Twisted psychiatric experiment? Exploiting students and veterans? Imperial brainwashing?

[lostnfound]

Or all three rolled into one?

I'd seen an email about it previously and thought it was nauseating -- but I thought it wasn't real, right?? Just some rightwing, maudlin and fake rallying theme, I supposed. Now I am shocked: it IS real, and it is apparently spreading. On one level, a simple experience, no big deal, but it carries the faint odor of a twisted experiment fit for a totalitarian military state -- not a celebration of democracy. In fact, I find it demeaning not only to the kids but to the soldiers themselves. They aren't carpenters, you know.

A friend of mine has a son in elementary school. He went to school one morning and all of the chairs were missing. The kids asked 'where are the chairs?' and they were told "you haven't earned that privilege yet." A few hours later, some soldiers enter the classroom, and the kids are called up one by one (are they standing at attention? I'm not sure..) to come retrieve their chairs. The soldier hands them their chair, and the kids are told that "this has been to illustrate that we have certain privileges because we live in this country that other countries that aren't free don't have; and it's because of our soldiers that you have these privileges." Then they watch a video about the military, they applaud the soldiers, and they are taken to the cafeteria where the soldiers serve them some refreshments.

How wrong is all of this, let me count the ways.
1. The soldiers who won "our freedoms" the first time around -- the revolutionaries -- weren't exactly "soldiers". They were revolutionaries fighting the government that was in charge at the time, the King of England. They were the rabble-rousers, the people who rose up to fight against the establishment and its standing army.

2. Soldiers ain't props. These soldiers may be called on to risk their lives and survive in terrifying places, but here they are being told (or at least encouraged) to participate in a cheap phony charade to brainwash a bunch of schoolkids.

3. If someone takes away your chair, kids, the lesson is to stand there submissively and wait for the authorities to give it back. The fighters in the American revolution would have demanded them back. The independent spirits of America would have gone out and chopped off some branches and lashed them together to make a chair. But in the dreamworld of the Bush military state, all good flows from the point of a gun. In the prison of a public school, the kids are powerless, and some distant schemer is playing power games or mind games (because you can be sure this wasn't just one teacher's idea).

4. The Army etc. employs a very large number of psychologists, some of whom are busy designing 'techniques' for 'interrogation', as we've recently learned. The others?...Nah. This was simply random acts of ..what...school superintendency?

It would be laughable if it weren't really happening. Is it happening at a school near you?

[lostnfound]

1. Here's another example, this one in Bowling Green.

http://www.bgdailynews.com/articles/2007/11/09/news/news1.txt

Lt. Col. Bobbie Pedigo told the students they didn’t have to earn their chairs, that their chairs were earned for them. At that point, members of the National Guard marched in, carrying the chairs with them.

The soldiers brought in the chairs and lined them up, calling students’, faculty members’ and community members’ names until all seats were filled - and said, “I earned this chair for you.”

The removal of the chairs was modeled after an event that took place at an Arkansas school, where a teacher let students know what it meant to “earn their desks.”

“Soldiers are protecting our freedoms every day, and the emphasis was that students have responsibility as well, which is to do the best they can,” Morehead said.

"modeled after" -- yeah, right. More like "scripted in the same way as".

[lolly]

2. Where did this happen?

And how are you sure it was real?

I can imagine some wingnut dreaming up this stunt, but why would teachers go along?

[lostnfound]

4. I am POSITIVE it was real.

They emailed the parents afterward to tell them about it.

[lostnfound]

8. It happened in Florida, I won't say exactly where.

And as far as whether it's real, you can see from the other two examples that I just found on Google that it is most definitely real.

[Duer 157099]

5. Creeeeeeeeeeeepy! Just substitute "Jesus" for "soldier"

and the story still plays the same doesn't it?

I hate indoctrination like this, yeeeech!

[lostnfound]

7. Here's another example, in Grand Island Nebraska.

http://www.theindependent.com/stories/11072007/new_freedom07.shtml

Then Eirick began urging her eighth-graders to think about what they had done to earn the right to sit in the chairs they took for granted every day.

The teacher then said she was going to present a lesson that hopefully "will stay with you for a long time."

