Tonight I had the "honor" of attending a foster parent meeting where the topic was "Safety in our Schools" hosted by a principal of one of the Elementary schools here in Huntington County.
What a frigging joke.
Do you see the title I listed above? Because according to this guy, that was the one and only cause of the "increase" in societal violence. What was supposed to be an informative meeting turned into an "anti-gun, anti-TV, anti-FPS" rant on the evil of the media and how they are turning our poor, innocent children into deadly marksman.
I do have to agree that FPS games will most likely help you hone whatever skills you might need to shoot up a school, or a gaggle of evil monkeys from the planet Zalthron 3, or the Flood in Halo....but I digress. According to this guy, the source of all "bad" things in schools were the violence on TV and Video Games. The comment was "spy on your kids, don't allow any FPS games, no TV, spy on their friends" which to me is a load of crap.
#1. I can ban all FPS games in my house, all my kid has to do is walk down the street to another kids house to play GTA:III which I don't allow in the house, telling them there are other more interesting games to play.
#2. I can spy on my kids all I want, they will just learn to be sneakier and how to hide things better. Maybe talking to them would work better.
#3. The quote was "TV is addictive like drugs and alcohol" and that if you removed the TV from your house you would experience symptoms similar to withdrawls from other harder drugs.
This is the genius school district who has banned all wrestling shirts, all "provocative" band shirts, anything that might be construed as "sexually provocative", etc, etc, etc....but it's still OK for the girls to wear shirts with their boobs hanging out and the guys to wear pants that fall to the floor.
And the scary thing is, these guys want more and more money to help make our schools safer. One of the things they installed a school was a glorified set of "blast doors" to prevent a "Columbine style" massacre. They also created a "helpful" guide for the teachers for the teachers to walk them through almost every scenario that could harm their students. I can only imagine...
"Joan, which chapter was it that had the guide to dismantling a student built nuclear warhead?"
This is why I absolutely hate the Department of Education, and our school district. This guy was looking forward to getting grant money to have some former military guy come in and talk about his book. I have to wonder if this whole new "safety" concern is just a slush fund for schools to spend more cash on useless shit "for the children".