal. Based on my experience, I’d guess 10 to 20% of government school students suffer from severe psychological and emotional abuse. Smaller percentages suffer physical and sexual abuse.

My wife and I both describe our years in the government school system as a prison sentence. My wife kept a running countdown of days left in government school, like chicken scratches in a prison cell.

I asked her to write a blog post about her experiences with government education, but she won’t do it because thinking about it is too painful and depressing. She describes it with one simple word – horrible.

My wife and I were in the same grade and attended the same Jr. and Sr. High in Bloomington Minnesota from 1981 – 1987. We didn’t know each other when we were students. During our school years I had no idea she existed. She was ‘a nobody’.

I would have been ‘a nobody’ too, but I decided after 18 months inside that I wasn’t going to allow the public education caste system to brand me ‘a nobody’ and I became a highly visible renegade burnout. She knew about me. In her yearbook she wrote “biggest dirtball druggie in the whole school” next to my picture. She said the only time I communicated with her during those six years was when I bumped into her in the hall and growled at her like an animal.

Now before you jump to the conclusion that we were in a rotten school in a poor school district and had screwed up parents, let me set the record straight. During the 1980s, Minnesota had the #1 or #2 educational system in the US (they still do). Within Minnesota, Bloomington was one of the top two school districts in the state. The schools we attended (Olson Jr. High and Jefferson Sr. High) were the best schools in the district. So our example comes from the best of the best of the best government schools in the United States. We both came from Beaver Cleaver families, with adequate income, no divorce, abuse, or family violence.

My wife and I have talked about our negative experiences for eighteen years and neither of us believes we learned anything of value within the system. Everything worth knowing we learned outside of school.

I used to skip school and sit in the public library and read all day. I have an insatiable desire to learn but I couldn’t learn in school. The political, social, and sexual tension in school was too distracting.

I was born with this intense desire to learn and grow, but sometime in the second grade, school became an obstacle to learning. I felt thwarted at every turn by fellow students, teachers, and meaningless assignments. It’s hard to learn when you are constantly afraid of having your head flushed in the toilet.

The 10-Year Old College Prodigy

My father is an autodidact engineer. We had computers (TRS-80) and teletypes in our home since 1977. I taught myself to program Level II Basic at eight years old. By 10, I was hacking into commercial programs to improve them. By 11, I was enrolled and succeeding in college level programming classes at North Dakota State University.

Junior High Computer Class Failure

Two years later in Jr. High, I took an Apple II computer class. On the first day of class, I looked through the syllabus, found the last lesson, loaded the 5 1/4 inch floppy, and completed it. I beamed with pride and arrogance. The teacher looked at my program, turned bright red, yanked me out of my seat by my ear, and I fell to the floor humiliated. He pointed to the door and said, “get out of my classroom.” He forced me to sit in the hall the rest of the semester and failed me.

I didn’t complain to my parents or the administration, because they never listened before, so I had no reason to believe they would listen this time. That day ended my stint in education – I showed up – sometimes – but I never returned mentally. So even though I have a diploma, it’s fair to say my formal education ended in the 8^th grade. I never bothered trying to please the system again and I checked out of programming and computers for 15 years. I contracted a 15 year case of the F*ck Its (A term my brother learned in AA for an attitude that leads people to fall off the wagon).

This single event didn’t push me over the edge. It was years of institutionalization and constant emotional, psychological, and physical harassment. From 2^nd to 8^th grade, I was harassed for having the wrong haircut, the wrong jeans, the wrong belt, the wrong look on my face, the wrong brothers, the wrong parents, and the wrong attitude. The harassment ended in 8^th grade when I fought back violently. It worked, earning me a lasting respect. At the time, I believed it was my only viable option.

I spent most of my life believing I was defective

I believed I was defective until recently. I thought the reason I couldn’t function in school was due to some inherent incurable defect. But in my thirties, I discovered that I wasn’t defective, I was just different. Three years ago I read this article from Josh Shaine at MIT and it changed my life. His story was just like mine (except the expensive prep school part).

Government school doesn’t work well for kids that are different

I know there are oodles of success stories from government schools. I understand the system works great for some people. But what if you aren’t one of those people? What if your spirit won’t allow you to follow directions? What if your heart forces you to be different? Then what?

