Really, Really Good Article

The Organic Sister linked to an article on her Twitter and I feel it deserves reposting. The article is called School Bullying: A Tragic Cost of Forced Schooling and Autocratic School Governance. Some of my favorite parts come at the end.

"…the much-touted D.A.R.E. program designed to make kids immune to the temptations of drugs has been shown time and again to be ineffective, and three years ago it was included, in an article published by the American Psychological Society, in a list of interventions that are more likely to cause harm than good." 

I could have told you this when I was five. I’m glad someone besides me has actually put effort into trying to prove it.

"Bullying occurs regularly when people who have no political power and are ruled in top-down fashion by others are required by law or economic necessity to remain in that setting.  It occurs regularly, for example, in prisons. Those who are bullied can’t escape, and they have no legislative or judicial power to confront the bullies. They may report bullying to the prison guards and warden, but the guards and warden may not know whom to believe and may have greater vested interest in hiding bullying than in publicizing it and dealing with it openly. Recently I read the acclaimed book by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntau, Will the Boat Sink the Water?, about peasant life in modern day China. The peasants are not allowed to move off the land and they are governed, top down, by petty bureaucrats. The peasants have no political power and no due process of law, and so the bullies, who can best intimidate others, rise to the top. Should we be surprised to discover that at least some of our schoolchildren respond to forced confinement and dictatorial governance in the same manner as prisoners and Chinese peasants?"

Now, I have to admit that I don’t ever really remember feeling as though I were a prison inmate or a Chinese peasant when I was in school; however, I can definitely see the similarities.

"As a nation we decided long ago that there is no such thing as a benign dictatorship. To have a moral society the people who are governed must do the governing. That’s our foundational principle as a nation, and if our children are to be educated for democracy, wouldn’t it be nice if our schools, where children spend so much of their lives, were living embodiments of democracy?"

And this is just a beautiful sentiment. I love this. The author goes on to explain that he’s been involved with a school that does try to embody democracy and how well the principle works in practice. It sounds to me like he’s involved with a Sudbury School and just makes me even more interested in using one if I ever create spawn of my own.

Anniversary Dinner

March 28th is The Keeper’s and my anniversary. Last year we were both broke and living 4 hours apart, so we didn’t really go out. This year though, despite my being unemployed, we could afford to have a nice dinner.

The Keeper had chosen PF Chang’s because I’d never been there and he’d enjoyed it the one time he’d been with people from work. He made a reservation and everything.

I thought the decor was pretty. They have statues of Chinese generals strewn about and little clusters of wooden lanterns.

The Keeper was driving because he didn’t want me to have to deal with the busted car, so he only had one drink. PF Chang’s has Kirin Ichiban on tap.

I, on the other hand, had three glasses of Kinsen Plum Wine. I had never tried plum wine before, though I had been told it was very, very tasty. And it was. It was so tasty that on Thursday when we dropped the broken car off to be repaired and then went and had breakfast in a strip mall with a wine shop, I went and bought two bottles of it. Good stuff.

We had some dumplings as an appetizer, but devoured them before I thought to take a picture. I liked the pot sticker sauce that came with them almost as much as the sauce that comes from the place we order from during D&D every week.

Then came the main courses. I got honey shrimp on a bed of what appeared to be Styrofoam but was probably some kind of rice noodle.

And The Keeper got some sort of noodly dish, the name of which I do not remember. It was tasty though, I tried a chopstick full.

And at the end The Keeper had been counseled by a colleague to get The Great Wall of Chocolate.

Ridiculously huge slice of cake with fresh berries and raspberry sauce. Probably enough for 3 or 4 people to comfortably and easily share. It was too much for the two of us, so we’ve decided to make sure we have friends with us next time we go.

If You Like Chinese

I had dim sum for the first time today. I would totally recommend it, just not right after the Chinese New Year. Yea, that holiday fell on Wednesday last week, then on Friday when I was out with friends they suggested we do dim sum today without really thinking about how the holiday might effect things.

Apparently the restaurant- China Garden in Arlington- is pretty popular for their dim sum anyway, but it’s just crazy right after the Chinese New Year. My friend Dungeon Master, after realizing we’d chosen to try this at an inopportune time, suggested in email that we try to get there at 11:30am right when they open. We were cool with that, so we headed out intending to get off the metro a few minutes before the appointed time and then walk over to the place and meet everybody. Well, we stepped out on the street and things seemed a little different from what the map had shown so I called Tony to see if he could give us a little guidance. That turned out to be completely pointless though because as I was talking to him I was walking in the direction I thought we needed to go and I saw the sign for the restaurant. That call did illuminate Tony’s whereabouts for us though, which came in useful later.

When The Keeper and I entered the office building this restaurant is in, we looked up toward the escalator and our jaws dropped. There was a HUGE line. Thankfully, we found that Dungeon Master and his wife and gotten there early enough that they had got our name down and been told that when the rest of the group showed up we could be seated. So now we just had to wait for Tony.

So we wait.

And we wait.

We tried to figure out if we needed to call him or not by sort of comparing notes. When I had called him upon exiting the metro it was about 11:30 on the dot and he’d said he was at the Van Dorn station. Since I thought he had been catching the train at a station before that, I figured he had been on the train and not waiting for a train. So, I was figuring that meant he should be getting off the train about 20-25 minutes after I talked to him and then about a 5 minute walk to get to us. Turns out, I was mostly right. He’d been catching the train at Van Dorn, but it had just pulled up and he was boarding as I spoke to him. Somehow he still didn’t end up getting to us until I think 5 or 10 minutes after noon. It was all good though.

We got in and got seated at a table that was a little too small, but it wasn’t too bad because they were PACKED and that’s saying something considering how big their dining room is. Then the carts with food started trickling over to us. There were various dumplings, buns, and noodles. We saw bowls of shrimp that would have looked tasty if they didn’t still have eyes… I love shrimp, but something about their eyes just creep me out. There were these weird wedge shaped, jelly lookin white things that I have never seen before and I have no idea what they were. There were little custard tart things. All kinds of stuff. And I liked almost everything I tried. My only real complaint is that a lot of what made it’s way over to us seemed to be kinda spicy. Otherwise, awesome. I think The Keeper and I may have to go back and we’ll have to keep it in mind for when friends and family visit.