"In 2011 the museum had problems with a 4-14m installation called Peanut Butter Platform by Wim T Schippers."

"Unsuspecting visitors stepped in the thick layer of peanut butter smeared on the gallery floor at least three times. They were given a clean-up bill."

From "Child damages €50m Rothko in ‘unguarded moment’ at museum/The abstract painting will undergo restoration works after it was scratched at the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam" (London Times).

If the peanut butter people had to pay for peanut butter "clean-up," does that mean the parents will pay for the restoration needed after this "number of visible scratches in the unvarnished paint layer... caused by a child who scratched the underside of the work in an unguarded moment"?

"Scratched the underside"... I'm trying to picture that. I'm guessing the child did not scratch the front surface or the back of the painting, but the bottom edge of what was an unframed painting.

I ask Grok: "Did Rothko leave paintings unframed and paint the edges (the part 90° from the surface plane)?"

Answer: "Yes, Mark Rothko often left his paintings unframed and painted the edges of the canvas (the sides at 90° from the surface). He typically wrapped the paint around the edges to create a seamless, immersive experience, emphasizing the painting as an object rather than a framed window. This approach complemented his large-scale, abstract works, where the edges were integral to the viewer's encounter with the color fields. However, practices varied slightly depending on the piece and period, with some works later framed for exhibition or preservation purposes."

Perhaps the child was fascinated by the seamless, immersive experience and became a tad too immersed.

AND: Astoundingly, Rothko painted a peanut butter sandwich!

"[F]amilies of means tend to choose play-based preschool programs with art, movement, music and nature. Children are asked open-ended questions, and they are listened to."

"This is not what [the researcher Dale Farron] is seeing in classrooms full of kids in poverty, where 'teachers talk a lot, but they seldom listen to children.'... Private preschools, even home-based day cares, tend to be laid out with little bodies in mind. There are bathrooms just off the classrooms. Children eat in, or very near, the classroom, too. And there is outdoor play space nearby with equipment suitable for short people. Putting these same programs in public schools can make the whole day more inconvenient. 'So if you're in an older elementary school, the bathroom is going to be down the hall. You've got to take your children out, line them up and then they wait,' Farran says. "And then, if you have to use the cafeteria, it's the same thing. You have to walk through the halls, you know: 'Don't touch your neighbor, don't touch the wall, put a bubble in your mouth because you have to be quiet.'... 'Whoever thought that you could provide a 4-year-old from an impoverished family with 5 1/2 hours a day, nine months a year of preschool, and close the achievement gap, and send them to college at a higher rate?' she asks. 'I mean, why? Why do we put so much pressure on our pre-K programs?' We might actually get better results, she says, from simply letting little children play."

From "A top researcher says it's time to rethink our entire approach to preschool" (NPR).

I'd never before noticed that phrase "put a bubble in your mouth." Here's an article about it. Excerpt:

"At some point during the winter break last month, someone covered the playground of a public school in the Rego Park section of Queens with swastikas and other anti-Semitic sentiments."

"Either poor spellers or unfamiliar with the exact phrasing of the Nazi salute, whoever was responsible inscribed the words 'Hail Hiter' on the ground in chalk. Several days later, two boys were arrested and charged with aggravated harassment. They came from the neighborhood, one that has long been predominantly white and Jewish but grown more diverse in recent years with an influx of Asian immigrants.... In this case the face of hate was the face of two children of color — one black, the other Asian — who were 12 years old.... [Maybe] they learned that it is perfectly fine to express a mischievous, rebellious or playful side through the use of such cruel and divisive imagery. This generation of children has grown up with constant screen time, inundated with an endless stream of images that eventually renders many of those visual signifiers meaningless, where Nazi symbolism is just processed as more cartoonish provocation.... We do not know whether the two boys arrested in Queens understood the weight of their actions, whether what they were doing was an act born of loathing or stupidity.  In big cities where neighborhood demographics are so often changing and gentrification is often compelling those changes, a truly holistic approach to preventing acts of racial and ethnic bias.... would be proactive rather than responsive. The police would keep from reflexively criminalizing ignorance."

From "Two 12-Year-Olds Drew Swastikas on a Playground. Is That a Hate Crime?" (NYT).

Apple considers pee a "biohazard" and it will not accept a peed-on MacBook for repair.

Nor will it accept for repair the 30 MacBooks — valued at $36,000 — that one 11-year-old boy peed on at Upper Allen Township Elementary School in Pennsylvania.

Young brains.

1. Does homosexuality reside at the biological brain level? "There is substantial evidence of various connections between genes, brain, hormones and sexual identity... But those do not amount to a simple picture that A leads to B." So gay people aren't born gay? "I honestly have no idea if I was born this way. My memory doesn’t stretch to the crib. But I know that from the moment I felt romantic stirrings, it was Timmy, not Tammy, who could have me walking on air or wallowing in torch songs and tubs of ice cream."

