Tea at Trianon: Normal Children

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

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Normal Children

From Crisis:

Yet, you cannot help but notice that people who read books are still able to operate a microwave and tie their own shoes. For kids growing up on smartphones, the outcome looks less promising. When children are plugged into iPads to keep them quiet during daily activities and hooked up to televisions suspended from the ceiling at the dentist’s office, what are the boring quotidian experiences that they are missing out on? And what are the consequences?

Writing in The Wall Street Journal about the challenges posed by Big Tech for little kids, Peggy Noonan captures the frustration of many parents. It is clear that popular apps negatively affect the emotional health of teenagers, especially teen girls. Perhaps the most damning evidence is that some of the very same people making money off such apps send their children to schools free of the taint of computer screens and smartphones. But how do you, the plebian, get off the treadmill and disconnect? Half-measures are difficult to enact, and banning technology renders children veritable social outcasts. Still, it seems worth it.

Noonan includes an anecdote about a mother with many children whose children used little technology. While at the grocery store, she was asked, “Do you homeschool?” Noonan explains, “The mother wasn’t sure of the spirit of the question but said, ‘Yes, I do. Why do you ask?’ The checkout woman said, ‘Because they have children’s eyes.’” If it is that obvious that children are being raised differently, there may be something there worth investigating. Sitting out the technology quagmire seems increasingly reasonable.
A full two years after Covid-19 brought normal social interaction to a grinding halt, you will still find stray signs affixed in waiting rooms, hanging so long they have been overlooked. Expressing the rallying cry of March 2020, they plead, “Stay Home. Stay Safe. Save Lives.”

Setting aside the question of whether isolating healthy people was ultimately a prudent decision for society at large, the forced closure of schools was a catalyst in many families. Brought together by the strange events in an increasingly strange world, many families discovered that homeschooling was not as far-fetched as they once imagined. Absent the grinding strain of institutional bureaucracy, some children’s migraines disappeared, their moods brightened, their sleep improved. Covid-19 or not, staying home might really be a good thing for some children. More than anything, what children stand to gain in home education is the ability to be real children, innocent and not yet deformed by antisocial technology. (Read more.)