Why are you throwing your life away?

If you conform, the system rewards you. If you rebel, it destroys you and someone in authority will inevitably ask you this question…

Why are you throwing your life away?

Think about the implication of that question. Your body and soul in the back of a garbage truck on the way to the dump.

I’m not angry or bitter

You may think I sound bitter about all this. I’m not. I am grateful for my experience because I believe it’s my purpose in life to tell these stories. I am never going to stop talking about it. The emotional abuse of children in our government schools is shameful and the story must be told.

The Intergenerational Code of Silence

Few kids tell adults what really goes on within the school building. Did you? When you finally got out of school and went to college or work, most of you wanted to forget about the place.

A famous comedian said “you know who scares the sh!t outta’ me? Those f..king people that liked high school. What are they sadists – masochists – what the f… Did they go to the same freaking place I did?”

When we have children, we don’t want to tell them about our experiences, because if we told them the truth – the horror stories and the wasted time – we’re afraid they’ll use it as an excuse to fail. Besides, if you admitted the truth about your experiences, how could you justify putting them on the yellow bus every morning.

Is it just part of growing up?

When I talk to people about this, most don’t want to hear it. And the most frequent response is, “Everything you’re talking about is just a normal part of growing up.”

Emotional abuse and self-denial is not normal childhood development.

There is nothing normal about enduring years of emotional, psychological, and physical abuse in a government institution. I have met dozens of home-schooled kids and they don’t suffer from these problems. When I talk to them, they stand upright, look me in the eye, and speak confidently. Many of the government-schooled kids I meet won’t look me in the eye. They hang their heads and speak in muffled tones I can’t understand. Many of them act like abused puppies. The contrast is astonishing.

What’s normal about a homely awkward girl walking into the lunchroom and hearing three hundred kids chant her name, “Trina, Trina, Trina, Trina, Trina, Trina, Trina,” until she breaks down sobbing and runs from the lunchroom? I saw it and I am sad to say I participated in it.

Things are Different Today – Yep – It’s Worse

When my sons were born, I wanted to believe that things were different today, and I discovered that they’re worse. I met a local mother with teenagers several months ago while I was anguishing over what to do with my son’s education. I asked if her kids were in the local public school district (which has an outstanding reputation). She said, “We pulled ‘em out. It was horrible.” I prodded her for more information. She spent most of her nights with her kids trying to correct the damage done at school earlier in the day. She said there was a lack of basic decency and respect throughout the institution.

She said the students intentionally elected an obese, awkward girl as homecoming queen as a joke. Funny huh?

Her kids said that racism was so rampant that life was intolerable. Racism is something I didn’t have to deal with. Sure racism was there, but there wasn’t any racial conflict. I’ve read racial conflict is a constant problem in many of today’s government schools.

About a year ago, while I was planning my writing projects, I contacted my 12^th Grade English teacher. He was one of the few teachers that treated me like a free spirit instead of a caged animal. He was one of those teachers that fought the status-quo, and I respect him for it. I asked him what had changed about his students over the past 25 years. This is a paraphrased summary of what he said:

Critical thinking skills have been absent from my classes for years. Kids used to read the book “Catcher in the Rye” and then describe what Holden Caulfield meant to them. Today, they read it and expect me to teach them what it means. Not just most kids, all kids. I haven’t seen a critical thinker in my classroom in five years.

The top students learn the system. If they are free thinkers, they hide it, because they’re after top grades and independent thinking is too risky and unpredictable.

What’s different today is the nature of the mediocre and poor students. They don’t confront and challenge us like they used to. They seem brain dead and indifferent.

Our zero tolerance policies have created a larger gulf between the students and us. From the late sixties until the mid-nineties, the students and their culture were somewhat accessible. Today they completely shut us out.

The Poisonous Pedagogy

Yesterday my 4 year old son asked, “You never say no to a teacher, right dad?” I asked where he heard that. His Montessori pre-school teacher said it. This is an example of what Alice Miller calls the Poisonous Pedagogy. I didn’t answer my son’s question directly. But I believe we should teach our children to question authority and refuse to follow blindly. I plan to talk to the teacher and the administrator of the school. I realize the need for an orderly classroom, but she can maintain control without demanding blind obedience.

