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Report Suggests That Nanny State Might Actually Not Be For the Best
tonyreadsnews writes "Usually, 'thinking of the children' is a starting point to impose limitations on video games and internet in general. For once, a study requested by UK's Prime Minister seems to be a bit more objective than most. In the Executive Summary (PDF) 'Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe — this isn't just about a top-down approach. Children will be children — pushing boundaries and taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and
shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.' I think that is an important point that most studies miss, that just 'thinking of the children' and locking the bad stuff away is actually setting them up for failure later in life. A direct link to the full PDF is also available."
At the same time, UK Social Services is committing acts of terrorism (yes, kidnapping threats are acts of terrorism) against a family with fat children.
Hypocritical much?
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I always thought it was called either "culling the herd" or "being a Darwin Award recipient".
The needs of the US are different from the UK.
Obese people just naturally float, just like the really big chunks in the septic tank (and politicians) always rise to the top ...
Kevin Smith on Prince
Starting off by calling it the "nanny state" is already trying to frame the debate in a way that reinforces particular biases.
No, we should not attempt to foam pad the entire world so the precious little ones don't get hurt, but that doesn't mean we should just toss them out in the woods and let them fend for themselves either. Certain safety regulations are required for the functioning of an advanced society, many of which are created at least in part to keep children safe (school zones, crosswalks, etc).
The debate should be about which regulations and safety precautions make sense, not about creating a false dichotomy by calling any regulation the imposition of a "nanny state".
But sometimes I confuse myself. I mean, sure, don't show children "adult" things, and make sure they don't swear... but why? Why exactly do we embrace an arbitrary concept of "innocence" in children? I believe being honest is the best way to raise children. Of course my child has already seen breasts, he was breast fed. Why deny their existance just months later? Why not explain how society works and give them the honest scoop?
"Sex is only for adults, but since you asked..."
Sometimes I hear a young kid swear in public and it always catches me off guard, thinking "geez, kids these days have no respect." But then I think- what is inherently bad about swear words anyhow? We're just safegarding them from things that we've deemed innapropriate in our society- that they don't even realize is inappropriate, because they're new to society. Why not be brutally honest with them instead?
"Son, Fuck is a bad word that people don't like. Try not to say it in public or around your teacher. Also, don't use it around your parents, it's disrespectful."
Treat them like children.. they'll act like children...
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.
Most importantly, nobody suggest that swimming pools should be outlawed.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
In "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," Mark Twain warned about this kind of thing. The town was so proud of their righteousness that they wanted to keep that reputation so they made sure kids were never subjected to temptation so they'd never do bad things, then a stranger comes by, gets fed up with their self righteousness that all he does is tempt all the leading citizens. Since none of them have had much experience with temptation or resisting greed, they all fall in his trap and he shows how corruptible they are.
They change the two motto from "Lead us not into temptation" to "Lead us into temptation" because they learn that only by dealing with temptation will they learn to fight it.
It's the same thing here, just took over 100 years later for anyone to actually have the guts to stand up and say it.
Objective - Adj - A viewpoint which is closer to your own
Granted, I totally agree that a nanny state is a Very Bad Thing (tm), but it seems disingenuous to say that because the report doesn't glorify a nanny state, it is therefore more objective.
"Taking warning labels off of everything and letting things work out on their own" would also have been an acceptable answer
Think of the politicians! Think of the gadflies!
Won't somebody think of the busybodies?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
NEVER SHAKE A BABY!
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Children have parents coming to swimming pool with them. Imagine sending a 5 year old to swim by him/herself and not checking back for 3 hours. Now why would you do the same with an online (or just violent) game or Internet browsing/chat/so on session?
Now the situation would be reversed for a 16 year old teenager. He/she is expected to live independently in just two years, so supervision (on Internet or in the swimming pool) should only happen on voluntary discussion basis of if there is a reason to suspect problems.
People like risk because the thrill of danger followed by the realization of success pushes our pleasure buttons.
Life is dangerous. It's a terminal disease. We can't make everything safe no matter how much we try, because we're all going to die anyway. However, we can make life increasingly unpleasant by removing all the fun, interesting parts of it in the interests of a fundamentally unreachable goal of complete safety.
