Old news? Hell, in Minnesota this is dead buried and long forgotten news. Yecke overplayed her hand, and as a result was never seated and the standards were never implemented. That was 7 almost 8 years ago. There has to be better and more recent stuff on T-Paw than that. Smells like lazy journalism to me.
All I can picture now is a grumpy old lady standing on front of a kindergarten class…
“Break a crayon - spend a night in the box.
Lose your eraser - spend a night in the box.
Wet your pants - spend a night in the box.”
Are they now just trying to one-up each other on who can be the most conservative/batshit?
Very old. While I hate to admit I’m related (tangentially) to this nutcase, I am. And it was like “wow, her star fell fast almost ten years ago.”
Yes. The batshit base rules. Its like when you see the polls that say 45% of Republicans are birthers. Its not so much that your father’s Oldsmobile Republican Party has gone nuts, they haven’t, its just that the people who are willing to self-identify as Republican are far more hard-core, and also why the “Independents” are so conservative. The independents haven’t gotten more conservatives, its just more conservatives don’t want to call themselves Republicans.
Because then, instead of Oldsmobiles, they’d have to drive BatshitMobiles. Which are only two-seaters.
It kind of is, TBH. When I was in grade school we were required to bring certain supplies on the first day of school and one of them was a bottle of glue. The teacher then took the glue everyone had brought and put it in a cabinet, turning it into “community glue”. WTF teacher? My parents paid for that. I didn’t like it much and my parents weren’t too thrilled either.
Sharing sucks.
It looks like Mother Jones is trying to dig up dirt on Pawlenty, for his eventual run for president. Pawlenty has been out of office for 3 months now, and the start of this story was 8 years ago.
I should make a correction to my story: there were, of course, some bottom-feeding students who didn’t bring the required glue, which was the reason for doing the community glue thing.
Is it really cool to teach our kids that forcefully seizing and redistributing property is the “right thing” to do?
It is reasonable. Sort of. And its tastysweet sensibility is a perfect example of why conservative ideals live on. BUT it uses the same divisive machinery employed by the spin machine: false dichotomy. We are allowed to choose between: Everyone’s crayons suck and Why should we reward the malingering crayon biters at the expense of the other kids who take care of their stuff?
The reality, which does not reflect the dichotomy, is more likely to be:
“Aw shit, Huxtable! My blue crayon just broke–lend me yours?”
“Sure thing, Holmes–by the way, can I borrow your lime green? Mine’s still in my left nostril.”
“Hey Holmes! You or Huxtable got any paste? I used mine up on that last paper chain project.”
“Here–Use Mildred’s. Girls never use enough paste.”
After 30 days, nobody’s got a complete kit anyway. Also, if the art projects for 30 kids end up using a total of 47 pounds of supplies in the school year, does it make more sense (in an ecological, economical sense) to start with 60 pounds of community supplies, or for 30 kids to come equipped with 4 pounds of supplies which they will not share (or use next year).
See the problem? Reality took too long. False dichotomy is neat and attractive–beautiful. Like truth.
Also, I have ravaged my own position by citing it as “reality” when, in fact, I pulled the scenario and art supply numbers right out of my ass. But my point is, it is more reasonable to assume a world in which kids are taught to share should lead to one less dominated by selfishness. Should.
“Eatin’ my paste, boss!”
Compared with humiliating some kid who’s parent’s couldn’t afford or couldn’t be arsed to get them their supplies? Hell, yes.
For sure, your example shows the positive side of sharing - people making compromises on their own initiative.
Part of the problem is the abstract nature of words like “sharing” and “selfishness” - they mean different things to different people. I don’t know what scenarios these “conservatives” in the meetings see in their heads when they hear those words.
Worse still, people use words like “selfish” to bully others into giving them what they want. I could just as easily see an example like this:
“Huxtable! Give Holmes your blue crayon - he needs to draw the sky!”
“But Miss Crotch-Cobwebs, I need to draw the sky too!”
“Don’t be selfish! You need to share!”
“But.. but.. Why is his drawing more important than mine?”
From what I recall of my childhood, that might not work for a kid the way it does for an adult. 
Kid in box:
“Whirrrrrrzooooom!”
pushes imaginary buttons inside the box
“Pewpewpewpew!”
*
turns imaginary dial*
“ZeeeeePOW!”
Is it really cool to call kids bottom-feeders because of factors beyond their control? It’s not as though the kids who did bring glue managed to do it because they’ve done the responsible thing and gotten a job to pay for school supplies, unlike those lazy bottom-feeders who just expect to have everything provided to them for free.
And don’t get them started on families. That’s straight up communism.
Right.
While I do find lots of joy in the SRIOTD thread, this is mighty weak. A political appointee did something idiotic eight years ago? Though it has some degree of value as an insight into Pawlenty as candidate, the tenuous link and the eight years is pretty banal–particularly as this all happened before Socialist became so mainstream as a slur against Obama. newly elected Republican govern
It’s never too early to humiliate those losers, and show them that they will never be as superior as I am.
ME, who is able to guilt the divorced parents into buying the GIANT 128 color box of crayons with BUILT IN SHARPENER!
I AM BETTER THAN YOU!
Upon further reflection, I’ve remembered a glue story from my own elementary school years. I may as well share it as long as we’re treating school supplies as a microcosm for the role of government. I never had to bring school supplies to contribute to a communal supply. In grade one, we all kept our school supplies in our respective desks; my parents had written my name with permanent marker on all of my supplies so there would be no mix-ups. One day, my glue stick went missing from my desk. I wasn’t the type of kid to lose things like that, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. At a later date, I noticed a glue stick in the desk of a little girl in my class. It was just like the one I had had, except with a rectangle of orange construction paper taped to its side. On a hunch, I peeked under the construction paper, and sure enough, there was my name. The little girl had stolen from me, and tried to cover it up. Make of that what you will.
She did the best she could. What was she supposed to cover your name with? Everyone knows you don’t give permanent markers to first graders. So with no marker to use I’m sure she thought the orange paper would be good enough. And she was right, until some creepy little boy rummaged through her stuff.