Mari, can I have your love child?

Which One Of Your LJ Friends Will You Marry?
LJ Username Favorite color red blue white orange green purple pink blackGender male femaleYou will marry... mastamariYou will be married for...years 21Your combined income will be... $268,899.31You will have...children 17
This fun quiz by fuzzinabox - Taken 16406 Times.</a>New! Get Free Daily Horoscopes from Kwiz.Biz

Random...

I figured I'd give some random background on my icon. The pedestrian signal with the guy with the hat is from east Berlin. Under communist rule, all of the little guys on the lights wore hats. So, when the wall fell, the west wanted to replace all the hat guys with their "normal" pedestrian lights. However, the east Berliners threw a hissy fit and, to this day, you can tell when you enter east Berlin because all the crosswalk signal guys wear hats. Silly Germans...

Long time no see...

Well, I suppose I'll start using this thing again, even though no one reads it. Um, this summer's been busy...Got back from two weeks in Germany a couple weeks ago. Now I'm just taking a couple classes at Northlake, which kind of sucks. Government starts at 7.30 in the morning, which is just cruel and unusual punishment. Also, since I haven't officially graduated yet, I'm scurrying around trying to finish my English correspondence course. That's all that stands between me and a diploma, but I'm terrified I won't finish in time...Oh well, we'll just have to see. That's basically all I'm up to right now because my life is sad. Oh yeah, that and Ken's moving in with us. The guy he and his dad are living with is selling his house, so he needs a place to stay. Yeah, life's gonna get real interesting in a couple weeks...

Bandwagon time!

If there is one person you can't stop thinking about, post this same exact sentence in your journal.I'll update for real someday...

All in...

All in all, this weekend was ok. Ended up going to the Asian festival on Saturday with Ken, Kenny, and Christine. It was generally kind of lame, but the taiko and Chinese yo-yos were cool. Then we went back to Kenny's and I watched the boys play video games (as Akane can tell you all, I can sit for hours and watch people play). Realizing I had yet to buy my mother a gift, I dragged Kenny and Ken out on a little shopping adventure, but ended up empty handed since the stored decided to hate me. Got free food from Kenpa then went to sleep at Ken's for a while. Sunday was equally fun. Got my mom a foot massager (can anyone say "double motive"?) but forgot a card ><. Oh well. I made it up to her by taking her and Ken (he lacks a mommy) to Benihana's for some spiffin hibachi. Rawkage ensued. Not too shabby a weekend, if I do say so myself.Today (school day) was, unfortunately, not so spiffy. Woke up to the horror that is the AP biology exam. The multiple choice kind of sucked but they managed to pick VERY nice essay questions (thank you College Board!!). After that, Ken took me to Corner Bakery and yummy foodage was attained (get off campus lunch if we do AP exams). The rest of the school day was boring and not worth noting.After school, I hooked up with Mary Helen, Cory, Eileen, and Ken and we hung out a bit (yay Futurama and Tivo!). Then, all of us (minus Ken) went to the lake and hung out there for a while. Upon finding a rather large patch of blackberries, Eileen, Mary Helen, and I gorged and all was well with the world. Cory and I also climbed some rocks and a surprising thing happened. Now for those of you who don't know Cory, he's not the um...nicest of people. However, he occasionally has nice moments and I must have caught him on one of his extended ones. It should also be noted that he's about a foot taller than me and much stronger, so climbing is a bit easier for him. Realizing this (though I think he also has some sort of odd sense of chivalry), he actually HELPED me on SEVERAL occasions. Sounds like nothing special, but if ya knew the guy, you'd understand. Anyway, after that funness I had to leave for jiu-jitsu.Jiu-jitsu was fun, but I wanted to learn more techniques. Today, instead of learning new stuff, we basically just drilled the whole time, which got kind of boring, but oh well. Coach says that if I compete in a tournament on May 29 (it's no gi, which is not cool) an dI get 1st or 2nd place, he'll blue belt me right there. However, I don't like tournaments, so I'm torn on what I should do...While I want to be a blue belt as soon as possible, I hate that kind of competition. I want to do jiu-jitsu to do jiu-jitsu, not to compete, which is what coach wants me to do. Also, I hate point fighting (that's what determines who wins if no one's tapped out) since I can't read the points when I grapple cause I'm almost blind. That and I think it's dumb (submission fighting pwns especially with hits). Grrrr, but I want my blue belt! Oh well, I'll figure something out...Poem of the Day:Roses are redViolets are blueAnd all my base are belong to you-Cap'n Midori

