MrsMom said:
Go ahead and laugh, but if you believe that "role play" does not affect or influence our children, you are sticking your head in the sand. I can control what my own child does at home, but I can't watch them 24/7 - what's to stop her from going to a friends house and "acting out" their "secret spells"? And, since it is secret, the parents need never know, right?
Plant a seed, nurture it, and it will grow. Flower or weed, it matters not - it will still grow. What kind of seeds are we planting?
It looks like we have another follower of Socrates. We must censor the poets so that their verses won't disrupt our children's conditioning. It is crucial if we are to breed the perfect soldier for our Republic, that we must not let the children hear anything contrary to what we would like them to hear. We must mold these young minds. The future of our Republic depends on it!
The Wiccan barbie doll would set their conditioning back by several months! Think of all of that time we'd waste!
You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.
Quite True.
And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?
We can not.
Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded.
Such then, I said, are our principles of theology-some tales are to be told, and others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth upwards, if we mean them to honor the gods and their parents, and to value friendship with one another.
Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.
But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?
Certainly not, he said.
And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?
Impossible.
Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile, but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.
That will be our duty, he said.
Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses,
"I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule over all the dead who have come to nought."
And shall we proceed to get rid of the weepings and wailings of famous men?
They will go with the rest.
Neither ought our guardians to be given to laughter. For a fit of laughter which has been indulged to excess almost always produces a violent reaction.
So I believe.
Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good. But nobody else should meddle with anything of the kind; and although the rulers have this privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for a sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the ship and the rest of the crew, and how things are going with himself or his fellow sailors.
Most true, he said.
If, then, the ruler catches anybody beside himself lying in the State,
"Any of the craftsmen, whether he be priest or physician or carpenter."
he will punish him for introducing a practice which is equally subversive and destructive of ship or State.
-Plato's The Republic-INSPIRATION FOR HITLER.
If you want to be a good parent, you would do well to foster INDIVIDUALITY in your child, instead of molding her in your own image.
Not in this lifetime.