The Gifted and Talented

We have a new label in our schools called – Gifted and Talented. I believe everyone is gifted and talented, so I don’t care for the label, but… The gifted child learns advanced material earlier than the mean. And they have strengths and weaknesses like everyone else. They tend to be highly emotional and in some ways, it is a social and learning disability. Patricia A. Schuler writes about the high risk facing this group of kids. She quotes the triggers as “lack of intimacy and rejection.” So these kids need intimacy and acceptance? Does anyone believe they’ll find these qualities in our government schools? I don’t.

What is the solution?

So let’s say you agree that government school may be the worst possible place for kids to learn. Then what is the solution?

Is it private religious schools?
No. Most of the above problems are present in the parochial schools – especially large ones. The biggest benefit the parochial school offers is the ability to easily remove abusive kids and teachers. But the smart covert tormenters will survive. The larger the institution, the harder it is to expose them.

Can we reform the existing system, minimizing these problems?
No. As long as you put hundreds or thousands of kids in a large government institution, the Lord of the Flies scenario is inevitable. Institutionalizing large numbers of children before they form a moral foundation will always lead to abuse.

Possible solutions:

Home-schooling – Millions of people are home-schooling in the US and it grows every year. It isn’t just for religious fundamentalists anymore. 25% of home-schoolers are non-religious. This is the best solution if you can do it.
Small neighborhood based co-ops – Small cooperatives of parents and professionals creating home based neighborhood-learning centers.
Small entrepreneurial schools – This is what I have opted for with my 4-year-old. He will be attending a small private Montessori school, with three teachers serving 20 students in a single room.

How is the Post Related to Personal Freedom?

My personal development program directly attacks the fears I learned during my stint in government school.

Fear of criticism
Fear of failure
Fear of success or fear of responsibility
Fear of rejection

My personal development program also attacks this belief which is clearly taught within our government schools.

My happiness and success are dependent on another person’s evaluation of me and my performance

This is an extremely damaging belief that I work hard to eradicate. As long as I continue to look outside myself for validation, I will be dependent and addicted.

A little controversy

A post over at ww-success.com cites the statistic that only 18 out of 100 American high school freshmen will earn a college degree within six years of graduating from high school. He goes on to cite statistics that show the relationship between education and income. I don’t dispute either of these statistics. He then makes the argument that the economic future of our nation depends on increasing the percentage of students that graduate from college. Based on our current system, he’s right.

But why do we need to keep this system? Our current government schooling system causes this problem. It’s designed so 20% rise to the top and the rest fall out to the factory floor. We have an antiquated system designed to supply labor to an industrial economy that doesn’t exist anymore.

As a society, shouldn’t we question how we discriminate between job applicants?

Are high school and college graduates more productive or is that assumption prejudicial?
Couldn’t prejudice be the root cause of the average income disparity between various educational levels? Similar to disparities between sexes and races?
If 82% of children will never graduate from college, why don’t we open more doors to them and see if they can make it? Wouldn’t that be in everyone’s best interest?
What could it hurt?
What are we afraid of?
Why punish and discriminate against people that don’t make it in formal schools?
What purpose does it serve?

“one of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he’s produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and through stock options is no doubt much richer than I’ll ever be.” – Peter Norvig in Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Test taking is the most valuable skill you can posses in school
My brother-in-law is a doctor and a successful student. He says that test taking is the most important skill necessary to succeed in college. I know he’s right. But what does that say about college? Who’s going to pay anyone to take a test? What does a test measure? It measures your ability to memorize stuff. Who is paid to memorize stuff? Actors? Pilots? I don’t know. I’ve never been paid to memorize stuff.

The most valuable skill you can possess in life

The most valuable skill you can possess is the ability to acquire useful knowledge and apply it to solve real problems. Once you own this skill, you have all the education you’ll ever need.

More History and Background

An Irish commenter on Reddit asked if American government schools are as insane as they are portrayed in movies and TV.

