Education: Feeding Calves
Growing up on a farm, I had to take turns with my brothers to help my parents from a young age. We would get back from school around 5pm and eat a snack. Then, if it was your turn to help...
Growing up on a farm, I had to take turns with my brothers to help my parents from a young age. We would get back from school around 5pm and get a snack. Then, if it was your turn to help, you would put on boots, smelly farm clothes, and head to the barn. Duties included feeding the bulls and cows, cleaning up cow manure, restocking grain feeds, etc.
Feeding Baby Calves
My favorite was by far feeding baby calves. Sometimes we’d get lucky enough to see a cow deliver. Trust me, it’s only fun when it’s a natural birth. Today, people stranger to farm life would get disgusted seeing a farmer turning into an obstetrician for 15 minutes. You definitely want to stay away from cesarean operations!
Feeding baby calves was so much fun. My dad would hand me over the mother’s milk in a 5 gallons milk can and help me pour the exact quantity needed in the bucket. Then I’d feed those hungry calves. I would put my hand in the mouth of the calf, he would bite leak it :-)
Every task we performed required discipline and hard work for boys under ten. You had to show up on time to feed cows before my dad would milk them. Each animal breed had different feed amounts and combinations. The quantity of milk to give a calf would change every week as they would grow.
At that age I took no pleasure doing the job and even got frustrated when I had to miss my favorite cartoon. There was no Netflix or Disney with on-demand access to shows or replay motions. Cartoons would play at a set time every day of the week.
Teaching The Value Of Hard Work Early In Life
In retrospect I can’t thank my parents enough for getting me and my brothers an early taste of real life and for teaching us the meaning of hard work. We built resilience and acquired such an unfair advantage early in life compared to the other kids who have it easy.
It may sound cliché but life was different back then. We had no phones, no computer, only three TV channels; we played outside with friends, had family dinner every night, met regularly with family and friends, helped parents with chores. Trust in our community was strong. Strong networks existed to support each other.
I’m not nostalgic. I like the comfort of modern society. I can’t complain about living in Dreamland. However, I see our value system eroding in front of us. We’re trained to be consumers, individualists, debtors.
We’re formatted from a very young age to blindly trust organizations that solely focus on profit or control. We live in a coercive system that monitors each personal action and tries to influence the next. We are confronted with a powerful propaganda engine at all levels of society.
Setting Lower Expectations
It’s concerning to me that the brainwashing starts with kids and most notably outside of the family inner circle. Yes, I’m talking about our school system. As parents, we put our faith in a system that does a poor job preparing our kids for real life.
Like currencies' steady devaluation over time, the education system keeps setting lower standards. Examples are numerous. Where I am from, over 90% of students graduate. This number increases every year. So far so good right?
Well, few can write an essay without making numerous spelling mistakes (hint: Word processors with spelling check are not yet allowed during exams); even fewer can develop a small bit of critical thinking to debate a philosophical topic during the exam. They would rather instead complain on social media about the extreme difficulty of the exam using (common) language they don’t understand.
The same holds in the US. This example of a high-school graduating students is telling. We should not generalize of course but the core courses have been redesigned over the years to remove critical thinking and graduate obedient and confirming students.
Common Core A Social Engineering Tool?
Alex Newmann, a promoter of at-home education, wrote an interesting article called Common Core Education is Social Engineering. That one rang a bell with me a few weeks ago.
I was preparing dinner when my thirteen years old comes to me and says something like: “We had a class on sexual identity today. I found that I am a bisexual”.
Despite my emotional level, I stayed calm and said “ok”. She’s entering teenage years and you don’t win an argument with sound logic and reasoning. Everything the school says is “god speak” (they still wear masks today, September 19, 2022).
To Newmann’s point, this is clear evidence of social engineering. In this case, someone went as far as designing a course on gender identity and having kids take a test to select their gender. This is so wrong!
Whether it is gender equality, climate change, racism, or whatever cause is deemed of “global interest”, our kids are getting fed propaganda during English, Math, History, Science.
The Ministry Of Truth Says No
A simple Google search on gender identity from the US confirmed my suspicions. The pattern is SO OBVIOUS. Top spots in the ranking go to our favorite Ministry of Truth, I named Wikipedia.
It’s closely followed by brother ministries: the Ontario Human Rights Agency and our own NPR. Add to this cocktail mix trusted sources such as the Human Rights Campaign (LGBT movement) and Planned Parenthood, both .org sites.
I don’t think this social engineering scheme is as advanced in other countries but I have not done enough research on it, nor am I a specialist in education.
Graduating more kids by lowering the standards for everyone is doing a huge disservice to society, to the kids, and their family. Equal chance does not mean you lower everyone’s level to make the ones who struggle feel good.
Equal chance is the opportunity to develop oneself and become a sound citizen independently of your gender, race, and social origins. Equal chance is about starting the race together and let everyone give it their best. Equal chance is not about everyone finishing the race together because they had to wait for the slowest runner.
Conclusion
There are more fundamental issues we’ll cover in future posts that I consider essential pillars for developing sound chicks and preparing them for adult life: freedom, finance, health, family. We’ll also dig deeper on parents' over reliance on the school system and how students are ill-prepared to invest in their future, post graduation.
This rooster is not only about ranting against the system. I want to help my kids. I’d like to help other families. I hope that along this journey we’ll be able to exchange and discuss practical ideas to help our kids succeed in life and become responsible citizens.