CONES!!!!

So, there's this weird inside joke thing with a couple friends of mine bout stealing cones and putting them in people's yards. Seeing as tomorrow is one of these friend's boyfriend's birthday, we went on a little excursion tonight. After driving around for a while, we managed to get 5 cones, almost pulled over by a cop, and almost caught while stealing one from th side of a busy road. It was fun. ^_^ Then we had to sneak over to his house (with our mad crazy ninj4 skillz) and place them strategically about his front walkway. We need to do this for everybody's birthday every year! Or maybe I'm just easily amused. Whatever, I had fun and that's all that really matters. =]-Cap'n Midori (a member of the Cone Bandits)

Woke u...

Woke up this morning, got in the shower, and all of a sudden my leg was covered in blood. I was confused for a moment until I realized it was dripping from my nose. That would of been ok, except it wouldn't stop for a long time. Definitely not a good way to start the morningCollege finals are over and I have only the AP bio exam left. Needless to say, I am thrilled beyond all belief. As a result I'll be able to go to jiu-jitsu enough times a week to finally get my blue belt and I'll actually get to have a life!!! The AP US History exam wasn't too bad, actually. As I arrived at school today I was hit with a feeling of "oh my God I'm screwed"ness, but I was quickly proven wrong. All in all, I did well and rawked the essays. Since I cannot speak about them because of their anal rules, I shall simply say the essays pwned in their simplicity. =] After that, I went to CiCi's (that's all you can eat pizza for $3.99, for those of you who don't know) and brought Ken along to introduce to all my friends. Went back to school after foodage and did NOTHING. Fifth period we were supposed to have a guest speaker (something to do with finances, but I already know most the crap they wanna teach us), so Andy and I asked to go to my car to get something. Let him borrow my Kenshin dvds and promptly drove away, never to return. Since we have a sub (who doesn't really care what we do) and I had already signed in for attendance I didn't have to worry bout being counted absent. =] Good times.The rest of the day was lazy. Hung out with Ken and took him to sparring class then was lazy some more. I wanted to go buy my mom a mother's day present but it occurred to me that the ad she gave me with her request doesn't say WHICH item on the ad page she wants! Great, that's convenient...now I get to guess and hope I get it right. However, since I couldn't buy her a gift, I bought myself a book instead: the second book of the Sword of Truth series. Rawkage is almost assured. Tomorrow = Asian festival which promises to be cool. Food, sumo, taiko, dragon dance, an artist walk, and a koi show have been promised. ^_^ Afterwards, I get free food from Kenpa (Ken's dad)! Free food rocks my socks.Why am I obsessed with interior design?-Cap'n Midori

One AP exa...

One AP exam down, 2 to go. The English AP exam sucked and was too long, but I think I did relatively okay. My essays were rather crappy, compared to my usual writings, but adequate. Afterwards, our little posse headed over to Chik-Fil-A for our hour long off campus lunch and had some yummy foodage. Laughter, mocking, and face stuffage ensued. Then we went back for 2 periods of school, one of which I completely slept through. Somehow ended up hanging out with Ken, even though we both needed to study and had agreed prior to today that we would just see each other tomorrow. Needless to say, little studying occurred. Oh well. After pestering the boy, I ran off to college for some "fun" time in the language lab (which I used to study) and my Japanese final. Yeah, that final sucked. I wanted to get an A in that class, to keep my 4.0 GPA in college, but I don't think anyone's going to be able to get one, unless she curves it. All in all, today was excessively tiring. It should be noted this was not helped by my body's decision to become allergic to something within the last 3 days, after 17 years of NO allergies. Thanks Body, you always make my life so much more interesting. =P -Cap'n Midori

AP Exams: ...