Thing is: it's a shifting goal. In the early 1900's, being able to buy dynamite at the hardware store made sense. Does it now, from a societal viewpoint? There *are* things that become increasingly dangerous as populations and technologic sophistication rise, so maybe we do need to change our rules over time, to deal with shifting situations. It's not like all safety laws and regulations are bunk. I'm living proof that seatbelts save lives, and if cars weren't legally required to have them, I might've been squished flat by a semi.
The thing is: we, as a culture, need to understand that 'safety' is not, by itself, sufficient reason to pass laws. A better understanding of the consequences is required, to prevent us ending up in a self-imposed prison.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I know we were all expecting "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense", but I was really hoping someone would tag it "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" instead.
I was confused there. I could have sworn that creating a risk-averse society was going to lead to a more daring and entrepeneurial economy, a government with balls of steel that stands up for the principles its society claims to hold dear, and a society of people who are independent and capable of functioning on their own without cradle-to-grave hand holding.
Of course the greater issue is how we got down this path in the first place. People don't want to admit it, but it's the feminization of society. It is offensive to modern values to suggest such a thing, but simple observation will show you that the outrage over these restrictions is far more common and fiercer in men than women. Women may disagree with the excesses, but they don't disagree with the principle nearly as much as men do because as voting records have shown countless times in many countries, women tend to value security over freedom. Ever wonder why most libertarians tend to be men?
I'm not trying to bash women here, I'm just saying that society as a whole has taken on an overtly feminized aura to it. There is no balance anymore, the way there used to be.
by the Journal of DUH.
Besides the nanny state, what about this concept that "everybody wins". Society needs mediocrity to reward the true winners. It also needs Darwin Award winners.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think it's a great idea to warn people about the danger of the nanny state. I showed that article to a friend of mine, who is a Congress staffer in Washington D.C. He was enthusiastic. His boss will present it in commission. They'll form a committee to formalize these recommandation and will draft a bill.
The bill will create a new Federal agency, the Protection Against Nanny State Agency. This new Agency will monitor public behavior and watch for complacency and exaggerated reliance on the State. Its agents will have power to monitor private conversations and intervene in public or private places. Whenever someone will be heard saying "they oughta be a law" or "why doesn't Congress do something", the agents will intervene, battering down doors if needed, and vigorously wag an aseptic, non-latex-gloved finger in the face of the offender, who will be sternly warned: "That would be asking for a nanny state, Sonny".
The new Agency will cost an estimated $134 billion a year. But this is a small price to pay, considering the Federal government will protect us against the growing menace of the Nanny State.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
Never mind the children -- how do we teach the damn adults to take care of themselves? What a great world it would be if people took responsibility for their own lives rather than blaming the government for not giving them enough "free" goodies.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The problem with your thinking is that it seems to assume that children are just like adults, that they think the same way, have similar value systems, et cetera -- they just lack experience, so they should be "brought up to speed" in much the same way an ignorant adult would be.
Not so. Children are fundamentally different from adults. They don't think the same way. They don't experience the world the same way. Check out any good textbook on cognitive development and couple it with close, unprejudiced observation of your own children.
Most importantly, the way children think changes fairly rapidly as they grow. How a child reacts to a naked tit, for example, completely changes from age 1 to school-age, and again in middle school, and once again at sexual maturity. A wise parent considers these changes, and does not try to use the same reasoning and the same solutions at all ages.
And, in recognition of the fact that children don't think the same way at the same age, society tends to say that certain experiences should be shoved into certain age ranges, when they are easiest to successfully understand and cope with (either for the child or for the adults around him). It's among our oldest traditions as a species, the idea that certain experiences are best at certain ages, and it would generally be gross folly to overturn them without damn good reason. ("Gee! Tt seems reasonable to me! What could possibly go wrong?" doesn't qualify, by the way.)
The same arguments apply to purely intellectual stuff, too. For example, the present trend to teach algebra skills as early as grade 5 or 6 is almost certainly badly misguided. The mental circuitry required to easily learn algebra is usually (although not in every case) not "hooked up" until early adolescence. That means kids are tortured with stuff that is very hard to get, when waiting a few years would make it a piece of cake. Again, a failure to understand that children are not merely miniaturized, ignorant adults.