2. Do kids with ADD have a different kind of brain that makes stimulants like Ritalin have a mysterious opposite effect, calming them down? "Putting children on drugs does nothing to change the conditions that derail their development in the first place. Yet those conditions are receiving scant attention. Policy makers are so convinced that children with attention deficits have an organic disease that they have all but called off the search for a comprehensive understanding of the condition."

3. Are teenagers defective at the brain level? "Brain research is often taken to mean that adolescents are really just defective adults—grown-ups with a missing part. Public policy debates about teenagers thus often turn on the question of when, exactly, certain areas of the brain develop, and so at what age children should be allowed to drive or marry or vote—or be held fully responsible for crimes. But the new view of the adolescent brain isn't that the prefrontal lobes just fail to show up; it's that they aren't properly instructed and exercised.... Instead of simply giving adolescents more and more school experiences—those extra hours of after-school classes and homework—we could try to arrange more opportunities for apprenticeship. "

Politico's Ben Smith calls some Gingrich video "Possibly the weirdest video of the cycle."

But the video is down now, so I have no idea what that was about. Other than Christmas.

A little more info, at HuffPo:

The video, posted December 23, features the Republican presidential hopeful's New Hampshire staffers decked out in Santa hats, singing to the tune of "Deck the Halls." While the group sings of Newt's solutions stopping Obama's "trauma," one staffer dons an elf outfit and runs around Gingrich's New Hampshire office.

So... maybe the problem was the implication that an "elf outfit" is "gay apparel." (Paging David Sedaris.)

In other news... a teacher in a Michigan elementary school changed the "Deck the Halls" lyrics after the kids laughed at "Don we now our gay apparel." She made it "bright apparel" and then got publicly criticized for not turning it into a "teachable moment." Video at the link of the principal telling the reporter: "We have an anti-discrimination and bullying policy that includes sexual orientation, and so, going forward, the teacher will be addressing: this is how we're supposed to be reacting, this is how to be respectful about this."

"Gay" is not a bad word... I agree. But can you really teach people not to laugh at the silly line "Don we now our gay apparel"? Nothing makes you want to laugh more than being forbidden to laugh. And "gay" is supposed to mean mirthful. Where's the mirth? If mirth is forbidden because we must be respectful and ever on the alert for incipient bullying, then I think you need to pick another song. But "Deck the Halls" is one of the best secular Christmas songs.

What are you going to do? Maybe we need to recognize that music is not compatible with the highest values of the public schools of the United States:

It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning respect for all minority groups and essential and useful bullying resisting skills and fill their time with teachable moments and healthy recreations instead of music.

ADDED: My son Chris tells me about the time, years ago, when he was in a public school chorus that had to sing the song "Scarlet Ribbons" and the kids were forbidden to laugh about the line "I peeked in and on her bed/In gay profusion lying there..." Chris IM's:

we had to practice a lot to get to the point where we wouldn't laugh on that line, and we had been able to do it in the last rehearsals, but then in the performance someone laughed, that made everyone laugh, and it made you laugh and you had to cover your face and sort of put your head down

It almost seems like bullying to put the kids through that! [LATER: I just realized that the "you" in his description referred to me! It still makes me laugh right now.]

"We used to sneak under the fence on the north side of the stadium."

"There was a loose board there that every kid in Green Bay knew."

That's one way to build a fan base — tolerate the kids sneaking in. That quote is from a woman who proudly announces her seat number — "Section 133, Row 49, Seat 5" — and the fact that she's seen every game — save 2 — since 1957.

The schoolgirls have "meltdowns" when mom packs the lunch in ziploc bags.

Because the girls "don't want to be shamed" at school.

Because enviromentalism is the religion taught in public schools, and it's the kind of religion done with shaming young people.

But also:

1. Some people wash and reuse ziploc bags. So don't presume you know that the ziploc-user is an enviro-sinner.

2. Kiddies, if you are old enough to understand environmentalism and to pressure your mother with it, you are old enough to pack your own lunch. And if you're so hot on being saintly, start helping your mother, not making her life any harder.

"Do you believe children should be charged with hate crimes?"

Good framing of the question. The answer is obvious.

"My students are out of control... They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners."

"They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."

I dug up that longer version of what a teacher wrote on her Facebook page after reading about it in this story about another teacher who wrote, in Facebook, about her first graders as future criminals and said she felt like "a warden." Both teachers were suspended. Also:

And Chicago Public Schools officials are investigating a teacher who apparently posted a photo on her Facebook page of a student who wore Jolly Rancher candies in her hair. The 7-year-old girl's mother complained to school officials after she saw negative comments written about her daughter's picture on the page.