AP Exams: Monday the 3rd - English Friday the 7th - US History Monday the 8th - Biology (is going to destroy me)Plus whatever crap I get in all my classes.College Finals Monday the 3rd - Japanese Thursday the 6th - GovernmentBut do I study? No. I watch Iron Chef America.Someone kill me. Now.

I reall...

I really wish I had a good camera so I could take pictures of the pretty storm...Lightning that spiders from cloud to cloud pwns.

Well,...

Well, recently my church had a shoe drive for this charity but I know one can never have enough shoes for orphans in Russia. Since I personally think this is an awesome charity, I'm putting the link in my lj in the hopes folk'll maybe help em out by sending some shoes. Even though a lot of y'all don't share the same religious beliefs as me and this is a Christian ministry, I think that helping kiddos is above all that, so please check it out:http://www.shoesfororphansouls.org/-Cap'n Midori

Well...

Well, day 3 of TAKS and we got to take the history portion. Yeah, we started about 8.40ish and I was done by 9. I might have missed 2 questions. So, after that I took an hour and a half long nap, only to wake up to find I still have and hour and a half till I was allowed to leave the room. I promptly (after a secret call to my mother on my handy-dandy cell phone)became quite ill (don't you just hate those cramps?). As a result I "went home" and was cured by an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet and cuddling. Did my Japanese oral yesterday and pwned it. Hopefully I shall do the same on the final, but I'm worrying a bit. Need to get together with Thom to study...heh, he invited me to go drinking with him the other night. I was muchly amused. Silly boys.Kitty Saga update:Hobbit is no longer confined to just my room and there has yet to be any bloodshed. =]-Cap'n Midori

Standardized...

Standardized tests are a royal waste of paper. Come to think of it, today was a royal waste in general. Had to take the math TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills), which was 70 questions long and painfully easy. After I finished, I took an hour nap and then read a chapter in my AP bio review book. That was the ONLY thing productive that occurred today. Afterward, instead of letting us go home at 12 (which would have made sense, since they had already gotten their money for our attendance) we had to keep going. So, since 3rd period is the lunch period, it has to 2 hours long (we have 4 lunches), which left 40-50 minutes for 4th and 5th period. Seeing as I have speech for 3rd, I did nothing, and there wasn't enough time to do anything in 4th or 5th. Needless to say, nothing was accomplished from the entire 8 hours I spent at school today. Yay. On the bright side, only 2 more classes of gov. and Japanese (I have to write a 30 sentence oral tonight...=[)! =] Soon I shall be able to go to jiu-jitsu twice a week again (which is the minimum required for such things, though I'll likely actually be going 3 times), so I can get assessed for my blue belt. ^_^Off to work on the nihongo.-Cap'n Midori

Ok, I'...

Ok, I'm tired of having to tell everyone what I'm up to nowadays so I suppose I'll just do a quick little overview. Right now, I'm taking a couple college classes (gov and 2nd semester of Japanese)and getting ready to graduate from hs. I hate the institution known as Coppell High School with a passion, so I am escaping it a year early. Hopefully, with the passing of my 3 AP exams (English Language, bio, and US hist)I can enter college as a sophomore next year(I should have 30 credit hours)...As of now, however, I am exceptionally busy (school 9 hours a day, what?), hence the decided lack of actual entries in this here online journally thing (which I was "given" under duress).Kitty saga:George met Hobbit and it was rather anticlimatic. They sniffed, and then wandered off (George promptly tried to steal Hobbit's food) . However, Scamp was slightly less amiable. After growling, hissing, and scaring Hobbit till he ran under the bed he tried to chase the poor little guy. I promptly kicked Scamp out of the room. Hopefully Scamp will warm up to him. =]I want to build a Japanese garden in my backyard. Any ideas on what kind of plants/structures to put in it?-Cap'n Midori

...

