From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Burning at the Stake (!)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 08:11:59 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

	Well, Ted, you're wrong, as a review of the archives of this chat
list will reveal.  I mentioned that I had read about the Shaver Mystery and
you vehemently accused me of being a Shaverian (i.e. advocate of Mr.
Shaver's theories).  I denied it, and you went on to accuse me of Shaverian
advocacy in stronger terms including a credulous reliance on Mr. Shaver's
rock records.  This statement of yours was totally without foundation since,
at that time, I had never even heard of Mr. Shaver's rock records and I have
never before or since advocated Mr. Shaver's colorful but ludicrous
theories.  Your statement that you can remember events shortly after your
birth sits oddly with your demonstrated inability to remember what you wrote
on this chat list several months ago.  Your repeated false and patronizing
statements about other people tend to discredit any statement that you make.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ted White [mailto:twhite8 at cox.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 6:12 PM
To: WSFA members
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Burning at the Stake

----- Original Message -----
From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 12:33 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Burning at the Stake

> Actually, Ted, I believe that I responded to your earlier statement,
> but, perhaps, more subtly than you realized.  Allow me to be more direct:
> Your earlier statement that parents who are concerned about their
> children's reading are repressives who are trying to shield their
children
> from life is a wildly incorrect overstatement probably true in a few
cases
> but certainly not in all cases.  A responsible, loving parent guides his
or
> her child, introducing the child to life at a pace that the child can
> handle.  Children **are** naive during their youth and benefit from the
> guidance of a mature mentor.  In my own case, I naturally resented some
of
> the restrictions that my parents (an English teacher and a medical
doctor)
> established when I was young, but they relaxed the restrictions as I
> matured, and now I appreciate their concern for my well being.  And, no,
I'm
> not an intellectual carbon copy of either of them as a result of their
> guidance.
> The reason why I mentioned the Shaver Mystery is because you
> previously condemned me vigorously for even reading about said Mystery
[Hoax
> actually].  Your present call for free inquiry rings hollow when you have
> previously condemned the results of free inquiry.  Ditto the NAACP and
> M*A*S*H.

Not to put too fine a point on it, your head is up your ass.   I did *not*
"condemn [you] vigorously for even reading about" the Shaver Mystery.   And
I have no clue what your oh-too-subtle references to the NAACP AND M*A*S*H
are about, since I have condemned neither.

Since I've endorsed -- and practiced! -- "free inquiry" for most of my
life, the only thing that "rings hollow" here is your attempt to pin
positions on me which I do not hold (and, indeed find obnoxious).

As a child I strongly resented the "guidance" in my reading which certain
"well meaning" adults attempted to force on me.  (But not my parents, thank
ghod.)  I confounded them at both ends, by reading lots of comic books and
wading my way through various "classics" of our literature, all the while
mixing in boys' books from the first couple of decades of the last century,
and all the fairy tales and fantasy I could find.  Which led me to Heinlein
at nine.

I have raised my kids (a daughter and a son, now 32 and 15 respectively) to
think for themselves and I offer them a buffet of material to read or
listen to.   They have their own tastes, but find it easy to communicate
them to me.

"A responsible, loving parent guides his or her child, introducing the
child to life at a pace that the child can handle."  Exactly as I said,
from the viewpoint of a repressive parent.   Children aren't any more
stupid when they're young than they'll be as adults.  Most of them hear
things said "over their heads" by adults and fully understand what was
said.  I've listened to the conversation of young children -- three of them
aged 5 to 8, next door in their yard while I was gardening in mine, for one
example -- and I've heard astonishingly adult sentence constructions,
grammar, and conceptualization.  I've heard intellectual (not emotional)
arguments being almost dispassionately debated.   Most important, unlike
most adults, I retain a firm grip on my childhood memories and I can recall
my thoughts of that time in my life, as well as remembering the many and
varied conversations I had with my peers as preschoolers.   I don't
patronize kids.   People who think they know better do.

--Ted White