There's a big difference between writing in general about the discipline problems in your school and posting a photograph of an individual child. I don't think schools should cover up for their own discipline problems by attacking the livelihood of a teacher who dares to describe them in public.

"County supervisor fined $205 for Capitol protest sign held by young sons."

News article about the videos we were talking about the other day.

Back in the days when boys ate butter like it was candy.

Here's my son Chris back around 1987 (with analysis, in the end, from my other son John):

DeLynn Woodside, the Sharpie harpy.

"A 13-year-old boy was arrested Friday for using a permanent marker while in class at his Oklahoma City middle school, a violation of an obscure city ordinance. According to an Oklahoma City Police Department report, the boy was spotted 'in possession of a permanent marker' by Roosevelt Middle School teacher DeLynn Woodside. The 50-year-old educator told cop Miguel Campos that the student was 'writing on a piece of paper, which caused it to bleed over onto the desk.'"

Diagnosed as ADHD?

Maybe you're just the youngest kid in the class.

"It may seem to a non-parent that this is mean-spirited and bitter."

"And perhaps some of the entries are. But a lot of them are just honest and good-natured venting, and also pretty hilarious shots of what massive damage kids can cause."

Remember that behind ever "hilarious shot" is a parent who decided that the first thing to do is — not to comfort, not to discipline, not to flush the Desitin out of their eyes — but to reach for a camera and take some pictures.

Is "Shit My Kids Ruined" a bad website?
	Yes, because parents need to focus on being present in real life with their kids.
	Yes, because it exacerbates hostility toward children.
	No, because it can help a parent transcend anger by recognizing the humor and shared experience.
	No, because it's a good warning or dose of reality to people who haven't had children yet.
pollcode.com free polls

A kid gets detention for a (big cliché) wisecrack ...

... and becomes an internet hero:



I'm not approving of what the kid did. HuffPo salutes him as "awesome." You really can't have kids making sexual remarks in class (as if it's "South Park"). But this shows what the internet can do. The earnestly detailed teacher's note makes for hilarity from this distance, and the kid gets another big laugh, as the biggest blog tells him "it was totally worth it" — getting detention.

Why haven't I produced another post yet this morning?

Because I'm seething away in the comments on the Goldie Hawn/Buddhism post from yesterday!

When do Hollywood liberals favor teaching religion in schools?

When the religion is Buddhism, propounded by The Hawn (as in Goldie) Foundation and it's used "to rethink our whole approach to classroom education, integrating neuroscience with the latest social and emotional learning techniques," because "a peaceful, happy child is the first step towards a peaceful world."

Somehow the Other's religion is neuroscience, to be imposed on rowdy children to make them serene. Thanks, Hollywood liberals. You know, I can't think of one Hollywood movie about kids that had a placid protagonist. The movies always boost boisterous children. The great kids that we are encouraged to identify with are mischievous and too energetic for their stuffy teachers. If there were a movie with an aging hippie teacher character bringing nonviolence to the kids through Buddhist meditation, I'm virtually positive she would be a self-loving idiot whose was really about repression and a hostility to the vibrancy of youth. But outside of the movies, are our Hollywood friends on the side of the childish protagonists or the repressive authority figures?

"A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker..."

Headlines The Daily News. Why make a star out of a kid that defaced school property with graffiti? She's an especially cute girl, willing to pose with her wrists together in the handcuff position. I'm sure some readers appreciate the entertainment on that level. Do we know the whole story of why she was arrested and why handcuffs were deemed necessary?

The girl and her mother dish up the quotes:

"I started crying, like, a lot," said Alexa. "I made two little doodles. ... It could be easily erased. To put handcuffs on me is unnecessary." Alexa, who had a stellar attendance record, hasn't been back to school since, adding, "I just thought I'd get a detention. I thought maybe I would have to clean [the desk]."

"She's been throwing up," said her mom, Moraima Tamacho, 49, an accountant, who lives with her daughter in Kew Gardens. "The whole situation has been a nightmare."

Is stoking the victimhood feelings of your child like this a good idea? The girl did wrong, as she knows. She should apologize, straighten up, and rededicate herself to schoolwork. The mother should not tolerate the child's sickly overreaction — even if she believes the school is too harsh in its response to crimes committed by kids in school.

A class action lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union last month against the city for using "excessive force" in middle school and high schools. A 12-year-old sixth-grader, identified in the lawsuit as M.M., was arrested in March 2009 for doodling on her desk at the Hunts Point School.

Fine. Let the courts review the patterns and, if the schools are violating the law, provide a remedy congruent with the legal violation that leaves room for the schools to preserve discipline and good order.

The new school "no tolerance" policy: no touching!

"They said the new policy means no high-fives and hugs, as well as horseplay of any kind."