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I did not learn to read until about age 20, learning as my daughter learned. My first books as an adult were old nickel thrift store children's books. My childhood was of extreme poverty and depravations.
Horace the elephant. The ant and the grasshopper. The 3 little pigs. Others.
All of those are stories of one person laboring, suffering, struggling, working - while another person played and laughed at the one working. Then, when hard times come, those who had worked were alright - and those who had not were starving and begging those who did.
The moral was of the value of work and building towards the future, plus to prepare for hard times. If not, you then will bear the consequences, just like those who worked have the good consequences of those efforts.
Do those values apply anymore? Did the growing "social safety net" that assure free-living even if subsistence to people who where high school dropout punks, alcoholics, drug addicts, people who never save a nickel, who claim that available jobs are too much below them - and all the lamenting of economic unfair plus a political system that now openly buys votes with promises of free money, free everything?
I noticed some time ago no children's books have those morals and values anymore. They tell children how to cope with divorce in books that says divorce can be a good thing. How to be environmentally good. To love animals. To accept others. But none about the values of labor, of savings, of preparing for the future or self reliance.
Do the economic values of those old books still have any value? Or do they only have value to those wise enough to understand those principles still apply unless you want to be at subsistence dependency living?
The poll is about the story of The Ant and the Grasshopper. The ant worked tireless to build up food. The grasshopper played and fiddled. And then hard times came. The ant was not sympathetic. The grasshopper suffered. Is that a viable perspective to teach little children?
Horace the elephant. The ant and the grasshopper. The 3 little pigs. Others.
All of those are stories of one person laboring, suffering, struggling, working - while another person played and laughed at the one working. Then, when hard times come, those who had worked were alright - and those who had not were starving and begging those who did.
The moral was of the value of work and building towards the future, plus to prepare for hard times. If not, you then will bear the consequences, just like those who worked have the good consequences of those efforts.
Do those values apply anymore? Did the growing "social safety net" that assure free-living even if subsistence to people who where high school dropout punks, alcoholics, drug addicts, people who never save a nickel, who claim that available jobs are too much below them - and all the lamenting of economic unfair plus a political system that now openly buys votes with promises of free money, free everything?
I noticed some time ago no children's books have those morals and values anymore. They tell children how to cope with divorce in books that says divorce can be a good thing. How to be environmentally good. To love animals. To accept others. But none about the values of labor, of savings, of preparing for the future or self reliance.
Do the economic values of those old books still have any value? Or do they only have value to those wise enough to understand those principles still apply unless you want to be at subsistence dependency living?
The poll is about the story of The Ant and the Grasshopper. The ant worked tireless to build up food. The grasshopper played and fiddled. And then hard times came. The ant was not sympathetic. The grasshopper suffered. Is that a viable perspective to teach little children?
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