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England's National Health Service is urging parents to get their children vaccinated for the flu ahead of the holiday season to protect grandparents and other vulnerable relatives:
Flu vaccines administered through a nasal spray rather than an injection have been rolled out this autumn for two and three-year-olds, and children in reception class and years one to four in primary school. Children are super-spreaders because of the greater likelihood of them contracting flu at nursery or school, where germs are passed on at a rapid rate. But only 18% of school-age children have had the nasal spray immunisation, according to the latest figures.
Prof Keith Willett, NHS England's medical director for acute care, said: "Flu can be spread more easily by children, especially to vulnerable relatives such as older grandparents, those with heart or lung conditions and pregnant family members. Last year, millions of people missed out on their free vaccination and yet it's one simple, common sense step to help us all stay healthy this winter."
With less than a month until Christmas, the NHS is urging parents to book their children in for the free vaccination to help curb infection over the festive season, when family get-togethers can spread the infection.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror (a tabloid) claims that Russian agents are spreading anti-vaccination propaganda in the UK in an effort to destabilize the country:
Russian cyber units are spreading false information about flu and measles jabs in the UK, experts warn. [Ed's Note: The current flu immunisation is applied via a nasal spray - there are no 'jabs' involved.] Vladimir Putin is believed to want to erode trust in US and European governments. The state-sponsored units are spreading the lies on social media to destabilise Britain, it is claimed. The Kremlin has previously been accused of attempting to influence Brexit and Scottish independence. Now, it is feared it is trying to create distrust over flu jabs and the MMR measles vaccine.
[...] Security services are so concerned over the threat to public health and security that Government departments have been ordered to monitor social media and flag up risky articles. Health chiefs have had emergency meetings over the spread "fake news" over vaccination campaigns. [...] We can reveal public health officials are investigating whether an outbreak of measles last week in Liverpool and Leeds was fuelled by parents not vaccinating children due to "false information read on the internet".
Also at BBC. BBC's collection of newspaper covers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:03PM (52 children)
They exhaust them. My kids don't have sticky fingers or put them in their mouth anymore. I managed to parent them out of that behavior by being consistent in my messaging. If you aren't consistent, children either don't understand what you are telling them or do it out of spite. Of course, you have to be disciplined in your use of positive and negative reinforcement, along with positive and negative punishment. It seems to me that most parents don't do that anymore. The reason I suspect is that with mom and dad both working jobs now (or sbsentee) and less support systems available, that leaves the parents with less energy to properly parent. Parenting is work, but most people not actively doing it seem to forget that, pretend it isn't, or don't realize it is.
Yes, I understand the concept of picking your battles, but if you can't really fix the big stuff due to the above, you can't ever get to the small stuff.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:36PM (51 children)
Discipline is unpleasant. People get uncomfortable seeing it and dishing it out. Some parents are blessed with kids that need relatively little, then assume that all other kids have similar personality.
There exist busybodies who will actually call 911 over normal discipline. Nobody seems to call due to lack of discipline, which is certainly a form of abuse. The mind craves order and a role in the world, and discipline helps to provide that.
Well-intentioned parents won't always be perfect. Discipline can get screwed up. An "oops" can easily lead to abuse charges in the cruel machinery of our criminal justice system.
Kids get torn from their families. This is typically far more traumatic than the original "abuse" ever could be. Kids get scarred for life. Sex abuse is pretty common in foster homes. Serious violence of a non-sexual nature is common too.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday November 27 2017, @10:06PM (40 children)
> Discipline is unpleasant.
Too many idiots see enforcing discipline as a failure on their part. "I should be able to talk them out of this behavior". It's reinforced by silly books and media ideas, and in totalitarian places, by the fear that witnesses will call the authorities on you at the first chance, to prove themselves to be good citizens. Children are also free to be brats at school, without noticeable consequences (behave, you have to be in school, misbehave, you get expelled and get vacation, it's fucking upside-down!).
Nobody wants to be seen failing at trying to enforce discipline, it's better to blame children, their friends, and their teachers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday November 27 2017, @10:28PM (38 children)
Exactly, and what this all adds up to should be the realization that we need to, as a society, abandon this idea of people raising children.
Think about all the other activities in society that we've determined are usually best left to professionals: growing food, building buildings and bridges, building or repairing HVAC units, etc. Sometimes amateurs will do some things out of personal interest, and may do a great job at them too (or not), but the vast majority of people will instead leave these tasks to trained professionals. So why do we have this idea that child-rearing should be something done by rank amateurs who have little or no training, and frequently zero experience? Even worse, people of all different genetic backgrounds are breeding together, so there's no quality control whatsoever.