Insanity TestUsername Age Your problem is ...Well what ISN'T your problem?Will you ever be cured? (8) - Don't count on it. - (8)Just how crazy are you? - 63%
This QuickKwiz by insanitydefense - Taken 11789 Times.</a>

Yay!

So, my mom has decided to let me keep the kitty, unless we see any signs for it. Since we have yet to determine the sex of the little critter (it's rather fuzzy and won't sit still long enough) we've decided on a unisex name. Due to it's massive feet, with hair between the toes (I think it's part Maine Coon), it shall be named Hobbit. And with that, the kitty number aboard is upped to 3.-Cap'n Midori

Doctor Unheimlich...

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me withMidori's DiseaseCause:lack of junk food in dietSymptoms:foot swelling, occasional Hitler moustache, collapsed lungs, sudden tunnel visionCure:sleepEnter your name, for your own diagnosis:So true...

Doctor Unheimlich...

Doctor Unheimlich has diagnosed me withMidori's DiseaseCause:lack of junk food in dietSymptoms:foot swelling, occasional Hitler moustache, collapsed lungs, sudden tunnel visionCure:sleepEnter your name, for your own diagnosis:So true...

Well, I...

Well, I was quite depressed earlier, but I'm a bit better, now. That aside...I saved a kitty!!! ok, well, maybe not "saved"...Ken and I were walking and it came up to us and purred and meowed and rubbed against us. I noted it looked skinny and kind of ragged, so perhaps it was a stray...and so the adventure began. To make a long story short, the kitty's currently in our garage and might actually belong to someone. I'm hoping it doesn't so we get to keep it. >^,,^<- Cap'n Midori

This could get fun...

Come on, everybody's doing it!Ask any three questions of me. ANYTHING. Honest answers shall come forth. And I'll ask you some, if you want.I'll eventually get around to asking the people I yoinked this from (in my "spare time", that is).-Cap'n Midori

Ok, just so...

Ok, just so everyone knows, I swiped this paper off of Tsurara's lj a while back because it interested me immensely. Since my firewall is hating folk and not letting certain people view it, I decided I'd just post it here to save myself some trouble. AGAINST SCHOOL: How public education cripples our kids, and why. By John Taylor Gatto I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were. Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame? We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however, I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap. The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover that all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insightsimply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up? Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated. We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools? Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold: 1. To make good people. 2. To make good citizens 3. To make each person his or her personal best.These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not "to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else."Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern. The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch's 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven , was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann's "Seventh Annual Report" to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America is hardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German-speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens 11 in order to render the populace "manageable." It was from James Bryant Conant-president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century-that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant's 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State , and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modem schools we attend were the result of a "revolution" engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education , in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary." Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole. Inglis breaks down the purpose—the actual purpose—of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier: 1. The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things. 2. The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force. 3. The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one. 4. The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits—and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best. 5. The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit—with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments—clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain. 6. The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. There you have it. Now you know. We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, liberty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed. There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era—marketing. Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley—who was dean of Stanford's School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant's friend and correspondent at Harvard—had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: "Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down." It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it. Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology—all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can. First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves. John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American Education. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on a Hill," which appeared in the September 2001 issue.

Ah, good times...

I just got to do an Easter egg hunt (and I got $25 from it). My parents rawk. See, you're never too old for an Easter egg hunt. =]-Cap'n Midori

Ok, just bac...

