Instapundit has a roundup of links about a story that students are actually being taught to defend themselves.
All of them seem to miss a critical point.
There are few instincts to any life form, let alone humans, more fundamental than those designed for survival. If we have to tell people (yes, even children) to defend themselves, we ought to be asking why such advice is necessary.
If children have to be told to not hide under desks, to throw things, to not be passive sheep, why is that? Why is it that, in contravention of their genetic heritage, they would be expected to act as a herd, and not a pack? Why is it that, in opposition to their fundamental nature, they would have to be instructed in basic survival techniques?
One can only conclude that, because one of one of the more modern traits inherent in humans, it is because we have trained them to be passive, to submit, to go along with whatever program whatever terrorist has planned for them, because after all, The Man will come and save them, if they can only survive long enough for the actual negotiators to come along and offer whatever submissive supplications that the terrorists will demand to spare the lives of the tots.
After all, we all know that the way to peace is submission. Appeasement. Surely their demands must be reasonable--else they wouldn't make them. Wouldn't they?
So, every day, we inculcate our young'uns in the culture of appeasement, to protect them. If they'll be nice to their captors, their captors will surely be nice to them.
Well, actually, we learned a different lesson on September 11th. More specifically, the passengers on UL Flight 93 learned that perhaps going along with the program wasn't the ideal course of action. But they'd have never known it from their pre-flight instructions, or the constant barrage of propaganda from the peacemakers in the media and their supposed protectors in government agencies. No, they had to learn it from forbidden cell phones, from which they learned, illegally, that other planes, just like theirs, had been hijacked, and flown into skyscrapers.
They were headed for Washington, where there were no skyscrapers. There were only national monuments. And a White House. And a Capitol Building, with many representatives of the people inside. And a Pentagon...
They had been told not to resist, but they did. They were adults, with the faculty of reason, and the ability to change their programming as events, and information about them, required.
But the thought that we have to teach children to defend themselves should give us pause. How did they know to defend themselves when we were living in caves? How did they know when under seige? How did they know when on the frontier, against the wolves, and the cougers, and the bears?
They knew because they were bred to know. It is only today that we have to reteach them things they already know, because we've previously taught them nonsense. Let us hope that the unteaching of nonsense is easier than the teaching of it, and more enduring.
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