No, the stuff you see on TV and most movies is mild. The only two movies I’ve seen that come close to modern American youth culture are Kids (Warning – This Movie is Extremely Disturbing) and Over the Edge. But the last twenty minutes of Over the Edge isn’t accurate – but everything before they burn down the school is an exact time capsule of American youth culture in the late seventies and early eighties.

How I became so passionate about this subject

Since my first son was born in 2002, I’ve gone through a 4-year period of growth, healing, and introspection. His birth changed me forever. His birth got me asking questions about how my life became what it became. One of the things I needed to know was where all these crazy insecurities and fears came from. I looked to my parents and I think some of it came from them, but not most of it. I wasn’t born with these crazy fears. I joined 12 step programs. I dug into self-help books. I immersed myself in the work of Jung. But I never found the root cause of the baggage until I found this book – The Underground History of American Education. I read the online version here. After reading the book, I saw reality through a new lens. My life made sense again. I don’t agree with everything in the book, but about 70% of it directly applied to my educational experience.

I was also terrified after reading this book. People are going to think I’m nuts if I talk about it. What am I going to do about my kid’s education? Am I going to home school them? What am I going to do? I was flummoxed.

My wife and I had discussions over several nights and we decided that we would do anything legal to keep them out of government school.

But I still question the decision because I want my sons to be ‘normal.’ If I send them to some alternative school, will they hate me? If I homeschool them, how will they learn to pick up girls? Will my neighbors think I’m a freak? Constant questions enter my mind.

I’ll share the results of our journey on this blog as it progresses. So subscribe to my RSS feed for easy updates. If you don’t have RSS, get my feed via email.

Trust the people, give them choices, and the school nightmare will vanish in a generation. – John Taylor Gatto

Roe in Roe Vs Wade:

adriel — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:40:51 +0000

Apparently the plaintiff in the landmark case that denied the states the right to make laws about killing unborn babies based on local representation has never even had an abortion, and would like the case re-heard.

What I do not understand is this:

Why can a woman go to jail for selling her body for sex, for smoking a joint in her bedroom, but killing a baby is her right to privacy? When killing the baby actually hurts someone ELSE and the other two really just hurt her?

And if you have any question on whether or not a little fetus with hands and a head is a baby, you need to study anatomy more, seriously.

Her affidavit is in pdf form at the bottom.

http://www.operationoutcry.org/pages.asp?pageid=27776

Jesus is Real

adriel — Sun, 16 May 2010 11:28:47 +0000

This is important. God is not some fairy tale we tell to children like Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. He is real and he is moving all the time. Maybe you have not seen it. There are 6 billion people in the world, if you started now, and took 10 minutes to meet each one, it would take you 190 years to meet every person. How arrogant to claim that you know whether or not God is moving in peoples lives for real. When I pray he answers. I know he is real. I both love and fear him. Much as my son loves me and climbs on my lap, but if he loses his temper and starts beating on his sister, he has much to fear. Even as gracious as my punishments are, I make sure they are not pleasant. I even show grace sometimes and allow him to repent. But at some point children do not learn without some fear. Even if the punishment is no Nintendo DS for 24 hours. (Believe me he would rather have a spanking). We need to know that we serve a God of power. We do not serve some tiny helpless God that cries himself to sleep at night over the state of the world. We serve an AWESOME God of infinite power, that can do whatever he wants. We are where we are because of our sin. What is our biggest sin? Our lack of Faith.

Faith:

This is a good one, what is faith? Is it believing something can happen? Well that is one definition, but read the gospels with this thought in mind. Faith is believing in someone. Jesus was referring to God. Faith is believing that God can do anything, and that he will intervene on your behalf if you need it and you serve him. Faith is trusting God to pay your bills, and not going to a seminar on how to make more money. Faith is doing what you know to be right even if it may cost you your job, believing that God will protect those who obey him. Faith is trusting God with your health. I know the religion of medicine says you must see a doctor for your health, but I propose that you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Am I saying I will not take my kids to the doctor? No. we have CHIP, and if they get sick and do not show signs of recovery, I will take them. But I will not trust a doctor with my child’s safety, and if they try and kill them like they have done so many others, I will put my foot down. My ex wife is dating a man who lost his brother to the incompetence of a hospital about 20 years ago. (He died of gangrene, which he contracted IN THE HOSPITAL due to a lack of sterilization on the part of the hospital staff). I suspect that the doctor was not even fired. I am not saying never use a doctor, I am saying trust GOD to save you, even if he uses a doctor, and NOT THE DOCTOR. (I have plenty of evidence that doctors are about as trustworthy as auto mechanics). Am I saying that auto mechanics are all bad? No. But you would be wise to know a little bit about how a car works before taking your car in to the shop. The same is true for your body. You should pray that God protects you from the doctors.

