mother in-law jokes

You know, mother in-law jokes are strange things. I heard a rather neatly constructed mother in-law joke the other night:
"I've got a real soft spot for my mother in-law... the swamp."

It is funny because of the rather neat shift in perception in the joke, but I have to admit that I've always been bothered by mother in-law jokes. I love my mother. She is a truly wonderful person, smart, patient, gentle, talented. I suspect that many other people feel this way about their mothers too, but almost every one of those mothers is also a mother in-law. And that is the crux of the problem I have with mother in-law jokes.

young people today...

So many times I hear someone begin a complaint with "Young people today..."

It is weird. It is like we never learn. Or we steadfastly close our eyes to the reality of the world around us while developing selective amnesia of our earlier years. How is it that people can say that kids today are worse than "when I was young"? I distinctly remember teachers getting punched out by students when I was young (30 or 40 years ago), students ganging up and beating the living crap out of each other, and teachers inflicting horrifying tortures as punishment upon kids for quite spurious reasons.

But these days teachers are often livid when a kid talks back to them or refuses to carry out orders. "We should be able to beat it into them," as if teaching how to be cruel ever fixed anything. "Discipline, that's what's missing," as if forcing your will on someone else ever had good and uplifting results.

What it says to me is that teachers haven't been properly equipped to attract kids into doing the right things. We have all heard of inspired teachers who effortlessly keep kids interested and laughing, who get impossible children to listen and learn.

This is what is needed, not more of the old-style beatings.

the war against your children

Just thinking again about the hypocritical stupidity that is the current attitude to drugs:
Tell kids a bunch of lies about drugs, then when they find out and do the whole baby-bathwater thing and try to find out first-hand what is the big deal about drugs, our society washes its hands of them.

It is infuriatingly irresponsible to "educate" kids with a bunch of lies, and utterly criminal to condemn them when they become curious about the lies.

Our policy-makers should be in prison, not the kids who try to find out what all the damn fuss is about.
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