The Twinkies

I can check what sites referred people here. That’s how I find out about the crazy searches that land people on this site. Today I had a lesson on why I shouldn’t follow those links.

I’ve asked that this Facebook group be removed for harassment so by the time you read this it may be gone which would be nice.

One of my former students, a boy afflicted with a major case of entitled brattiness, made a Facebook group linking to my post on one year of nursing twins. General student comments included things like “With her choice of proffession I find this disturbing,” “i am still really immature and think that is gross…,” “go figure the one teachers boobs i don’t want to see i see,” “I believe she did this in hope to appear in Playboy’s Milk of the Month page” and so on. The charming founder asked “Who does this? and Why?”

Well, since you asked…

I think it’s pretty obvious WHO does it. I do. As far as why, well being able to breastfeed my children remains one my proudest accomplishments. It wasn’t easy, it took a lot of work, a lot of struggle and a lot of determination. It hurt. I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I had to pump milk to maintain my supply when my son wouldn’t latch which made me feel like a cow. I did (and do) it because I believe very strongly that human milk provides them with the best possible nutrition. Children who are breast fed have high IQs, lower rates of asthma, a decreased risk of diabetes, lower SIDS rates. I could go on. Formula is wonderful for women who can’t breastfeed for whatever reason but breast milk is indisputably best.

Breastfeeding rates, especially for twins, are also very low. Many women simply assume it isn’t doable. Doctors are uneducated about breastfeeding management and rarely supportive. The knowledge base that other nursing twin mothers shared was invaluable when I was struggling. I’ve taken photos and made videos of my children breastfeeding so I can remember this time when it is over. I post them to let other women know that it is possible to nurse twins. I write about my experiences to contribute to the collected wisdom out there in cyber space so that other struggling mothers have that much more to draw upon.

It’s just too bad that a former student thinks it’s fun to try to use them to publicly humiliate me. And it makes me sad that students I used my spare time to tutor, students for whom I designed individual curriculums, students who went to a school founded on principles of faith and religious values would play along.

UPDATE: The group is down and the slew of Facebook referrals has slowed to a trickle. I also reported the ringleader for online harassment to the Dean of Students at Emerson, the institution that he attends, though now that Facebook has taken the offending group down I doubt they can do anything.

I’d like to say something snippy like “you can read the results of a Catholic education focused on faith, respect and character in some of the more colorful comments” but I know those kids are the aberration, not the norm.

B is a huge Shakespeare fan. He’s actually read Two Gentlemen of Verona. Because I am a total freak I am planning on making bedtime Shakespeare story books with a synopsis of plot and some of the most beautiful lines for him to read to the kids.

Me: So…which of Shakespeare’s plays do you think are the most appropriate for kids?

B: Comedy of Errors. Oh, and The Tempest, but not the rape stuff.

One of the sad truths about being a fan of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1) is that you are rarely defending people’s rights to read Huck Finn. No, you get to defend pornographers, Ann Coulter and teenagers who call people “douchbags” (sic).

Avery Doninger, after an altercation with her high school about who could use the school auditorium, described unnamed school administrators as “douchbag” in her Live Journal blog. The school stripped her of her position as class secretary and when her fellow students reelected her, writing her in as her name was not permitted on the ballot, the school threw out the write in votes. Her family sued on the basis that her right to free expression was being thoroughly trampled on. The judge ruled in favor of the school basing his ruling on a precedent that students were not free to, for example, yell “Fuck you” in school hallways.

That’s right. The Internet is contained within the halls of a public high school. All your base are belong to us. I’m certainly no lawyer but that strikes me as a generous interpretation of the precedent and a rather dangerous one as it extends the authority of the school, already too great in my opinion and certainly far more extensive than at the time of the Tinker vs. Des Moines ruling, beyond the doorway of the schoolyard into the wider world. Or, in adolescent parlance, that is seriously fucked up.

Following the logic of this ruling a school could penalize a student who wrote an expose of school corruption, a novel the administration didn’t like, or used a personal blog to prostelize her faith and claim all non-believers were going to hell. Sound extreme? Never underestimate the eagerness of school administrations to use every tool at their disposal to control students.

Somehow this system, a system that denies students the right to free expression even outside the school, a system that throws out the results of elections it does not like, this system is supposed to teach young adults how to be participating members of a representative democracy. However, you are going to have to tell me how that is going to happen because, frankly, I don’t see how an individual can go from functioning in this kind of petty tyranny to participation in an open society with any kind of ease.

(1) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

People always seem to have problems with these. A friend of mine came up with the best way to get people to remember the difference, but, alas, you can’t use it with high school students.

He did her. (Her is the direct object, directly receiving the action of the verb.)
He did it to her. (Her is the indirect object, only indirectly getting that action.)

Boy – I hate Hamlet. We had to read it three times in my AP English class.

Girl – Did we read Hamlet?

Me – You did a 20 minute presentation on Hamlet.

Girl – Oh.

Boy – I guess it really made an impression.

—–
Girl was in my AP English class. Boy was not.

Can you imagine the cover letter for a job application. “Please hire me. Students who go through my class don’t actually remember Hamlet two years later, but at least they don’t hate it.”