The book "Brave New World", written in 1949, shows what we should aim for as a society: reproduction is controlled by the state, done in factories using fine-tuned industrial processes to minimize problems due to variations and imperfections in biology, with humans designed for the role in society, and finally with them being raised by trained professionals who themselves were specifically bred for the task. This also allows society to create the optimal number of new humans, instead of having either shortages or surpluses that we get when we allow people to reproduce based on their own whims. Instead of taking on an unpaid full-time job of child-rearing, adults should concentrate on living and enjoying their own lives, and contributing to society and the economy in the profession that's best-suited for them, without worrying that enjoying relations with other adults will create an accidental new human that gives them massive legal and financial liability and even in the best case will consume all their free time and then some.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:12AM (37 children)
FTFY
I realize, and enjoyed the fact, that most of your statement is snark.
But I think you missed a key point. By ignoring child care as part of
having a healthy society (e.g. having double income be the norm for
families and discounting parenting because there is not an easily
quantifiable affect on GDP), we have already decided as a society
not to raise children.
We should perhaps think of real solutions to this problem as opposed
to your rather amusing :) snark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @01:23AM (7 children)
There is no secret, no need to figure out much anything new. Inequality must go down, lack of sufficient income is the biggest driver of stress and fear which creates most of our modern problems.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:21AM (6 children)
A typical non sequitur. What you earn in a year is deeply relevant to your "sufficient income". What Bezos earns in a year is not.
The game here is that income and wealth inequality are here to stay because some people want wealth, are willing to sacrifice a lot to get it, and are competent at acquiring wealth, while other people aren't. The only way to achieve absolute wealth equality is to fuck over the people who produce and are competent. So some wealth inequality is desirable. I have yet to hear why the current level of wealth inequality is supposed to be a bad thing.
Similarly, stress and fear are here to stay because some people need that. They will find something to stress and fear over even no matter how imaginary it happens to be. I consider "inequality" to be of that nature.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:05AM (5 children)
It all depends on what people with piles of money are doing with their piles of money. I'm sure there are some who spend it all on hedonism. We probably don't hear about them as much. Then there are those who choose to risk it on something that may have broader impact like SpaceX/Tesla. That's fine by me. What I don't want are George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, the Clinton Foundation, etc., etc. buying politicians and crafting media disinformation campaigns to further their own interests. I am also not thrilled about people like Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and Bill Campbell conspiring to screw over employees for a buck (I am referring to the Silicon Valley "Techtopus" wage-fixing case).
Having a pile of money is OK. Wielding it as a weapon or worshipping it as a god is not. There are plenty of examples of bad behavior occurring with inequality at current levels. Inequality may not be the cause of such problems, but it does enable and amplify them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:14PM (4 children)
So what? Spending it on hedonism means they don't have it anymore and the wealth has moved on to someone else.
I see a considerable lack of relevance to inequality here. Let us keep in mind that a fair number of people and organizations don't use their own wealth for this purpose, but other peoples' wealth, such as financial institutions or government agencies. CalPERS (pension fund for California public employees) or the CIA don't come about due to extremely wealth people and hence wouldn't be affected by attempts to reduce or eliminate inequality.
I disagree. It's not very impressive as a weapon. And if someone wants to build an expensive altar to money and grovel before some pieces of shiny paper, let them do it. There are actual problem in the world that we probably should concern ourselves with instead.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:46PM (3 children)
So what? Spending it on hedonism means they don't have it anymore and the wealth has moved on to someone else.
I don't think he was complaining about that one.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:52PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)
No, I think you're misunderstanding. Right after he listed that point, he mentioned the ones like Musk with Tesla/SpaceX, and it was clear he thought that was a positive. *Then* he got to the stuff he didn't like: Soros/Kochs/etc., and then after that the tech billionaires who screw over their employees. It's pretty clear to me that he thought the hedonist spending was somewhat neutral. He was complaining about the Clintons and Kochs, not the hedonists and obviously not the Musks.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:59PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:05AM (21 children)
Child care was a big problem even before double incomes became normal in western societies. Lots of kids grew up in abusive or neglectful households; it wasn't unusual at all. Parents beat them, parents were drunks, parents had too many kids and ignored them, etc. The idea that somehow there was some wonderful era where kids all were raised in healthy, non-dysfunctional families is nothing more than a myth. Childhood has been a terrible experience for countless children (especially poor ones) ever since civilization was invented.
