Webloggers like Michele and Kim have been talking about the wussification of our nation's school children. (On a side note, Michele raves about the word 'wussification', even though it is an obvious rip off of Dr. Williams' coinage, 'sissification'.) They have pretty much covered the flap about the onslaught of political correctness in our nation's text books. Words and phrases like apartment, busybody, the elderly, huts, jungle, lumberjack, and regatta, have been deemed offensive, and are banned.

Another form of sissification of our school children is the idea that whenever anyone dies, the school must provide 'grief councilors' or 'crisis councilors', to tell kids that it is okay to cry. Recently some teenager thought it'd be neat to slide down the staircase railing at a museum. She met with a tragic and untimely demise after falling from the railing. Naturally, "museum officials called in crisis counselors to work with the other members of the youth group," so that they would not be 'traumatized'. Personally, if I had a child in one of these schools, I would be very concerned about them providing or mandating therapy for my kid without my permission.

As for other examples, I noted last year, much to the chagrin of several parents, that their kids are being sissified by the heavy backpack crusade. Schools have been mandating less homework and issuing books on CD-ROM to combat the growing problem of whining kids back strain. It is my personal prediction that government subsidized computers are the next step. After all, those CD-ROMs, won't play themselves. Of course, there will also be a double digit increase in the number of kids suffering from myopia, caused by staring at those computer screens all day.

Is my prediction way off base? Well, it seems like the obvious socialist answer to a problem that could be easily solved by rolling backpacks, or by teaching kids to use both backpack straps instead of worrying about looking cool. My picture of the future doesn't seem too unrealistic when you throw in the latest anti-war craze, and the teaching of our kids to ask "why do they hate us?".

All of this pampering and nannyism is making me worry about the future of this nation. Could we have liberated Europe in WWII with people that had grown up whining about every little thing?

"Sarge, my rifle is too heavy. Do I have to carry all these bullets around with me?"

UPDATE: In a usual bout of schadenfreude, Laurence Simon offers this suggestion:

Besides, what do they need crisis counselors for when museum instructors ought to take advantage of the situation and teach a lesson in Natural Selection:

Walk up and down the stairs: survive.
Slide down the railing like an idiot: die.