Ok, just back from watching Butterfly Effect and I must say that that movie is one very long mind copulation. Good movie, but weird out the wazzoo. After watching that joyness, I took Ken home and almost hit a dog on the way back here. Now, most of you are probably thinking "so what? that's no big deal" but I must admit I am rather shaken by it. I have no idea why I'm rambling about it here but I guess that's what this is for. I wouldn't mind it so much except that my first pet (the cutest little white and black kitty you'd have ever met) was hit by a car. I cried for days after that and still blame myself for it a bit. We used to let her outside for a little bit in the evenings and if I had just tried a little harder to find her and bring her inside before we left, she would have lived...When the dog ran in front of me and I lost sight of it (before I saw run away safely) all I could think was "Oh my God, I'm going to make some poor little kid cry, just like I did back then..." And, um, yeah...I feel stupid for putting this in here. Started a model of Heavyarms Custom with Ken, day before yesterday. Was all going well till the power died (it was special) and let me tell you that building Gundam models by lantern light really isn't all that romantic. Tis amusing, though. ("Hey, move your hand, you're blocking the light!" "Just let me get the damn sticker on first!")Finally, in my little nonsequenctial ramblings, I must say that 4 day weekends pwn, as do $10 sushi buffets. =]-Cap'n Midorilittle known Midori fact: I cannot stand cooked fish (I can barely eat it without becoming ill), but love it raw.

One day ...

One day last week I took my pants off (hot, isn't it?) and threw them in the washing machine (sorry, did I let you down?). About 30 minutes later it occurred to me that my cell phone was missing in action. Now, all of you are thinking "Oh come on, Midori would never do ANYTHING as scatter brained as that...", but it's true. I ran to the washer (with the utterance of some very naughty words) only to find my cell phone, still in my pants pocket, sopping wet. Yay. Well, I decided to dry it on my monitor cause it's warm, which worked surprisingly well. Upon drying, the phone worked almost as well as it had before, minus the fuzziness of the person I talk to (to whom I talk? stupid prepositions...). All was well, until the next day, after my phone had survived washing machine hell, it was lying on the ground, minding its own business, and its silly antenna ran off (I kid you not, the stupid thing ran away and hid). So no more phone for me for a few days. However, it is now fixed, so for those of you who tried to call me on it I apologize and I am now open for your talkiness. I gave blood today. Being absolutely terrified of needles, it was an oh-so-joyful experience. What made it even better was when the guy tried to take the needle out, didn't clamp the tube right, and sprayed himself with my blood (got a couple drops on my jeans =[). On the bright side, they asked me if I was "a man who has had sex with a man, even once, since 1977." Silly people. -Cap'n Midori

Of rants and Mondays...

Well, I survived yet another Monday, though not so unscathed. My idiot German teacher (Akane can back me up on this) is pissed at me again cause I deem her class irrelevant. I apologize to all for what is about to be said because it shall be long, tedious, and not especially interesting. Now that I have a livejournal I think I'm going to use it to rant about crap and I think I shall start off the ranting with the topic of Frau Bardin. For some reason or another, she has decided that she knows everything about German and many other subjects. For example, she received an e-mail from a native speaker of German and, after her whole 2 semester of staying there (1 in hs and one of college), she decided she knew mroe about it than him and corrected his usage of articles. I have 2 problems with this: 1) He's probably right and 2) no one cared but her and she had lots of fun making fun of him since he "got it wrong". I also pointed out her lack of knowledge on an issue recently and got chewed out. The woman can't tell the difference between a main idea and a theme or a symbol and an archetype and she attempts to "interpret" literature. Of course, anyone who tries to correct her is being "disrespectful" or "condescending" and she does everything within her power to make that person feel stupid and threatens them with office referrals. Now, all of this (and there is MUCH more) might be tolerable if we actually learned in class. Now, I'm not sure why we have to go to school 7 hours a day, but I'm pretty sure that the 73 minutes I spend in that class should be used at least PARTLY for learning. But no, we do nothing. And it's not even that "nothing" where we actually do a little bit of something, it's literally NOTHING. Grr. I sometimes want to hit her with a heavy, solid, object. I can go on for hours about that woman, so I think I'll stop myself...The rest of the day was ok, cept for a stupid physics lab. Get to do a symposium on "Should the US be in Afghanistan" tomorrow(What are y'all's thoughts?). Took Ken to work and then eventually went to Japanese. Found out they won't have a Japanese 3 class next fall semester which made me quite the sad. =[ Now I'll actually have to study on my own so I don't forget everything. Gah, stupid colleges and their we-must-have-8-people-in-a-class rules. Oh well...I should probably go do something useful now, since school insists on sucking out my soul...-Cap'n Midori