As for double incomes, that *should* be the norm, otherwise one person (usually the female) is taking a *huge* risk that the relationship will work out and not result in divorce. Looking at today's stats, that's a foolish risk to take since roughly half of marriages fail. And the high divorce rate isn't even a bad thing: in older times, couples stayed together and hated each other because divorce wasn't socially acceptable, and countless women suffered in abusive relationships (and many men did too, though those usually weren't physically dangerous the way it was for women with abusive husbands).
Considering all this, and today's plummeting birthrate among non-poor people, it should be obvious that the current situation is simply unsustainable. As soon as humans have 1) gender equality, 2) easy access to reliable contraception, 3) wealth (middle-class or better), they don't want to have many kids, not enough to sustain the population. And it should be obvious that one solution to this is to delegate reproduction and child-rearing to the state. The other option I could see is normalizing polyamorous relationships (so that groups of parents lived together and raised kids as a sort of village), but that's fraught with legal problems, plus a lot of stigma, the way our societies are currently structured, so I think Brave New World-style institutional reproduction and child-raising is much more likely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:06AM (18 children)
As for double incomes, that should *not* be the norm, because without women taking a risk in the event of divorce there is little incentive to resolve relationship problems. We also don't get many children.
We'll fix this. If not via the law, we'll fix it with evolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:59AM (10 children)
We have 7,000,000,000 people on planet. Soon 10,000,000,000. So WTF are you talking about?? There are more than enough people on this planet already. Human race is not enough to die off because we don't breed. On contrary, we may die because we over-breed.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:54AM (1 child)
> We have 7,000,000,000 people on planet. Soon 10,000,000,000. So WTF are you talking about??
Ah, but you see, most of those are browns and yellows, not good, honest, God-fearing Murricans and other superiors!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:29PM
Why is black pride supposedly OK, but white pride is not? Why do you hate me and my kind? In the world, I'm a minority. There are relatively few white people.
Without my kind being preserved, you lose diversity. It's like having mountain gorillas go extinct.
I happen to like the preservation of my sub-species.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:56PM (7 children)
We have 7,000,000,000 people on planet. Soon 10,000,000,000.
No, current projections show (IIRC) the global population leveling off around 8-9 billion, and probably falling after that.
There's a couple of problems here:
1) it's easy for the population to fall drastically, if everyone turns middle-class and starts having only 1.2 kids. Within a couple of generations, your population is cut in half or worse.
2) our economic systems and social services are not set up to handle population reduction *at all*. You need more productive younger people to support the not-as-productive older people. (And killing off the older people to remove them as a burden won't work, because then the younger people won't bother being productive any more since they can't even look forward to retiring.)
3) a bigger population results in more innovation; we've only enjoyed the technological pace we have because of a very large population.
4) the planet can handle a LOT more humans than it has now, the problem is that it can't handle billions more living a middle-class American lifestyle with a McMansion in the exurbs and 3 gasoline-powered cars. Build more cities like Manhattan or Tokyo with everyone taking public transit and living in small condos, and figure out how to grow meat artificially, and grow food in vertical buildings with robots, and the planet can comfortably support 3-4x the current population, probably more. Build giant rotating artificial habitats in space and we can support many billions more.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:00PM (6 children)
Cut back on the services, and you've fixed that problem.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:36PM (5 children)
Then you either have what I already mentioned in the parentheses, or you have a shitty dog-eat-dog society that only sociopathic libertarians (like about half of all tech workers) really want to live in.
One thing that'd help is eliminating aging medically, so that there's no more retirement and no more ageism.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:27AM (4 children)
Well, do you want to solve the problem or do you just want to whine impotently about it? Reminds me of the patient complaining to their doctor "It hurts when I do this." The doctor's reply? "Then don't do that."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:02PM (3 children)
Other, less-dysfunctional societies seem to get by just fine with plenty of services, and enjoy a higher quality of life than Americans do as a result.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:32PM (2 children)
You get what you pay for. Americans are paying to increase the price of various services (particularly education and health care) not paying for higher quality services. While I applaud your interest in higher quality services, that's not the point of US government services for the most part and hence, becomes yet another reason to cut back on those services.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:37PM (1 child)
Americans pay more per-capita for education and healthcare than other industrialized nations, and get much poorer-quality services for their money. (Their healthcare money isn't coming so much from tax dollars though, it's coming directly out of their bank accounts or paychecks.) Having higher-quality services for the same tax money we pay is certainly possible, though perhaps not in America just because we're too dysfunctional as a society.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:17PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:39PM (6 children)
As for double incomes, that should *not* be the norm, because without women taking a risk in the event of divorce there is little incentive to resolve relationship problems.
