Well Judy, I'm glad to see that you are big enough to consider that MAYBE Roman's art doesn't need to get trashed in this sordid little story.

But consider : the U.S. is number 2 after China in the sheer HUMONGOUS numbers of its prison population, and the American citizenry seems to feel that prison is the ... CURE for every imaginable evil. (No, I take that back, the American citizenry would just like to lock 'em all up and throw away the key. And while we're at it, the citizenry doesn't have a fantastic amount of imagination about the variety and scope of evil in human experience... it just keeps on ranting and finger pointing in that puerile, Puritan mentality that has characterized this country since before the American revolution.)

Let's keep on locking up EVERYONE and spouting off about all that due process which has gone the way of our largely corrupt state and federal government.

That way we can finally bankrupt ourselves by continuing to spend all those dollars we are currently churning out in a last, desperate attempt to convince ourselves that we are still the world's masters.

My title is stupid because I HATE having to think up titles to comment here...

Reading your "confession" reminded me how frustrated I was at having my high school daughter come home after more than a ten hour day too tired for me to reasonably be able to share anything that I wanted to pass on to her, and in a context where, as it turns out, I have a lot to pass on to her that she is interested in, and which is every bit as valid as what the school system churned out for her benefit in that great initiation rite which is our public, or private educational system.

I think that it's important to keep in mind that not all that long ago children were already working for their livelihood at 6, and that the public schooling system was ALSO put into place to "protect" them from some pretty grueling treatment. But our children's "school" conditions have always pretty much paralleled their parents'... WORKING conditions, because in our society, SCHOOL IS WORK.

As for teaching our children how to think... I think that we can safely say that mass education in any form just can't do this. That's why in the old days, the poor were not educated at all, and the rich very often... had tutors (yeah, you know, that one on one relationship that so fosters intellectual curiosity, when it is handled by a curious, open person ?)

As for social skills... just WHO says that everybody has to be... SOCIABLE ? (And what does THAT mean ??) Every advantage has its disadvantage, and it takes all kinds to make up a diverse, stimulating world.

Some reading recommendation : try out Rousseau's Emile. Rousseau may have handed over his children to the State to be fostered, but he regretted it to his dying day, and Emile was written as penance. He says MANY MANY interesting things in his "guide" to education.

And your "anarchist" wife would probably enjoy it : the book was banned on publication, and burned, and Rousseau was hounded out of France and Switzerland for it.

He was saying some of the things that YOU are saying here, in this article. Before the French revolution...

The reaction YOU get from people is remarkably similar to the reaction... HE got when Emile was published.

As a permanent expat, I get more info out of reading the piece WITH the letters, which are themselves an important part of the picture for me.

What comes across : 1) the obsession about co-dependency (but just what is so GREAT, or IDEAL about being "INDEPENDANT" when "independance" is part of the big lie that we have been telling ourselves for a long time now, we are dependant at birth, and all the way through our existence) AND 2) the hysterical finger pointing tendency to profer diagnoses of craziness about all behavior that does not fall into our very narrow, psychorigid definitions of "normalcy" as outlined in the bible of the mass media or the DSM manuals.

Much more interesting than the initial article, which, I agree, definitely does not merit first page place (and who cares about objectivity, everything, everything is written with a slant anyway, that's the slant that our own personal viewpoint on a situation gives it...).