hey, something to do!

1.WHAT IS YOUR FULL NAME? Emily Anne Norris 2. WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING? blue jean shorts3. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Sunrays and Saturdays by Vertical Horizon4.WHAT ARE THE LAST 4 DIGITS OF YOUR PHONE NUMBER? 84535. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? corny dog6. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? . . .7. HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW? beautiful8. LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Ken9. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX? hm...I generally notice if they look like they'd be spiffy to be friends with10. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT YOU THIS? yeppers11. HOW ARE YOU TODAY? Awesome! I actually got stuff done today and I get to have a rawkin dinner in a few hours!12. FAVORITE DRINK? ocha!13. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK? rum and coke 14. HEIGHT? 5'4" (I grew!)15. HAIR COLOR? brown (alas, no more green for me...)16. EYE COLOR? green, but occasionally blueish17. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? nope18. SIBLINGS AND THEIR AGES. None19. FAVORITE MONTH? one that has no school20. FAVORITE FOOD? gyoza21. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Gladiator22. FAVORITE DAY OF THE YEAR? days that I can drive with the wondows down, hang out folk, and eat sushi24. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT? yep25. DO YOU LIKE SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDING MOVIES BETTER? happy ending movies give me a nice fuzzy feeling inside (yes, I am incredibly cheezy =P) 26. SUMMER OR WINTER? both27. HUGS OR KISSES? from who? well, I like hugs from everybody but kisses I like only from one person.28. RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE NIGHT STANDS? relationships; one night stands are stupid29. FAVORITE ICE CREAM? spotty dog, but that's only in Australia, so I'll have to settle for red bean30. DO YOU WANT YOUR FRIENDS TO WRITE BACK? [shrug] if they want to31. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Shiro likes to fill these out with random stuff when he's bored, so probably him32. WHO IS MOST LIKELY NOT TO RESPOND? people who don't read it33. LIVING ARRANGEMENT? with parents 34. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? Guns, Germs, and Steel35. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? green36. FAVORITE BOARD GAME? Monopoly37. WHAT DID YOU DO LAST NIGHT? tried to watch an Ultimate Fighting Championship match, and hung out with Ken and Kenny 38. FAVORITE SMELLS? vanilla, Ken, and Cory 39. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF IN THE MORNING? "5 more minutes..."40. WHAT DO YOU DO BEFORE YOU GO TO SLEEP? crunches, put up an away message, and worry about tomorrow

slave labor

Well, Akane's gone, so the house is a bit (sadly) saner. After she left, I got to spend 5 hours or so helping with yard work using a hatchet, chainsaw, and axe. It was fun. Unfortunately, my mom and I got in trouble when my dad came home to find some of our (incredibly ugly) bushes ripped out. Oh well, at least I accomplished something today...It should be noted that Snapdragons are THE best flower in the entire world.My life is boring so I'm going back to hack at stuff.-Cap'n Midori

gee, thanks Akane....

So, I leave home today at 8 p.m. to go watch Ultimate Fighting Championship on paper view with some folk, only to come home and discover I have been oh-so-specially "gifted" with a livejournal. Don't worry, Akane should still be recognizable (I use the term loosely) when I am through. =]