don’t panic

You know, there are few people able to make such a consistent and perfect ass of themselves than Rush Limbaugh. And once again he proves this by doing more for the Democratic party than Democrats do. Nice one, Rush.

Every day at school, my daughter gets a colored card sent home by her teacher letting me know how her day went (it’s a special ed thing), with the color scale being very much like that of our National Threat indicator.  A green card indicates that everything was fine, no problems.  Then there’s yellow – a warning, orange -  she lost some privileges, and finally red – call home or sent to the principle.  You hope you don’t see too many red cards.

So anyway, when my little girl manages to get all green cards for a given week of school (it’s rarer than you think) we like to really play it up and throw in a little “positive feedback” in the form of a “prize” or something. The last time this happened, grandma pitched in and got her a new PlayDoh set.

PlayDoh is, at least in concept, a great toy. It’s basically child-safe clay that can be extruded and molded into all sorts of reusable fun. It comes in about two dozen different colors, (some with smell and glitter) but it is completely ruled by the Three Laws of PlayDoh-dynamics.

The First Rule states that all colors of PayDoh seek to become homogenous. That is, a uniform grayish-brown mass. The Second Law proclaims that all PlayDoh will eventually harden into a crystal speckled rock. The final Law of PlayDoh-dynamics is that the enjoyment you get from the Doh is directly proportional to the creativity you put into it.

It’s the last law that has me bothered lately.

I’ve commented here before on the bastardization of the toy industry in general, but PlayDoh deserves a bit more attention because of it’s involvement in my own youth. The Doh is sacred… pure. It pains me to see it being turned into nothing more than a marketing medium.

How you say?

Take a trip to one of those previously mentioned toy stores. PlayDoh is certainly a mainstay product, and most of the bigger chains have entire aisles dedicated to the stuff. But what you will find is that more than half of the kits are “sponsored” by a third party like McDonalds or Dora the Explorer. This in concept isn’t necessarily a problem, and the potential for fun is certainly there. But open the box and you’ll find that the Doh has taken a back seat to the marketing of the sponsor itself. It used to be that when you got a kit, it came with a three-pack of medium-sized “cans” (roughly 7 oz.) of dough in basic colors. Now, you’re lucky to get a three-pack of small cans (roughly 2 oz), and a large number contain the mini-cans which are about a single ounce. There’s not a lot of room for creativity in a can that size.

And to be fair, half the fun of PlayDoh is extruding it through various shapes and creating a million copies of some cookie-cutter form, or even pressing it into a mold. But lately, it seems like even that has taken a back seat to the product marketing. The extruders are lame and designed so poorly that they barely function. The molds rarely work, and when they do, it’s only to produce a lame version of some marketing character. Instead of Doh, kids are given pre-made plastic figurines and cardboard backdrops plastered with logo’s and copyright symbols. Sure it makes it easier for the kids to “play”… But why does it need to?

We’ve stopped letting our children think for themselves. We immerse them in a world of pre-packaged scenarios and fixed-arm action heros with buttons on the back to make them say five canned phrases, and then expect them to somehow have hours and hours of mentally stimulating and creative play. The best toys my daughter ever had were were her simple little Fisher-Price people. Why? Because it didn’t matter that they didn’t have arms or legs, voices or blinking lights. It really didn’t even matter what they looked like or what accessories they came with. My daughter always found a way to make “her people” come alive and do things all on her own. If she wanted one of them to be a mom, then poof! they were a mom. No matter that they didn’t look the part, she made them what they were. If they needed a house, a cardboard shoe box would do just fine, or a pile of blocks or whatever! The whole point was that she was making the world they lived in, and not some clueless marketing hack who could care less about my daughter.

Blocks and clay and simple dolls that don’t do anything may not be exciting on TV, but darned if they don’t make for better toys.

There’s an axiom in government that states that a population is better suited to decide how a populace should be run than the people who are running it. In theory, this is why we vote. We decide what we want and “government” executes it.

Of course, this same axiom assumes (to be successful) that the general public is smarter than the government it has elected into office. Therein lies the problem.

Here in lovely San Diego, the government has decided to let the people decide if they want to go ahead and use Marine Corps Air Station Miramar as a possible new airport site should it become available in the future.

Never mind that the military has already said this ain’t gonna happen, and that even if it were a possibility (which it isn’t), it wouldn’t occur for decades at least.

But hey, why not waste our time and money on a pipe dream come November? it’s not like we have anything better to do with our vast surplus of funds here in America’s Finest City (on the verge of bankruptcy).

Bah!

You know what makes me really sick?… It’s the fact that we can spend a billion dollars per B1 bomber so that we can not use them, instead of putting down maybe a hundredth of that to produce a freely available set of public domain electronic textbooks that could be used in schools without the budget for the big, hardcover expensive versions put out by publishing houses.

Yeah, sure it puts a dent in the free-enterprise publishing trade… Tough. I think giving a basic education to all children is a little more important, sorry.

I mean, think about it. Electronic math books that could be printed or viewed on a cheap terminal would be a godsend to small rural or inner-city schools. Teachers could print chapters as needed, or home-schooled kids could download and use them right at their own computer. Sure there might be issues of politics and curriculum, but that’s nothing new.

So how about it, Bush. You’re so keen on “no child left behind.” How about putting the government to work doing something actually productive and forward thinking for a change. You want to be sure all kids get a fair chance at education, then bring it to them. Then at least if they don’t take it, it’s their own fault and not something you can simply blame on overworked, underpaid teachers and underfunded schools.