bess.bigwhoop.org

What a great message to send to Grade 4 children.

What could the message the parents are sending them be?

Maybe they'll interpret it this way: "Please disregard free speech and do not act civil and handle your problems with bombing and shooting."

Next thing you know, the school will be screening for weapons when the children arrive for class...oh, wait.

Hopefully, they'll address some of this in their 4th grade english class. "Helecopters." isn't a sentence, its a fragment.

I think we should give all Iraqi's candy canes too. You know what else we should stop? Poverty and AIDS.

Stop the starving, stop the dying, cure AIDS.
I'll give you the contents of my pig bank, cure AIDS.
I know nothing of reality, because I'm 11. Cure AIDS.

Gee, Furstie and Young Jayko: speaking of people who know nothing of reality, I sure wish a born-again Christian and/or someone who can neither spell the word "helicopter" nor use contractions correctly would step up to bat on this issue. Know anyone up to the task?

These lyrics (and all punctuation therein) were transcribed by a parent.

Ad hominem, unrelated to content.

You can do better, address the issue.

Wow. I thought you had some sense Furst, I don't understand where you are going with your comments. What is the issue to you?

Those kids are getting a good taste of reality right now. A sad reality our world has turned to in which past Presidents would not be celebrating on a holiday like yesterday.

What a joke that an opinion can't be expressed in this day and age! Just because you don't agree with it, doesn't mean it should be banned. Do you not see how this is bad and leads to a fairytale world?

What is the issue to you anyway?

Those 11 year olds probably have a better sense of reality than most adults in this day and age do.

You keep supporting restriction of free speech, cure AIDs.
You keep supporting bombing the shit out of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, cure AIDS.
You keep praying, cure AIDS.

Yes, Furstie -- you set the ad hominem standard here by attacking their 4th-grader-ness. I'm only playing by the rules you've set. They can't have opinions because they're bound by the naivete of being 10, and you can't have an opinion because you're bound by the grandest imagination-/pretend-based form of naivete out there.

See? I didn't even have to use the word "reality."

And, lastly, where the _hell_ is AE?

This is ridiculous. My only problem would be if the students were actually required to sing the song.

What do you guys think would have happened if the students had written a song in support of the war?

"What a great message to send to Grade 4 children."

You know, it's not a great message, but in a funny way it's great that the students are getting this message at such an early age. Let them get their first taste of how things really work in our world.

They wouldn't have, since people don't tend to write songs in support of wars. Music is about stickin' it to the man -- it's about idealism and hope. People write songs about how they *wish* things were.

Forget about whether they would have. How do you think the important players in this story would have acted differently? Let's say they wrote a modern day version of "Over There" by George M. Cohan.

Who exactly are the major players here?

Okay, to answer your question, if the 4th graders had written a Lee Greenwood-esque patriotic ballad about the Few and the Brave and the Proud (or what have you) and how guts on a battlefield are a sign of American glory, no, I don't think it would have been pulled by parents. Country is in -- lamenting about the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave whilst flying the flag at half-mast and airbrushing eagles onto tractor-trailers is totally, hushed-apologetically acceptable.

The issue here is that most anti-war songs don't tend to use graphic imagery like "gore" and "maiming", so that's what stands out. Pro-war songs *always* do, though. Anti-war songs have historically been more intellectual/refined than that, but since this one was written by 4th graders, it's got its heart out on its sleeve. It's painfully candid.

Anyway, why shouldn't they be allowed to sing it at the concert, if they, as a class, came up with it as their assignment? I can think of a number of things that I was "forced" to participate in as a child that weren't necessarily of my own doing, and it didn't kill me. That's what a classroom setting is -- versus homeschooling or one-on-one tutoring.

There are many pro war movies and songs out there and no one complains. Funny enough, the "important players" in this story are the ones who are living a dreamworld thinking people don't share the same opinion as they do. This goes against everything the war they are supporting stands for. Can you not see this?

I may share the same beliefs and views as you (Dowdell), Bess, Furst, and Jayko - that doesn't mean I should call to put your views on mute. Since when did this become acceptable in the land of the free?

Reality is what you make it I guess. Great job guys!

