From today's independent.
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 24 March 2006
Depending on your political predilections, you have double reason to be worried if you find your school-age child tends to be the whiny, sit-at-the-back-of-the-class kind. You had better get the child's confidence level up a notch or you may have a future conservative in your nest.
A study by Professor Jack Block of the University of California at Berkeley should be sufficient warning. He has been specialising in this area for years and his conclusions are clear: the boys and girls who are resilient, smooth and sure of themselves end up liberal in their older years.
The research, in the latest Journal of Research into Personality, does not exactly say that Dick Cheney, the Vice President, must therefore have been the most tiresome wimp in school. Or that Al Gore won the school popularity contest. But it comes close. "The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity," the professor found after selecting 90 children for his experiment and following their development over two decades to adulthood.
"The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn introspective."
I have done some research & unearthed a section of an old school report that might prove interesting.
Pupil........... A Hitler
Class 5 B
Subject
History. Made no attempt to study Napoleon's Moscow campaign.
Art. Painting, very good at the undercoat but a bit sloppy with the artexing.
Religion. I think, I detected a certain dislike of the Jewish faith.
Geography. The only country he could identify on a map of Europe was Poland.
PE. Football. A more than useful right winger.
Cricket. When bowling, he has no trouble keeping his arm straight but he suffers from the occasional no ball.
Writing. All a bit of a struggle.
Overall. I have never met a more whiny child and he should really do something about his appearance, has he really only got brown shirts?
4 comments:
I am not trying to butter you up, but this was actually funny!
Having been a callow youth when 'Last Tango in Paris' was doing the rounds, I'll take your buttering up in a nice way.
Oh my (minor) god!, you must then be almost as old as I am. How's your Viagra supply doing?
Funny you should ask, I went into a chemist & said to the chemist, have you a Viagra tablet, he said yes, so I asked if I could get it over the counter?
He replied. For that you'll need 2.
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