All that does is lead to virtual slavery for women and pushing people to stay in monogamous relationships leads to abuse and unhappiness. Abusive relationships were the norm before double incomes, because women had nowhere to go if they were unhappy.
We'll fix this. If not via the law, we'll fix it with evolution.
We'll fix it by having the state assume responsibility for child-raising, which is basically how it was before we stupidly invented monogamy. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, there was no marriage, and children were raised collectively by the village. We just need to go back to that, except with the modern version which involves governments.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:21PM (5 children)
Village != government. It's not even wrong.
And while we weren't data collecting back in the prehistoric era (by definition), marriage is ancient, wide-spread, and thus, probably predates agriculture. Tribes are well-known for have a huge variety of social systems and values. So it is likely that we had tribes back to the beginning of humanity who had monogamy relations (as well as other sorts of relationships) just like we do now.
And emotions aren't a recent invention of modern man. Things like jealousy and cuckoldry would have been a problem from ancient times. Monogamy is one way to manage that.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:44PM (4 children)
And while we weren't data collecting back in the prehistoric era (by definition), marriage is ancient, wide-spread, and thus, probably predates agriculture.
There's no evidence to support this.
So it is likely that we had tribes back to the beginning of humanity who had monogamy relations (as well as other sorts of relationships) just like we do now.
It's possible, but again there's no evidence to support it.
Pre-contact Hawai'ian culture had no monogamy among non-royals, and that was until relatively recent times.
Things like jealousy and cuckoldry would have been a problem from ancient times. Monogamy is one way to manage that.
Monogamy arose along with agriculture and the concept of land ownership. Jealousy and cuckoldry are only an issue in a culture where men care about their "legacy" or who's going to inherit "their" land. (Notice that, in traditional cultures including American culture until recently, it was only sons who were valued, and daughters were not.) In a communal village, such concepts simply don't exist. People have relations with whomever they please, whenever they want, and any children that result are raised by the community at-large.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:13PM
The fact that marriage is wide-spread in unrelated cultures is the evidence. Tribes in the remote Amazon rainforest have it; unmarried women get gang raped.
Jealousy and cuckoldry are issues wherever women historically needed male support for survival. It's strongly in the DNA of people from cold climates. Modern life may be different, but the imprint of the ancient environment has yet to be purged from our DNA.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:59AM (2 children)
Well, obviously no one wrote such things down in prehistory. But we have oral tales. For example, I can think of a number of ancient deities who had a single spouse such as the Greek or Norse pantheons. And many origin tales of humanity start with a man and a woman.
And once again, there is huge variety in hunter-gathering cultures today, including monogamy.
I disagree. Jealously and cuckoldry are clearly ancient emotions which are exhibited in similar fashion among other mammals and aren't particular to monogamous situations. I'm sure there were plenty of cultures that did as you indicate above, but I also am sure there were cultures which did not.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:58PM (1 child)
Well, obviously no one wrote such things down in prehistory. But we have oral tales. For example, I can think of a number of ancient deities who had a single spouse such as the Greek or Norse
No, we don't. Those mythologies you cite come long after the invention of agriculture, and sure as hell don't extend back to hunter-gatherer times.
And once again, there is huge variety in hunter-gathering cultures today
I'm sure there were plenty of cultures that did as you indicate above, but I also am sure there were cultures which did not.
Which proves that monogamy isn't a necessary part of human culture. If it were, they'd all be monogamous, but as you admit, they aren't by a long shot. As I've said before, monogamy only became really universal among human cultures with the invention of the notion of land ownership and agriculture.
Jealously and cuckoldry are clearly ancient emotions which are exhibited in similar fashion among other mammals and aren't particular to monogamous situations.
They're particular to situations where there's a shortage of one of the sexes (usually females). Eliminate that problem (and the sexual frustration that comes with it), along with the notion of parents being completely responsible for raising their offspring, and these emotions (which are simply a by-product of fear) go away. The whole idea of "cuckoldry" after all comes from the notion that a man "owns" a woman, and also from the modern idea that a man is responsible for providing for all the children of "his" women. Eliminate marriage and this idea of owning another person and then "cuckoldry" disappears as an idea, and jealousy has little place: if a guy gets mad that some woman is sleeping with another man, he can just go find another willing partner. It's only in monogamous marriage-oriented societies where this is somehow a problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:15PM
OTOH, if marriage was present in some form from at least the human population bottleneck of 75k years ago (Toba eruption), that would easily explain its prevalence now.