Fuck sakes, I could have used the "preview" button.

I may share the same beliefs = I may not share the same beliefs

I'm going back to Grade 4.

I'm just amazed that a bunch of 4th graders could come up with a unilateral agreement on an anti-war stance when there aren't 30 adults in the country that can. I'm astounded that those kids sat down, brainstormed that song, and agreed amongst themselves that they'd sing it as a sign of solidarity against our government's policy. When I was a 4th grader, I was not motivated enough, nor were my classmates and I organized enough. I was probably just as easily swayed by my elders.

Come to think of it, I don't think the kids ever wrote the lyrics when I was there. Huh.

I still liked a comment from the message boards on this topic:
"Censorship aside, how about we take a minute to answer the very question asked by the song's lyrics -- i.e., What for? -- by turning these 4th graders around in their seats to look out their classroom window upon the giant subdivision of McMansions encroaching upon the Intermediate school. Each family's multiple luxury oil-guzzling SUVs roughing Goshen's treacherous paved culs-de-sac? The displaced deer and birds and foxes and coyotes wandering around distraught in the parking lot?I certainly hope one of the other classes was asked to write a song that goes ahead and answers the question "What for?", since the goal of all the gore and the maiming and the crying is watching its soaps via plasma flatscreen, putting in pools where forests used to be, and shoving the bible down everyone's throat while cheating on its wife with its secretary -- all in plain sight of where this reflectively hopeful 4th-grade songwriting is taking place."

But I guess we're right, these 4th graders probably have transcended all of this to have an impartial, informed opinion on this topic.

Bess,

I'm curious about how my misspelling of helicopter and using "its" instead of "it's" puts me in Furst-esque Jesus-loving fantasy world, IE not understanding reality?

Furstie, the point isn't whether these kids know enough to have an informed opinion -- the song is a pretty generic anti-war song; it doesn't even technically have to be about this particular war. We have no evidence that it was written with the Iraq War in mind. Clearly the parent who threw a hissy fit thought it was, though, so the joke's on him!

I distinctly remember being in 2nd grade, swinging on the Scotchtown Ave. swingset, whilst a girl in my grade -- Stephanie Bowler (sp), hopefully Amy is reading this right now because she definitely remembers -- played "We Are the World" on her boombox, which was the hit of that year. The entire grade swung on our swings and sang along. Did we know what we were saying? Not specifically, no -- but we knew it was a good and positive and hopeful message. And actually now that I think about it, I learned a new word that year: heed.

"There comes a time... when we heed a certain call..."

So hopefully these oh-so-sheltered 4th-graders who *definitely* had no input here -- and certainly didn't go home that day to shoot each other on the Wii systems their anti-war-song-banning parents clawed each others' eyes out for on line at 4am on Black Friday -- at the very least walked away knowing two new uber-big words: maim and gore.

And if you're accusing a teacher of putting words in the students' mouths (and if you are, you're not alone), maybe you don't get what it actually takes to be a teacher these days, in that if your personal agenda comes within about 300 miles of the school district, you're asking to be fired. Not to mention the fact that your lesson plans are scrutinized by administration at least weekly, and certainly long before you'd secretly be able to get away with teaching an entire class that year's official concert song on the sly. I think most of the same music teachers have been at the GIS over the past few years -- why would they choose this particular year to brainwash the kids into siding with their washed-up ne'er-do-well leftist agendas?

Shifting gears a little bit - what Jesus-ness is involved in any one of my comments here? I'm continually amazed that you're the only person on the planet that considers my faith to be legitimate enough to influence my discussion. Of course, you've needed to believe that so that you could weaponize it against me for these discussions, but I just wish more people would do the same.

Here's my real question though...Who named any of us to be valid interpreters of "reality"? For instance, we (I) argue that these 4th graders can't have a valid opinion because they're 9 years old. I might be able to say that I have a somewhat more valid opinion because I work in the defense industry, but if we cared about anything other than money, I'd have a vested interest. Bess, you're less impartial than FOX News. I hope you realize that, your opinions are prefabricated by your worldview. Then we have peace loving Nordics, whatever Jayko is, Dowdell - none of us is privy to any addition information. We appeal to AE as an arbiter, but why should she be? We could get Weiss in here, at least he's been to Iraq, but he's hardly going to have a non-biased opinion. So WHO pirthee, do we appeal to in order to decide our winner here?

