Postby pieces o'nine » Sat Apr 19, 2008 7:00 am
I could have sworn I was just responding to Rainswept, not starting a new thread...
It's like some kind of miracle!
I was tested as ready and shipped off to school at four. Kindergarten was only at Public school, so little brother was in a different system when TAG was introduced there. No TAG yet at Our Lady of Perpetual Punishment and Sorrowful Mortification* and the Dominicans were vigilant in crushing non-conformity (especially in girls, at that time). So I confined to home my math games (later learned not my invention: "Base 8" or "Base 12") and reading -- everything -- at several grade levels above my own.
At any rate, we had enough chores to do at home that no one languished in front of the TV. But when the intrepid Captain Kirk and the Landing Party were staggering around on a planet, dying of sound waves, my 8-year-old self and 5-year-old brother were staggering around the living room, dying of sound waves. We questioned why everyone in the universe spoke English. We had great fun critiquing the aliens and effects on Dr. Who, because they seemed a little...well...unexpected yes, but scary, no.
So yeah, his mind was stimulated, even without the quality that Sesame *was* striving to create at that time. Sadly, there was justification for the teacher's idea that it would "stimulate" his mind, because I never saw books in houses of any of my "main-street America" friends (aside from a Bible or maybe a Readers Digest edition or two) nor did most of them regularly go to the library. My only ineradicable prejudice is against people who don't read and are proud of it.** Ignorant and easily misled, the lot of them. And they're *still* getting all their mental "stimulation" from the tv...
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* Not it's real name, but it would have been cool, no?
** Definitely not referring to dyslexia or the like. Just to those who are to holy or too 'smart' to read.
I will honor Monkey in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
~Charles "Darwin" Dickens