Tea at Trianon: Grooming for Abuse

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 14, 2014

Grooming for Abuse

Unfortunately, some schools are grooming children for abuse. To quote:

Years ago an acquaintance of mine wanted to homeschool. Her kindergarten aged child was being chased home from school by 5th and 6th grade boys who would pull her pants down. The school said they couldn’t help- it happened off campus. The boys’ parents said boys would be boys. Older women at her church said, “Well, they have to learn to get along in the real world sometime.”

In my real world, people who do this to other people go. to. jail.

Unfortunately, in the school world, that is not a given. (Read more.)

The North Coast said...: Unfortunately, there's nothing new about this type of bullying. It was commonplace among kids of both public and Catholic schools when I was a kid 50 years ago. And adults in authority were no more sympathetic than many are now. I heard "boys will be boys" a lot, and girls who were targets of this type of harassment were often shamed for "leading the boys on" with their dress or behavior. It was almost always considered to be the fault of the victim.

What is new- and refreshing- is that bullying victims and their parents are fighting back, and there is less tolerance of bullying and more awareness of the real and lasting damage it does to children, than in the old days, when it was thought to "build character". At least the adults in charge no longer ask the poor little victim what he did to make the other kids mad.; March 14, 2014 at 2:04:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: You are so right, NC. I remember. Things have actually improved in some ways.; March 14, 2014 at 8:28:00 AM EDT