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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thehammer who wrote (155185)	6/22/2001 10:50:24 PM
From: rich4eagle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

I was pressured by teen age friends in 1961 to start smoking as a fourteen year old, I resisted, but succumbed, and learned how addictive and destructive the habit was. So, I have no mercy for the tobacco companies who propagated killing for so many years

To: Thehammer who wrote (155185)	6/22/2001 11:48:16 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Thehammer; In the primal state the clan was the rearing unit. There were no schools. We passed knowledge from one to another. Children saw many groups within the clan. Their peers and the next group up, down, women, etc. This gave little scope for unsupervised freedom of action. The copies were those warriors/men that were older than you and you copied them, swaggered like them etc. Now we are a mass society and se generate the large cadres of children of the same age in schools. They form a society and run according to their own rules, not those of their parents. Like all societies it is self policing by peer pressure. The people who are copied are those that are like the old warriors, but their fights are against the rules of their parents. Parents say no smoking....well they are going to smoke. Parents say no sex. The parents smoke and have sex, so smoking and sex are something good you want to keep from us. How do we change this? Are the kibbutzes in Israel more or less successful in stopping their kids from smoking? I use them as an example as they are the last vestige in our civilised society of any familial structure that resembles the old tribalism. They also have the adulthood ritual at 14, bar/bas mitzvah. Does giving the children formalised adult responsibility at 14 enable them to make better decisions regarding smoking than out wasp kids? I would say it does this way as none of my jewish friends smokes(nor do I) How to change it? Change society. This is I feel part of the lessening supervisory roles that teachers have taken over the last 40 years. As teacher wages have risen the roles and numbers of teachers have been cut back to the point where the kids in school have far more opportunity to mix in an unsupervised manner. When I was in public school every hall had a teacher or two in it watching. (This stopped lots of bullying) Now the halls have little supervision and the kids form a dynamic mass, going from class to class, bullying, fighting etc. This mix is a prime place for peer pressure to manifest itself and the alpha males/females are identified and the pecking order established.. This unsupervised time is the prime place for peer pressure to intervene. So get more supervisory presence in the halls. pay teachers less money to pay for this supervision as the wages of teachers have far exceeded the general rise in the economy over the past 40 years. This is bad as we reach the point where we cannot afford as many, so we use less and the tribal socieyt forms in the schools. Same reasons have allowed gang formation as well. Bill