It is this reporter's opinion that if you are not one of our “Talk Back” listeners on Cable Radio Network Digital Talk Radio, you’re missing some of America’s foremost journalists, political figures, and everyday people with a provocative story to tell.
Most recently, we did an interview on radio with Selwyn Duke who is disturbed by the left’s antipathy toward competition among our kids. Duke says the left feels that competition will lower kids' self-esteem and may create hurt feelings.
He cites examples. Recently, a Colorado Springs elementary school banned tag games during recess, along with such childhood pastimes as cops and robbers, musical chairs, and a favorite childhood school game, dodge ball.
More inane still is the decision by the Massachusetts Youth Soccer Association to prohibit keeping score during tournament games. Duke says it is all part of a pattern.
Boyhood is being banned.
It is almost impossible to find plastic toy guns that were a staple when we were lads growing up. Toy guns of any type are prohibited by crime-ridden cities and mothers that are overly cautious. Part of this pattern of banning childhood games includes not bestowing trophies on children that excel because it smacks of competition and challenges little psyches.
Boys love games. They thrive on competitive sports, hoping to grow up and join the ranks of the stars of competitive sports football, basketball, baseball, boxing, and hockey. They love hierarchies and “high five’s" given out in the spirit of competition and in the spirit of "nice try." They love guns, playing soldier, and shoot-em-up games.
These innocent experiences involving childhood activities are slowly being taken away from our kids or curtailed by the social engineers of the left. One school who waged a ban on dodge ball, switched to yoga exercises.
Recently, David Limbaugh wrote of the ban on dodge ball in his syndicated column, mentioning the school district banning of dodge ball to satisfy a panel of professors, students, and parents who want to “preserve the rights and dignity” of students.
Why? Because such competitive activity does not make students feel good about themselves.
The anti-dodge ball crusaders say the game encourages the strong to victimize the weak, that dodge ball is not only violent but conveys a message of violence. Violent ground competitive sports are a neofascist metaphor for war according to them.
Limbaugh mentions the suspension of a 9-year-old California kid playing cops and robbers, and two New York second-graders, suspended and criminally charged with — pointing a paper gun and saying, “I’m going to get you.” Then there was the 9-year-old New Jersey boy, suspended and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. He planned to shoot a classmate with a spitball!
These wackos are diagnosing normal boyhood behavior as a psychological problem. There is an increasingly common antipathy for all things male, especially in academia. Such an attitude is highlighted in Christina Hoff Sommers’ book, “The War Against Boys.”
Sommers cites feminists such as Carol Gilligan who believes we should civilize boys by diminishing their masculinity, Gloria Steinem who suggests we raise boys like we raise girls, or Harvard psychologist William Pollock who wrote the book, “Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood.”
These individuals and others see everything as a battle of the sexes. In their minds, “the ever-present ‘patriarchy’ will only be vanquished and women liberated once boys are sufficiently reprogrammed,” Duke says, adding that masculine traits that enable boys to be dominant must be quashed otherwise they will grow up and dominate women.
Many will protest that anti-male bias doesn’t rule their minds. Rather it is a matter of visceral dislike. Unwilling to confront their prejudices, the social engineering left manufactures excuses. Dodge ball is dangerous; cops and robbers are violent; musical chairs is exclusive and tag games terrorize.
These social engineers would douse boys' masculinity with Ritalin, as Duke suggests, which may be the closest they can get to their preferred solution of turning these youngsters, as they grow toward mature masculinity, into eunuchs.
These leftists are diagnosing normal boyhood behavior as some kind of a psychological problem. They are the same people who lecture us for not subscribing to the notion that homosexual behavior is innate and healthy and that normal boyish behavior is learned and destructive.
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