Moving on, even when pure monogamous marriage is not the only form of marriage, it often remains the most common sort, perhaps due to economics, lack of availability of mates, or desires of the couple. For example, almost 40% of listed cultures [uci.edu] (data comes from the Ethnographic Atlas [wikipedia.org]) are "occasionally polygamous", that is, have the potential to marry multiple times, but don't on average.
Emotions don't work that way. They're biological and hence, inherited from a time when they were preferentially propagated, perhaps because they were an evolutionary advantage.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:53AM (1 child)
Equality is a good thing, there's no reason a man and a woman shouldn't divide work and child care equally. What we don't need is the necessity of 2 parents both having full time jobs. It's time to reduce the work week to balance out both parents working. We might eventually need to address the birth rate, but given the current world population, we have a few centuries where we could stand a slowly declining population.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:24PM
That's a solved problem. Parents can already choose to work less. Of course, it means less pay as well, but that's their choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:24AM (5 children)
The fact that school quality is tied to neighborhoods is a factor that drives up house prices and keeps young couples from starting families early. We can bring back bussing. This is when kids get put in non-neighborhood schools. Another thing we can do is to nationalize the funding, prohibiting all local sources of funding. Local sources include PTA groups, school fundraisers, teachers paying for things, and parents being asked to bring in school supplies.
We could get rid of things that led to broken families: no-fault divorce, child support, alimony, per-person welfare increases when the man is not in the household, hiring preferences for women, and generally women working outside the home. We could apply a large tax to working women, perhaps 70%. We could apply a large tax to unmarried men, again perhaps 70%. We could increase the child tax credit. Better yet, divide family income up by the number of people before applying the normal progressive rates. We could criminalize adultery and allow the wronged party to sue for damages.
Even more unreasonable: Get rid of TV and similar distractions. Births tend to happen roughly 40 weeks after lengthy power outages. People fuck more when the electronics aren't entertaining them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:56AM (4 children)
Your ideas fall in 2 categories:
So, alternatively, get the Government the fuck out of our lives.
Get the Government out of schooling. Get the Government out of marriage. Get the Government out of charity. Get the Government out of business; get the Government out of resource allocation.
If your solution is "Get the men-with-guns to make people do what I believe would be a good idea!" then your solution is probably stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:41AM (3 children)
Dissolve the government, and a new one will form. More than one may form, each fighting to be the sole winner. While they fight, it's like Somalia. The winner will likely be awful.
So it is thus established that we need men with guns.
It's like that with lots of things. Libertarian idealism crashes and burns in the real world. (as does the opposite, socialism and communism)
FYI, the government did bus kids around. It was done in the 1960s in many American cities. People rightly hated many aspects of it, but it did help to deal with the problem of good schools only being available to people in expensive areas. The actual goal was race-related.
Nations rise and fall. Decisions that impact fertility have a huge impact on this, though they take decades to become obvious. By the time the population is overrun, it is too late to do anything. We can and should do something to delay the collapse of our nation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:30PM (2 children)
Irrelevant. We don't need to completely dissolve government merely to get it out of all the harmful interference the grandparent post described.
Just like the Irish, Jews, and Poles did to the US back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? The problem is grossly exaggerated. There are problems with high volume immigration, but it's not a recent problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
We've been lucky. Historically, the least integrating have been mostly non-destructive.
To use modern names: Lebanon was not so lucky. That was recently a Christian nation. Recovery is not happening. Death is happening. Afghanistan was Buddhist. Bangladesh was Hindu. Iran was Zoroastrian. Egypt was Christian. There has been a lot of death.
We ourselves did it to the North American aboriginal tribes. Once our numbers got big enough, we dished out death. Immigration did not allow for survival of the pre-Colombian cultures.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:32PM
Modern developed world countries have more going for them than weak corrupt societies of the past. I believe the violence in the Islam world is in large part due to radicals losing badly on today's culture front. Women, for example, will choose heavily a Western-style culture, given a choice between traditional Islamic role as a slave with no legal say outside her home and a culture where she not only has the full rights of a man, but also everyone has much greater rights and power.