It seems like this is all just an attempt to deal with the symptoms of the original cause, which is unqualified parents. We require licenses and tests to be able to drive or fly. Licenses to fish or check out library books, yet we allow any drone or sheep-person to enter into the commitment to raise and rear a human being for the next 18 years without so much as a second glance. This is like trying to clean up pollution while hawking hummers to every soccer mom. -W
news - there's a great tag. Can someone also tag it slashdot in case we forget?
Now, considering the general political leanings of the slashdot audience, this next part may get me creamed
Let's take it a step further. Once upon a time, it was "If you work hard and save your money, you can have a nice retirement." Then it was "We're going to take care of our poor retired people (by taxing working people)." Poof--there went a large measure of individual responsibility. We all know how the resulting system (Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid) has worked out: it's losing money rapidly, and in order to sustain it, taxes will have to be raised.
The problem comes down to this: the more the government (or any authority figure) takes responsibility for our well-being, the more we become reliant on that government or authority figure, and less responsible for ourselves. And this reliance comes at a price. In this case, the price is taxes. But in every case, there's an additional cost: our ability to take care of ourselves. We turn to the government for help when something goes wrong. We become victims, powerless to do anything for ourselves.
If you look at the political parties today, it's pretty easy to see which party (or parties) are encouraging further progress down the road to dependence. Government-mandated insurance, anyone?
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There are two sides to this argument
I disagree. There are no sides at all. The issue is one of continuously varying shades of gray. It's not a binary equation; there are more than two answers. There are, in fact infinite answers, to each variation of the question.
In some cases, people should be left alone to live their lives as they see fit. In other cases, they should receive guidance and protection from the government. This varies by the circumstances - everyone should have the government look for obvious signs of criminal behavior, because without government protection, we cannot protect ourselves against Might Makes Right gangs. It also varies by the people in question - some parents do, in fact, need strict government oversight in how they raise, or kill, their children.
There are no simple answers, only simple people asking the wrong question.
The human race has successfully raised children for millenia, risks and all. The idea has always been to see them to adulthood, whenever that happens to roll around culturally, and then see them out the door. If this happens, you have successfully passed your Darwinian challenge course. If they learned enough from you in the process that they succeed in punting your grandkids out the door, the formula has continued to demonstrate its adaptive suitability. "Protecting" children - and even adults from miniscule risks, you know, terrorists for example, or guns even, is scarcely beneficial except to the nuerotic. Consider that the US homicide rate last year was 5.5/100K. The automobile related death rate is nearly three times that, and guns and cars are our favorite risks supposedly. The birthrate, at an all time low, is still one hundred times that. Violent USians haven't even nipped a dent their birthrate. The conclusion is that "protections" for such miserably minor risks do not make any sense demographically or economically. The only sense they DO make is within a society where media defines "social problems" - animal rights, disabled access, child risks, lead based paint, asbestos, ect. - and politicians act to look as if they are earning pay.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
when I was younger (and no, I'm not that old) me and some friends would regularly meet up in the morning, raid respective parental kitchens for a pack lunch and vanish for 9-10 hours. We'd walk >5miles, make swings from old rope and swing out over the water cress beds, get soaked, throw stuff at each other and generally behave like children. This was before sat nav, gps, mobile phones and our parents had no way of contacting us. We all had small change for the public phones and the one time we needed help (someone broke a coller bone) we managed on our own to organise things.
It was simply how children behaved.
Now mothers are frightened to let children out of their sight, and a whole generation is growing up mollycoddled and unable to think on their own or take risks. Worse, numerous studies show that without exposure to other people, children to play with etc., they grow up lacking many social traits they need to learn from their peers and with little immunity for many common viruses. And don't even get me started on education.
It's sad, and I wonder (a) how we got to this situations and (b) how to get out of it.
Not so. Children are fundamentally different from adults. They don't think the same way. They don't experience the world the same way. Check out any good textbook on cognitive development and couple it with close, unprejudiced observation of your own children.
