one more thing...

regarding leo's comment on my previous post about bus stops, I would have to say that it isn't community that we lack so much as it's community that we fear. ignorance is one thing. certainly our 80's upbringing brought with it more health hazards and just flat out stupid habbits than the wiser, more conscientious parents of today. but i think there's something to be said about the pervasive trend of infantilization that's infiltrating not only our bus stops but our class rooms as well. you said it yourself in class today, leo: why must we use the students' discursive space as the only arena for instruction? Why not have them come to us, to our level? and i agree with you. i'd have to argue, however, that waiting with the kids at the bus stop is in many ways conceptually the same as using blogs and chat rooms as a viable substitute for term papers and essays: it isn't just about paranoia, in other words. Both are predicated on keeping the child close to that with which they are familiar and thus denying them an opportunity to grow. yeah i could have been swiped by some bad guy when i was six. maybe my parents were ignorant for letting me walk home by myself, maybe not. (personally, i lean toward the latter because I'm still not convinced the world is really any more dangerous than it was in the 80's when we were in the middle of a war and a recession...oh wait) But kids today can still be swiped and ya know what, i wonder if in all the time the parents stand next to them at the bus stop in the mornings, they tell their kids what to do in case some old man comes up and offers them candy. cuz maybe deep down the parents can't bring themselves to imagine a situation in which their babies will ever be on their own. hopefully not. i see it in my freshman, or rather in the emails i get from the parents of my freshman who demand to know why little jimmy got a B on a paper when he was an A student in high school....yup...college freshman...adults...my mom never would have dreamed of emailing MY COLLEGE TEACHERS about why i got a certain grade on a paper. but that is happening more and more often. parents of grad students...GRAD STUDENTS...are renting apartments for their children not because their kids lack the verbal or mechanical skills to do it themselves but because, and i've actually heard this before, "kids don't know what they're doing with this stuff." Kids? Grad students, kids? If they don't know how to do something, why not, I don't know, TEACH THEM! but no. that's just not how things are done anymore, it seems. i don't think wanting to see kids walking home by themselves reflects the absense of caring on my part but rather i believe the refusal to allow kids the maturation of walking home alone demonstrates the paranoid anxiety that something bad is always around the corner and by extention a total absense of faith in the decency of mankind or the benefit of individual growth: the lack of caring. ya wanna show kids you love them, teach them to be individuals. teach them to think. teach them to stand up for themselves without our khaki-clad legs there for them to always hide behind when things get a little on the uncomfortable side. oh, and just because something's written in a passionate manner doesn't automatically qualify it as a rant. in order to spare yall a rant, i'll stop now and go to bed. peace, i'm outta here.