Bourgeois culture

Monello

Smarter than the average bear
PREMO Member
Someone on the forums linked the rebuttal to this author in a different thread. Thanks to whoever that was.

The author of this piece makes a case that American values of the 1950s & 1960s led to a more stable and productive country.

[FONT=&quot]Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.[/FONT]

She goes on to claim that the undoing starts in the 1960s and is aided by such things as welfare.

[FONT=&quot]The loss of bourgeois habits seriously impeded the progress of disadvantaged groups. That trend also accelerated the destructive consequences of the growing welfare state, which, by taking over financial support of families, reduced the need for two parents. A strong pro-marriage norm might have blunted this effect. Instead, the number of single parents grew astronomically, producing children more prone to academic failure, addiction, idleness, crime, and poverty.[/FONT]

Such honest dialogue was met by anger by the left. As you can imagine the author, a college professor, was labeled a racist among other things.

Nearly half the professors at the University of Pennsylvania law school have published an open letter condemning their colleague Amy Wax for her by now (in)famous op-ed on bourgeois values.

Do the authors rebut these arguments? Do they offer counterevidence? No. Apparently the thesis of Wax’s op-ed is so patently beyond the pale that it is enough for the signatories to assert: “We categorically reject Wax’s claims.” In the absence of any attempt at refutation, that is simply a case of virtue signaling.

Either we want to have a conversation about ways to improve society or we just want to shout down any view that is contrary to our own.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
.... makes a case that American values of the 1950s & 1960s led to a more stable and productive country.



But The Free Sex Movement .... The Pill Freed Women to Act Like Men


but yeah .. the great society, the Gov. paying for Housing, Medical, Food
 
I don't see much room for argument... science indeed backs it up. It is why folks with good intentions who adopt or foster older children are unable to "retrain" the brain despite loads of therapy and nurturing. It isn't just an impact on "broken" families, but also intact families that believe they are doing the best they can for their children. Physical and verbal interaction with a child far outweighs brain development than any electronic "development tool" aka television, cellphone/tablet apps, etc. :

"The early stages of development are strongly affected by genetic factors; for example, genes direct newly formed neurons to their correct locations in the brain and play a role in how they interact.12,13 However, although they arrange the basic wiring of the brain, genes do not design the brain completely.14,15

Instead, genes allow the brain to fine-tune itself according to the input it receives from the environment. A child’s senses report to the brain about her environment and experiences, and this input stimulates neural activity. Speech sounds, for example, stimulate activity in language-related brain regions. If the amount of input increases (if more speech is heard) synapses between neurons in that area will be activated more often.

Repeated use strengthens a synapse. Synapses that are rarely used remain weak and are more likely to be eliminated in the pruning process. Synapse strength contributes to the connectivity and efficiency of the networks that support learning, memory, and other cognitive abilities.16,17 Therefore, a child’s experiences not only determine what information enters her brain, but also influence how her brain processes information."

"The excess of synapses produced by a child’s brain in the first three years makes the brain especially responsive to external input. During this period, the brain can “capture” experience more efficiently than it will be able to later, when the pruning of synapses is underway.11 The brain’s ability to shape itself – called plasticity – lets humans adapt more readily and more quickly than we could if genes alone determined our wiring.18 The process of blooming and pruning, far from being wasteful, is actually an efficient way for the brain to achieve optimal development."

http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain
 
Very interesting :yay:

I'm thinking about all those "educational" toys (aka electronic babysitters) that got their start in the 80s. Parents would park their kids in front of the Teddy Ruxpin instead of reading to them or teaching them directly. I guess I'm lucky we couldn't afford things like that.
Exactly. My son and I were actually talking about this last night. He has friends with young kids and he's observed the kids entertained with gadgets develop very short attention spans. He put two and two together when he was watching the decades worth of family and childhood videos from this weekend. He said, "Look at the groups of young kids actually playing together... there are three boys playing with a toy firetruck and they are actually playing with it all at once... no fighting over it no sign of boredom. Look at the ones playing catch and volleyball. Kids today seem to consider outdoor playing a chore."
 
IMO, when schools started to attempt to force boys to mature at the same rate as girls and eliminated recess and social interaction play time... that was the beginning of the mess we are in today.

"Formative years" are just that... YEARS worth of mental, physical and social development nurtured by adults who were quick to squash unacceptable behavior, rewarded for actual achievement and not just presence, and understood that male hormones beget different results in development than female hormones and thus each sex can and should be treated differently as they are different indeed.
 

Monello

Smarter than the average bear
PREMO Member
"The excess of synapses produced by a child’s brain in the first three years makes the brain especially responsive to external input. During this period, the brain can “capture” experience more efficiently than it will be able to later, when the pruning of synapses is underway.11 The brain’s ability to shape itself – called plasticity – lets humans adapt more readily and more quickly than we could if genes alone determined our wiring.18 The process of blooming and pruning, far from being wasteful, is actually an efficient way for the brain to achieve optimal development."

http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain

This is how infants that are raised in dual language homes are bilingual at an early age. Take an older child and plop them down in a different culture and it takes them longer to grasp the language. Add an adult into the mix and most likely it will take them the longest to master a new language.
 
This is how infants that are raised in dual language homes are bilingual at an early age. Take an older child and plop them down in a different culture and it takes them longer to grasp the language. Add an adult into the mix and most likely it will take them the longest to master a new language.
I became aware of this developmental window when I became fascinated with "feral" children. I was mind blowing to find out that once the vocal development window shut the child was never able to master what you and I consider normal language.

"The critical period hypothesis states that there is a critical age, before puberty, that one must learn language (Coronado, 2013)). If one has not learned to speak before puberty it is much more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to learn language and speak in a meaningful way (Coronado, 2013). This hypothesis has been supported by cases of feral children. Feral children have lived in social isolation with little to no human contact or care (Sinicki, 2016). There have been several cases of feral children, and each one of them had difficulty learning language."

https://sites.psu.edu/psych256sp16/...-for-language-acquisition-and-feral-children/
 

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
When I was growing up, we had recess three times a day - once in mid-morning for about 15 minutes.
After lunch for 30-45 minutes and afternoon for 15 minutes.

It made school a little bit longer, but our brains were always ready.
 
When I was growing up, we had recess three times a day - once in mid-morning for about 15 minutes.
After lunch for 30-45 minutes and afternoon for 15 minutes.

It made school a little bit longer, but our brains were always ready.
Same here.
 
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