It's true. My daughter (4.5 yrs) knows that a baby comes from a sperm from the Daddy and an egg from the Mommy and grows in her baby factory, but it has never occurred to her to ask how those two came to be together. An adult would pursue the inquiry to reduction at each level.
The same arguments apply to purely intellectual stuff, too. For example, the present trend to teach algebra skills as early as grade 5 or 6 is almost certainly badly misguided. The mental circuitry required to easily learn algebra is usually (although not in every case) not "hooked up" until early adolescence.
I read this idea elswhere a few weeks ago, and so decided to test it out. On a 20 minute car ride, my daughter learned the idea of X+ and X-, and thinks it's fun to solve for X, for small numbers anyway.
Granted, that's not all of the study of algebra, but the idea of symbolic representation isn't beyond the grasp of a relatively intelligent preschooler (she's not a math savant). I think the right question to ask is, "what ideas from Algebra might be appropriate for a first grader?" Right now everybody is focused on whether Algebra I is appropriate for Age X.
I think we're doing a disservice to learners by teaching:
This is what math is.
[insert 6 years]
Actually, this is what math is.
[insert 4 years]
Turns out, no, this is what math is.
[insert 4 years]
Well, yeah, that's what one kind of math was, but here are a bunch of others.
[insert 2 years]
Turns out we're still figuring out what math is.
We should be figuring out the right way to integrate rather than constantly stratifying. Granted, that's harder, but there are plenty of folks who like to study this stuff, and those of us stumbling around in the dark for lack of it would appreciate some real research.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We're protecting the swear words, not the kids.
If we have six-year-olds running around saying "fuck" willy-nilly, all that does is ruin the shock value of a perfectly good swear word. At that point you might as well be saying "boink."
"Oh yeah, boink me harder, baby."
"If Johnson doesn't get that report in by Tuesday the whole department is boinked!"
Now where's the fun in that? We'd just have to come up with a NEW swear word so horrifying that no child would be able to pronounce it without immediately being swallowed by the jaws of Hell, and honestly, I don't really feel like digging that far into the Windows API documentation.
Depends on the city. Talk to someone who grew up in Bed-Stuy or the South Bronx in the '70's and '80's sometime.
I've actually found that those farm boys are the ones with the MOST broken bones and torn ligaments. They don't learn from the pain, they relish it. I work with many of these people, and they all have a perverse need to destroy their bodies over and over again. They then usually bitch about the effete, pretentious doctors who couldn't put them back together quite right.
But I guess if I need a titanium rod up my back to make me not be a creampuff, so be it.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Fear of injury and litigation have killed so many things for kids. I guess with today's way of thinking...it is amazing a sufficient number of people my age survived childhood in order to reproduce. Bikes without helments, bicycle ramps imitating Evel Kineval (sp?), swimming without 'swimmies', diving boards...[shudder] playing outside on our own days at a time without supervision or cell phones....
What the hell were our parents thinking?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Eugenics is not Nazi. Nazis used gasoline so does that mean we are just as bad as them?
In the USA, the government used to sterilize people! Eugenics had gone a long ways towards being acceptable and normal in the 'civilized' world. Eugenics was practiced and gaining popularity all over the world until the extreme distortion and abuse of those ideas by the Nazis linked the two together and guilt by association caused Eugenics to fall out of favor.
Is it not possible that there is some middle ground? Should we be completely dismissing it?
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The term "Nanny State" refers to government treating its citizens like children. It is a contrast to the Daddy State that punishes you if you've been bad, and the Mommy State that shields you from the consequences of your actions. A Nanny State is one that is overly protective. All three assert that adults are too immature to run their own lives and that government must run their lives for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_state
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I'd rather have people who think guns are dangerous and don't want to mess with them than people who think they aren't dangerous and are fun to play with.
Guns are dangerous. That doesn't mean we should try to keep people from having them. But it is fine if people recognize they are dangerous and thus shouldn't be messed with unless you know what you're doing.
Don't confuse people who want to take your guns away with people who have no problem with your guns but don't want the responsibility of owning their own.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?