The bible I have actually says if any is sick among you, they should take them to the elders of the church, and the prayer offered in faith will heal the sick. This widely held belief is now pretty much illegal in America, enforced by CPS without due process. And if someone from CPS does happen upon this, I do have insurance for my children, and I will take them to the doctor if they get sick and do not show signs of recovery, I am being honest when I say that.

War:

I have the firm belief that faith in Jesus and war are incompatible. If God is real, he can defend you if he chooses, and if he does not, then it is better to die with a clear conscience, than live as a murderer. And make no mistake, war is murder. Jesus loves the troops, but he hates war.

The God I serve is all powerful, and does not live in the box so many have tried to put him in. My first duty is to find out what he wants me to do, and my second duty is to do it.

Mark 12:

The Greatest Commandment

28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.e 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’f 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’g There is no commandment greater than these.”

32“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

34When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Perhaps hell has been misrepresented…

adriel — Sun, 16 May 2010 10:47:40 +0000

This makes much more sense to me than the modern view of hell. I especially cannot reconcile the God of love with a God who will eternally torment the wicked. Also, I like the point about eternal separation from God vs. Omnipresence. How can you be eternally separated from God, if he is everywhere, without ceasing to exist?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationist

I have always had a problem with “hell”

I was reading Luke, and came across this:

http://niv.scripturetext.com/luke/12.htm

4“I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.

So I decided to look up hell, I clicked on the greek:

http://biblos.com/luke/12-5.htm

And found that hell is actually Gehenna. So I flipped over to Wikipedia to look up Gehenna, hoping to find an objective opinion, and not one molded to fit whatever mainstream religions teach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna

That is where I came across Annihilationism.

I have a few opinions now.

When you die, your place will be determined by your life, paradise or Hades. You will remain in one of those two places until final judgment. then you will either be destroyed (eternal separation from God which would HAVE to be an end to existence because God is everywhere). Or raised to life in your resurrected and immortal body. I believe that people who have lived a miserable existence and then repent at the last minute would go to Hades, which is the holding place for judgment. I may be wrong about some or all of this, but it is my current belief. And it is also possible that God can allow repentance in Hades, and once they have paid the price for their wickedness, they will be raised at the final Judgment. Those who cannot repent even in Hades, are lost forever and it is just time to let them go. One difference between this belief and the catholic belief in purgatory is that you cannot pay a priest to expedite the process or affect the outcome.

This solves many problems:

1) The problem of a God of love keeping a personal torture dungeon where they suffer for all of eternity.
2) The problem of saved vs unsaved, and keeping salvation vs losing it. You are given all the tools you need to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, if you fail or refuse, there is a price to pay.
3) The problem of why should I deny myself good things if grace just lets me do whatever I want and “repent” on my deathbed. Seriously, even if Hades is a second chance, you do NOT want to go there.
4) The problem of a man living a wicked evil life and “repenting” at the last minute, never having worked out that repentance.
5) It is very just. A soul is given a lifetime to repent, and God gives them every possible chance to find redemption. If they refuse and refuse, it is probably just hopeless. Some people will never serve God, no matter WHAT. They will sit in Hades cursing God the whole time for how evil they claim he is.

Obviously I am just forming this, and still praying for wisdom on the matter. In talks with people hell keeps coming up, and my previous answer is “It honestly does not matter, if you sin you will be punished, if you obey you will be rewarded, so obey” But then I decided to pray for an answer, and I think this is the beginning of my answer.

Protected: 5/9 – Preliminary settlement agreement:

adriel — Sun, 09 May 2010 12:53:51 +0000

Protected: 5/7 – HOME!!

adriel — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:09:49 +0000