Further, recent EU immigration has been curbed from the peak in 2015 by a huge amount [reuters.com].
It's not the same situation any more.
And every one of those countries you mentioned above improved in early centuries with the advent of Islam (particularly, the countries subject to Hinduism and its caste system). That includes the countries dominated by Buddhism (which had developed notable corruption problems since around 0 AD, among other things disappearing from most of India by around 600 AD). Islam had a lot going for it in the early days. Today is a long ways off from back then.
Finally, there are many other immigration populations to choose from than just Islamic ones. The US is more balanced, for example, with immigrants from the rest of the Americans, non-Muslim Africa, and Eastern Europe.
Sure, high levels of immigration from places without strong democratic or capitalist traditions can destabilize a Western-style society. But for the most part, that's not actually a problem in the developed world. Everyone has implemented some sort of gate system for immigration, which has been effective enough. We'll see in the future what happens. But so far, Islamic immigrants have not been very different from any other immigrant, particularly in the US.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:02PM
Actually, the current situation as you describe it is really the best case. Many children live in households with a single parent working full time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:57AM
I have an almost-3 year old. We have a new game, and she was putting pieces in her mouth. A few stern words about how I don't want to play with her if she puts them in her mouth solved the problem. Usually, talking is enough to stop undesirable behavior. Physical punishment is an extreme measure. Yeah, I'm sure she would follow my orders better now if she was more scared of me. But there is a long-term cost to authoritarian parenting. Once kids are smart enough to get sneaky and lie, they will make you regret taking such a hard line.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:59AM (9 children)
What exactly do you mean by "discipline"? Based on your post, it sounds like what you mean is spanking and other forms of corporal punishment.
My experience, as someone who has worked with all kinds of kids professionally, is that such actions are pretty much always unnecessary and do more harm than good. Even with kids who are seriously screwed up due to past abuse and mental illness and such.
Most misbehaviors fall into one of these categories:
1. The kid knows it's against the rules and is doing it to test whether you'll do anything about it. You respond to this one by making it abundantly clear that you noticed, and doling out a punishment as needed.
2. The kid has no clue what they're doing is wrong, or why it's wrong. You respond to this by teaching them both the rule and the reason for it, and then work with them to figure out some kind of appropriate punishment. Yes, this actually works - kids who made a mistake often come up with ways to punish themselves that are appropriate and proportionate to what they did wrong.
3. The kid knows intellectually that the rule exists, but because kids have emotions they overrode the brain telling them not to do something. This one's really annoying, but you basically have to get the kid to calm down enough to get them to realize what they've done, and then you work on the punishment angle.
The other thing is you want to use punishments that build rather than erode trust between the kid and the adult. The best possible punishment is one where you do absolutely nothing and the kid learns why your rule exists - e.g. "Don't touch the hot stove!" doesn't need a punishment associated with breaking the rule because the kid will burn themselves the first time they try it. The next-best thing is where the punishment involves undoing the damage they caused - e.g. you made a mess, you clean it up. The next-best option there is to pick a punishment related to the crime in some way - e.g. a kid who broke a dish on purpose but has no money to buy another one (because they're a kid) has to wash all the dishes for a while to "earn" back the money they cost you.
Corporal punishment is basically authoritarian - do what I say or I will hurt you. And the problem with that is that it only works when the authority figure is around to enforce the rules. The goal of discipline is to have the little brats doing what you want 'em to do without you having to tell them or force them, and you don't get that if you have to smack them around whenever they're disobedient. Kids who have been raised in this kind of environment usually end up going overboard the moment they are out of their parents' clutches. It basically is a lack of creativity on the part of the adults leading to discipline that doesn't actually work very well in instilling values in the kids that leads to them actually wanting to do what you want them to do.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:46AM (8 children)
My first paragraph features you. As I said, "Discipline is unpleasant. People get uncomfortable seeing it and dishing it out. Some parents are blessed with kids that need relatively little, then assume that all other kids have similar personality."
That supposed "lack of creativity on the part of the adults" reminds me of our constitutional ban on unusual punishment. Are you going to come up with something new each time?
Corporal punishment is quickly over and done with. It avoids the manipulative psychological abuse so often seen in families that avoid it. It also works on kids who can't have a reasonable discussion.
