Overheard at the Children's Park, Part V

Interchangeable commodities and the tough choice between tokens of status:

Mom #1: So, yeah, I could send him to Brentwood next year, but then with my two others in private schools, I wouldn't be able to buy a new Lexus this year.

Mom #2: Yeah, I know.

Parasites

A friend of mine alerted me to this article in the NYT. About a bunch of capri-wearing, teva-sporting, self-righteous, selfish freaks:

NYT Article.

A previous blog entry can be found here, which includes the Times Literary Supplment's review of Arthur Allen's Vaccine.

Among the many things that gets me about these types is their unconcern with their own ignorance of scientific medicine and the basic precepts of science. Ignorance empowers them. They sit around in their little Mommy and Me groups puffing each other up with a bunch of unfounded or ill-founded bullshit.

I believe that, in certain instances, it's possible to argue that denying a child a vaccine is tantamount to child abuse. And I while I would hope that the state would consider criminal charges against parents who endanger other's with their pseud0-science, I look forward to the civil penalties that may result from the neglect. Especially, considering that unlike yesteryear, where the poor were the only ones who neglected to get their shots, now it's the upper-middle-class Volvo/Westside set. And they have deep-pockets. This weird reversal is part of the whole precious-parent syndrome that I've been critiquing throughout this blog.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

many of these parents are influenced by misinformation obtained from Web sites that oppose vaccination.

Children who are not vaccinated are unnecessarily susceptible to serious illnesses, they say, but also present a danger to children who have had their shots — the measles vaccine, for instance, is only 95 percent effective — and to those children too young to receive certain vaccines.

Measles, almost wholly eradicated in the United States through vaccines, can cause pneumonia and brain swelling, which in rare cases can lead to death. The measles outbreak here alarmed public health officials, sickened babies and sent one child to the hospital.

“I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good,” said Sybil Carlson, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children hit by the measles outbreak here. The boy is immunized against some diseases but not measles, Ms. Carlson said, while his 3-year-old brother has had just one shot, protecting him against meningitis.

While nationwide over 90 percent of children old enough to receive vaccines get them, the number of exemptions worries many health officials and experts. They say that vaccines have saved countless lives, and that personal-belief exemptions are potentially dangerous and bad public policy because they are not based on sound science.

Some parents of unvaccinated children go to great lengths to expose their children to childhood diseases to help them build natural immunities.

In the wake of last month’s outbreak, Linda Palmer considered sending her son to a measles party to contract the virus. Several years ago, the boy, now 12, contracted chicken pox when Ms. Palmer had him attend a gathering of children with that virus.

“It is a very common thing in the natural-health oriented world,” Ms. Palmer said of the parties.

She ultimately decided against the measles party for fear of having her son ostracized if he became ill.

We all hate standing in line

LINK.

Because the Night belongs to Us

From the Sunday New York Times:

When I was in high school in the 1970s, we had a name for teenagers like Chloe: losers. If an otherwise normal girl thought that the best way to spend a Saturday night was home with her parents — not just co-existing with them, but actually hanging out with them — we would have been looking for a bucket of pig’s blood.

In my day, we did whatever was necessary to get out on a Saturday night: we climbed out of windows; we jumped on the back of motorcycles; God help us, we hitchhiked. We needed, on the most basic and physical level, to be out in the dangerous night, with one another, away from our parents and the safety of home. It was no way to live, and some of us didn’t. But it was a drive so elemental and essential that there seemed no way to deny it.

LINK to NYT Article.

Edu-Babble Part IV

"Research has shown." "A phrase used to preface and shore up educational claims. Often it is used selectively, even when the preponderant or most reliable research shows no such thing, as in the statement 'Research has shown that children learn best with hands-on methods.' Educational research varies enormously in quality and reliability. Some research is insecure because its sample sizes tend to be small and a large number of significant variables (social, historical, cultural, and personal) cannot be controlled. If an article describes a 'successful' strategy, such as building a pioneer village out of Popsicle sticks instead of reading about pioneers, the success may not be fully documented, and the idea that the method will work for all students and classrooms is simply assumed. There are strong ethical limits on the degree to which research variables can or should be controlled when the subjects of research are children. Many findings of educational research are highly contradictory. Greatest confidence can be placed in refereed journals in mainstream disciplines. (A refereed journal is one whose articles have been checked by respected scientists, or referees, in a particular specialty.) Next in reliability is research that appears in the most prestigious refereed educational journals. Very little confidence can be placed in research published in less prestigious journals and in nonrefereed publications. The most reliable type of research in education (as in medicine) tends to be 'epidemiological research,' that is, studies of definitely observable effects exhibited by large populations of subjects over considerable periods of time. The sample size and the duration of such large-scale studies help to cancel out the misleading influences of uncontrolled variables. An additional degree of confidence can be placed in educational research if it is consistent with well-accepted findings in neighboring fields like psychology and sociology. Educational research that conflicts with such mainstream findings is to be greeted with special skepticism. The moral: Print brings no reliable authority to an educational claim. When in doubt, ask for specific references and check them. Many claims evaporate under such scrutiny." - E. D. Hirsh