I say no one.

Lastly, here's my opinion on the war:
1) In hindsight we were wrong to go in there. At the time, we were almost unilaterally in agreement to go in there. Moral of story: it's not exclusively W's fault or the republican's fault. I don't believe the grandiose conspiracy theories, naive though I may be.

2) We've already lost the war. The extremists know that they just need to hang on for x more months and we'll be gone.

3) We're trying to find a graceful exit now, but it's not so simple as just leaving because the Vietnam/Iraq pattern of guerilla warfare will have yet again been validated. We're trying to keep egg off our face, and set up some semi-stable situation. It's like when you sleep with a woman and get her pregnant. You can't just say, "man, that was a mistake. Welp, seeya later." Or you can say that, but it's not particularly respectable.

4) We should let Israel deal with Iran while we develop experimental technologies to deal with the current guerilla tactics.

Can't we have God be our arbiter? Isn't He, after all, who named any of us (well, you) to be valid interpreters of reality?

God declares Furstie the winner, everyone! You can all go home now. Good game!

I can't have a discussion about the war with anyone who starts off with the premise that W even feels he's AT fault for anything. Everything went exactly according to his plan. If you haven't caught on to the fact that this war was waged solely for the benefit of a few (a few who, might I add, HAVE indeed benefitted nicely, successfully), I can't help you and we can't possible argue on equal footing. Until the majority of the nation can admit that we were tricked into fighting a private, petty scrimage between the Ivy and the Arab elite over property lines and penis sizes, we're not asking the right questions and there will be no satisfaction or resolve to be had on any side.

You're right there, the republican party has positioned itself nicely for the next few elections with this one. I just hope to God we get Obama instead of She-Wolf.

I don't know... if I have to pick between a borderline-man woman and a borderline-white black, I think I'll probably go with the one who knows what it feels like to bleed monthly and/or give birth.

I don't think we'll get Obama. He may be up against a political machine the likes of which none of us has ever seen. He certainly has a chance, but it's going to be tough for him to get the nomination. FWIW I don't have much of a problem with Hilary within the spectrum of American politicians. We've tried the dumb & likable approach, maybe we should give brilliant & offensive a shot. At the very least she seems unlikely to let people starve and drown to death in one of our own major cities.

The reason I asked about the "major players" is because I've been wrestling with this situation for a bit and I can't decide how it would play out if a political song expressing a drastically different opinion had been written instead of the one we see here. I'm pretty sure that some parents would vocalize their displeasure over a pro-war song, but I can't decide what the administration would do. I would hope that they would have a consistent policy one way or the other, but they do work for the government so there's really no telling. Likewise Bess, I wonder how upset you would be if a pro-war song got pulled for the very same reasons. I'd like to think you'd be just as pissed off as you are now.

Assuming that these children had some sort of legitimate vote as to what the song should be about and then actually wrote the song, I strongly believe that they should be allowed to sing. The one thing I would like to know is whether the administration knew about the assignment before they saw its results. If that is the case, then the administration is doing a horrible thing here. You can't ask students their opinion and then tell them to shut up when the opinion is controversial or doesn't jibe with your own. If the admins didn't know about the assignment and my two assumptions turn out to be true, then they still are doing the wrong thing. However, as I said before they may inadvertently be teaching these students a valuable life lesson about how things generally work.

And can we get a comment about the liberal media in here somewhere? No discussion should progress to this stage without someone blaming the entire event on the media. I for one have adopted the Republican policy of blaming everything on the media and I've never felt better about life.

God has declared Dowdell the most diplomatic, so we can all go home now! Nice scrimmage, everyone!

Young Jayko, all I meant by addressing your grammar choices above is the same thing I told Furstie a few days ago when forced to swat him out of the way when he wanted to talk about his feelings while I was trying to watch the game with my buds: there seems to be some widely-held misconception that I like you guys for your minds.