Savas-In reference to "Conforming our kids"

I just wanted to make a comment about a post you made down below about society trying to conform us to not think for ourselves, etc. in the post topic of "habit/addiction.

I have come to realize this first hand due to an experience we had with our daughter's school she attended a couple of years ago. This school had a "special" class that all the kids participated in every day for 2 hours. It was worked into there cirriculum and everyone but the school HATED it!! This "Wonderful" class was called "DI" thats short for.."Direct Intervention". Our daughter loved school but this year she would come home crying talking about how she hated DI and hated her teacher in DI and begging me to please not make her go back to that class. Well I dug up some papers on it that I had thrown aside not thinking it was very important earlier that year when the class was being introduced. This class was designed to "train" our kids to become better and more productive citizens and workers in the adult world. The whole description used words like "train,disipline,unisom,as a whole,drill,conform," over and over through-out the description. I found out that for every day each class would go to there DI class and teacher for 2 hours. During that class (mind you this is a FIRST grade class) the kids were not allowed to speak at ALL unless they were spoken to, and even then, the class had to speak as a whole. For instance...the teacher would ask the class a question and the whole class had to answer her in unisom style, all at once, harmonously. No individual student could speak by thereselves. The students were given a stack of papers they had to do and finish in that 2 hours. The class was completely silent. The kids are NOT ALLOWED to slouch, slump, or fidget. If they are caught slumping during these two hours they are repremanded for it. It was HORRIBLE!! My daughter had a best friend in that class that she also went to karate with. During karate class me and her mom would talk and she told me how her daughters hated this class and that during the parent/teacher conference she had with the DI teacher she was told how her daughter was failing and she needed to improve her behavior. When her mom asked what she was doing wrong...the DI teacher said that she did not have a good attention spand and that she fidgeded too much. !!!!  THE CHILD IS 6 YEARS OLD!!! ALL 6 yr olds have short attention spands and you CANT expect a 6 YR OLD to be able to sit completely still and upright for 2 HOURS!!!  ARGGGGG. I just told my daughter that she was gonna just have to try and tuff it out and luckily we moved that summer and the new school I enrolled them in told me that they did not have DI and when it was proposed they all shot it down quickily cause they thought it was obserd. It was like they were training our kids to be mechanical robots or something and to not be able to think for themselves. If that had not of happened to me it would of been real hard to believe that such things were being taught in the schools. Its really scary stuff!!

[eliminnopee]

    I have a yound brother, now 10yo, that experienced the same class in east TN.  They also had public school year round.  We could not allow him to be taught and brought up that way, unfortunately all the schools in this area are involved in this program.  In varying degrees all the way untill 10th grade here.  We have taken him out and been home schooling for 3.5 yrs.  When I say "we" I mean my older brother and I, we adopted him when our sister (his mother) was killed in an auto accident.  Anyway, know what you mean, what are these people thinking?

[wait2long]

WOW...this class you speak of sound utterly absurd...what ARE they thinking? and where and who developed this type of concept they are calling learning?  that scares me...

[Savas]

Lord, sounds like something they used to do in the Hitler Youth in Germany during the war (not exaggerating). I don't have to go on about all the reasons this is stupid. Teaching a child that "life can be boring and not fun and sometimes you have to do things you don't like" isn't something you need a special class for. All they're doing is make children hate school. If the teachers can't handle teaching kids because of their "behavior", tell them to go dig ditches for a living.


I'd bet good MONEY that if you did a study of the grades of kids in the year during this class and after you'll see a significant overall drop. Challenge the principal with this (fudge your statistics if you need to, everyone else does! :)  ) and threaten to go to the papers with his brilliant new program that's causing a decrease in grades.

Then again, don't parents still have a say in this thing? Any chance of getting a group together over it, or just pulling your child out of the class for "religious and moral" reasons? (It's a sin to do something so stupid!)

[Carrie76]

Yes, I thought it was totally obserd too!! Don't feel bad,..my first reaction thought was of hitler too:) I was soo glad to get her out of that school system. They go to the public school system here in cleveland now and they DONT support this cirriculum, they shot it down real quick when it was proposed. Thank God!! I should have started a group to try and get it dropped, but I no longer live there anymore. I would gaurentee that the grades dropped because I didnt know of one single parent or child that had anything good to say about it. Needless to say, now when the school sends home papers explaining ciriculum or new stuff..I READ IT!!!
There trying there best all over I feel to change our kids into little adults too soon. If a 6 yr old doesnt have an attention span...then thats a bad thing now....If they cant get a 4 or 5 yr old to sit still and behave, then they must have ADHD. ..For Gods sake people what ever happened to letting kids be kids! Kids dont have attention spans to amount to anything and they are ramboungious by nature!!!
I may google that word DI on the computer and see if I can pull anything up on it just to see what it says. If they ever do introduce it to my kids school here then you can bet I will be protesting and/or moving them out from it. Very scary stuff in my opinion and sooo far from the american way of life of having free speech and to do as you please and to have your own thoughts, opinions and feelings. What is this country coming to???

[Savas]

Well, remember, a school is run by a committee, and a committee by definition is an animal with one body, twelve or more legs and arms, and no head.  :)

I'm of the opinion most of our problems come from poor management. We came out of WWII with a GNP of 42 percent, when it should have been around 24%. Over the years it's settled down to about 24%...but...our government's been spending as if it's stayed at 42%. Sooooo... this country has gone beyond bankrupt due to continual mismanagement.
The overpopulation problem doesn't help to, of course. I'm beginning to think people are a lot like lemmings, only we're a little more inventive in how we self destruct.

[Savas]

(got cut off due to auto-backup) We also have to stop letting the media drive our every whim. I talk to my Canadian or Irish cousins out of country and they MARVEL at how Americans live in such a climate of fear. We allow the politicals and media to drive us into a frenzy of fear by bombarding us with images of "terrorism". We're BEGGING our government to strip away all our freedoms and rights and they're happy to be obliging.
People have to realize that there are bad people out there, who will do bad things. You can't protect against it, it's just going to happen. Statistically if we lose 5,000 people a year to terrorist attacks and still keep our political freedoms and rights, well...I don't think that's a bad exchange (we're losing more than that right now, with no positive result!).
Ugh, I could go on about this forever, but I won't.  :)

[Carrie76]

lolol,...I know just what you mean!!! I could go on and on to about all that!! Anytime someone starts talking about the government it starts me on "my rant and roll" lolo:)
The government is getting us scared and then coming up with these "grand" ideas to "protect" us better and we fall for it and say YES for the sake of supposable "freedom". When in the end were loosing all our rights and the government is just sitting back laughing at us all cause were allowing it to happen and most don't even realize it.

[Jaybay]

You have a great point about labeling young children with ADHD.  This ridiculous DI "class" sounds like just another way for school districts to label more and more kids with this so-called illness.  Why?  Because the more kids who are labeled with a "disability," the more money the district gets from the state and the feds to deal with them.  Just follow the money trail and you'll usually get your answer.