OK, since you think you know everything, help me out. I've got all the minor things handled perfectly well, mostly with spankings from infancy. My kids are way better behaved than most. The big troubles are homework and internet use. Now, before you come up with a totally impractical solution, note that I have 11 kids. Even with a full-time stay-at-home mother, there is no hope for solutions that involve isolation and huge amounts of parental time. Also, we aren't going to play cruel and abusive psychological games, and we aren't going to tolerate reward inflation. There may be ADHD or Asperger's in the family; we won't be drugging everybody.
We homeschool. Each week, the older 5 have a chapter of AP Physics BC Mechanics to do. We read it, and then there are about 50 problems for the week. There is also a section of a calculus book, targeting AP Calculus BC probably. This is usually 1 or 2 days per section, with perhaps 7 to 10 multi-part problems. The work doesn't get done. They chat, read books, find "useful" tasks like baby care, pace around, doodle, nap, and snack. (no TV or video games here) Remember that I work and the wife is busy with 6 smaller kids. If even one kid fails to complete the work, we have a huge problem. Continuing on means that they become unable to do future chapters. Providing extra time only rewards the failure; they are then able to halt the education that they find so distasteful. A complaint from them has been that getting work done seems to be "rewarded" with more work, which is kind of true when they are successfully slowing things down.
For all but the oldest one, computer use is banned. This is a sad state of affairs. It'd be great if they could learn to program or could read/watch something educational. The reality is that they would burn through their time -- hours upon hours each day -- playing games and watching the most pointless videos. It's a Linux household. I tried blacklisting for a while, but there are too many alternatives on the internet, plus video sites mix the educational with the idiotic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @05:13AM
Maybe they find the school work distasteful because you are making them to do it, and they associate your orders with spanking (and probably yelling). It's not like AP calculus and physics exercises are fun, even for people who are good at it. That's some pretty dry bread to chew.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:22AM (1 child)
Maybe they need some instruction on time management. If there are 50 problems for a week, set a target for finishing 10 per day and after they do that then they can goof off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:57PM
Uh, well, I'm not so great at this myself.
What if they fall behind? One day they do 5 problems. The next day, is it 15 problems they must do? If only 10, should they skip the 5 from the previous day or should they start from there?
It really is a disaster if they fall behind. Test days can not be moved. The other kids have to move on; if they don't move as a group then teaching becomes inefficient. If somebody gets away with being lazy, then the others expect to be lazy for fairness.
Suppose they sit down to work, and nothing happens. What then? (for me as parent, and/or for them hopefully being self-motivated) How does one make the studying happen?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by t-3 on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:39PM (1 child)
Fear only motivates a coward. My dad would apply "discipline" when I didn't do well in school, it just made me hate him. The efficacy of punishment is nullified when there is no emotional attachment, and creating an environment based around physical dominance quickly erodes any emotional attachment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:50PM
I guess I just give up then. The kids get no education. When they turn 18, I'll just drop them off at homeless shelters.
FAIL
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 29 2017, @12:15AM (2 children)
I'm not actually a parent: I've worked with kids professionally, which means interacting regularly with probably a couple hundred kids who've all been raised by somebody else up until that point. I've interacted with and been responsible for keeping in line a wide range of kids, from the spoiled brats to those with ADHD to those with autism to those who've suffered sexual abuse to those who are well-adjusted and well-behaved. And even a 9-year-old who can't talk due to severe cerebral palsy.
As for your specific problem (and whoa, that's a *lot* of kids, I'm guessing you're Catholic):
1. I think you and the stay-at-home mother need to do an assessment and plan a bit. You need to know about each of your kids is what activities they crave and what activities they avoid. You also need to know what privileges you are comfortable doling out. They don't have to be big, just stuff they want to do. In general, it sounds like you need the carrot more than the stick, and that means figuring out what actually is a good lure.
2. I'd take a hard look at how you're trying to teach physics and calculus: Do they get any practical experience using their knowledge of math and physics to solve real-world problems? Is there a time at work where you encounter problems along these lines that they could help you solve? If your teaching methods are limited to what's in the book, I'm not surprised they find it boring - textbooks and the questions in them are often frightfully dull even when they're covering fascinating subjects. For example, the best possible way to teach about pulleys is to use pulleys to do something.
3. Look at how the kids can be contributors to solving your household challenges rather than burdens. For instance, if the older kids are dodging your textbook work by wanting to take care of their younger siblings, then why not use baby care as a reward, and when they're doing that your wife gets a bit of a break?
4. As for the computer, it can be a great teaching tool if you can limit it properly. For example, the Kerbal Space Program [kerbalspaceprogram.com] might give your kids more of an understanding of physics and mechanics than your textbook will. As for preventing them from doing things they shouldn't on the computer (e.g. pr0n), the way you solve that one is to ensure that the computer is always in a place where the rest of the family can see it.