With that, Eirick asked her students to stand and motioned to the classroom door to signal a number of men, many of them dressed in military uniforms, to begin pulling the combo desks and chairs into the room.

The single-file procession was silent, almost somber. As each man placed a desk and chair in the right spot, he stopped and stood as if at parade rest.

One by one, the students were asked to sit down at their desks.

When all the students were seated, Eirick told them that the men standing beside their desks were either military veterans or active-duty personnel in the U.S. military.

"You wouldn't have the desks you have if it weren't for them," Eirick said.

Neither would students have the opportunity for the type of education they are receiving at District 1-R without the sacrifices of the men standing in the classroom as well as many thousands of other men and women who have served or are serving in the military, Eirick said

[lostnfound]

9. From Snopes, perhaps the original event, from Arkansas

http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp

Appears to have occurred first in September 2005. Huckabee used it in his pitch to some conservative group.

For some reason I don't have a big complaint about 1 teacher deciding to do this in their own classroom. Quirky and irrational, yes -- but not as disturbing and Orwellian as the repetitive examples.

[lostnfound]

10. Another recent one, in Fort Smith Arkansas.

I love the one answer this one young man gave.

At least these were 8th graders. Others have tried it with significantly younger kids.

http://www.swtimes.com/articles/2007/11/09/week_in_review/news/thursday/news01.txt

In each class period, Williams asked students what they had done to earn the right to have a desk. They offered all kinds of answers.

Judah Scott, 14, clad in a red shirt with “Fear the tusk” in white lettering and light blue jeans, offered his theory.

“I know why we earned the right,” he said. “Our parents pay taxes for them.”

[lostnfound]

11. Another recent one, from Boonton New Jersey

This was a private school so I don't think it counts. If parents want that indoctrination for their kids, fine.

http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071110/COMMUNITIES04/711100331/1203

BOONTON -- Students at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School got a rude awakening on Friday morning when they arrived at their classrooms.

Instead of neat rows of desks, the fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders at the parochial school found cold tile floors, where they were forced to sit for their morning lessons.

But they weren't sulking for long.

Shortly after lunch, their desks were returned by a dozen uniformed soldiers who arrived from Picatinny Arsenal.

Their mission? To help the school's staff with an unusual lesson on the price of freedom.

"They didn't know why their desks were taken away," said Mary Ann Unterkofler, a religion and life skills teacher who brought the idea to the school. "I told them the servicemen fought for their freedom (and) they're the reason we have freedom to fight for."

[tuckessee]

12. Wowza! I know that burg well. It's in Kentucky.

We always called it Berlin Green.

An amazing place! Corrupt, shallow, & always ahead of the curve in police state tactics.

They had street video cameras being actively surveyed by the cops 10 years ago or more.

[supernova]

3. Certainly sounds wierd

And yes, I was the type of child to simply go off and find my own chair or use a stack of books.

:evilgrin:

[TahitiNut]

6. I find that appalling. It has nothing to do with 'service' nor does it ...

... teach the MOST IMPORTANT lesson of all about a democracy: It must be earned! It cannot be a gift! NOBODY can do the 'job' FOR the citizens of a democracy. It's a Do-It-Yourself deal. Self-governance. This is why, imho, it's ESSENTIAL that our military be mostly a citizen military and NOT a professional military.

A young citizen enters the 'service' to his or her nation, putting his/her civil liberties in trust to that nation and also trusting that nation to employ his/her service in a manner that meets the collective, democratic will of that nation. When we cannot trust that the deployment of the military is in concert with the democratic will of the nation, we MUST either take it back (with force, if necessary) or LEAVE. To stay is to comply - to accept - to be complicit in whatever crimes are done. This is the very essence of the term "good German" and why it's a condemnatory phrase.

If anything, children must be taught that the liberties (or lack of same) into which they were born are a legacy - an inheritance from the blood, sweat, and tears (or GREED, SLOTH, and COWARDICE!) of millions of people who came before them. It will be up to them to either spend that legacy or increase it - that's the human right that CANNOT be taken away.

I fear that the current generation of Americans will become a bad example of history ... like the "good Germans."