5. What books are they reading on their own? How can they be used to help teach? Are there other books you could add in that might do a better job of teaching?
It sounds to me like your kids are bored, miserable, and putting most of their effort into avoiding punishment. At a very young age, you taught them to be afraid of you and your wrath by spanking them. And it sounds like you still maintain your authority basically by hitting them if they don't do as you ask. You also seem to be denying them most forms of entertainment, which is leaving them bored and desperately looking for something they can do. It doesn't sound like they leave the house all that often, or socialize with anyone other than their immediate family, which isn't healthy.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @02:14AM (1 child)
My wife is Catholic. I was raised that way, but I can't make myself believe.
Carrot instead of stick sounds nice, but kids will do the bare minimum and then inflation takes hold. They lose the motivation and demand better carrots. Money and time are limited.
Currently, we're limited to the book. We did AP Chemistry with some amazing labs, but half way through the year I had to drop the labs. Lab reports weren't getting done and the labs were taking time that was needed for working through the problems. We then did AP Biology without labs, and 4 kids passed the test. Physics labs seem to usually need lab-specific costly oddball equipment like air tracks and mercury lamps and spark gaps; chemistry labs at least tended to reuse the same equipment over and over again.
I'm not going to get bothered by kids seeing naked people. The trouble with the computer is stuff like the Annoying Orange videos, political news, and games with tank battles. It's not that I mind the stuff, but that it is an unproductive time sink. Uh, there was the 9-year-old girl who secretly signed up for OkCupid and chatted up guys in their 20s, but that was not the norm. The norm is just time wasted on nonsense. There is a bit of potential for computer damage too if they fight over the computer; there is no way I can have enough computers for everybody.
The 12-year-old twin girls read fiction like Warriors (weird books about cats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warriors_%28novel_series%29 [wikipedia.org] here), a bunch of disturbing Manga translated from Japanese, and stuff that looks to be romance novels. The 18-year-old boy prefers books about politics, war, getting women, and interacting with people. It's both fiction and non-fiction. He read some Tom Clancy stuff. He really liked 1984 and The Prince. The 14-year old boy reads whatever his sisters and older brother have; he isn't too fussy. The 16-year-old dislikes reading.
I suppose I should make it clear that spanking tapers off with age. I wouldn't put a hard limit on it, but the oldest 7 kids (age 7 and up) almost don't get spanked. There comes a time, gradually, when punishment is really not an easy thing. Years go by with nothing viable, and then on their 18th birthday I get the harsh option of telling them that they don't live with us anymore.
They may be bored. Of course they don't get entertainment: they haven't done their work! They seem to convince themselves, wrongly, that there is no possible way to complete the work and get to fun activities. The obvious defective conclusion is that there is no reason to try.
They do get out a bit. I've been limiting some of it due to the homework issue, but not totally. The boys do scouting, and the girls are in American Heritage Girls. The oldest is finishing up paperwork to be an eagle scout. The oldest has a job, 6 or 7 hours on one day per week. Several are alter servers. They all attend kid activities at the church. They all can unicycle for miles; some go 20 MPH. The twin girls play instruments in a summer band and sometimes at church. They get half a day per week with a homeschooling group, studying history and English with kids of similar age.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:13PM
The thing about your concerns with "reward inflation": The goal is that by the time they're leaving the nest, they can manage themselves without your guidance or assistance most of the time. So the kinds of rewards you dole out should basically amount to steady increases in both freedom and responsibility, until they basically can do whatever they like, because "whatever they like" falls squarely in the categories of things you'd like them to do.
For instance, the 18-year-old ought to, provided he has a drivers' license, be able to drive a family car when you or your wife don't need it, on the condition that he contributes to gas, insurance, and maintenance, out of the money he earns from his job. He loses that privilege the moment he gets a ticket (that's the responsibility part). And yes, that means he should be able to drive around town, meet up with that cute girl he's had eyes for, etc.
The same sort of balance applies to computer time, to academics, to everything: Show that you've learned something, now you earn the freedom to use that knowledge to do something fun, with the responsibility of not misusing it. For a simple example, I taught many many kids how to safely use a pocket-knife, and they were allowed to use them once they'd passed a test demonstrating that knowledge, but if they broke the rules we taught them they would lose that privilege again and have to wait a few days and retake the test in order to get their knife back.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin