{"id":5082,"date":"2011-02-02T23:20:09","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T06:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=5082"},"modified":"2011-02-02T23:36:09","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T06:36:09","slug":"generation-namby-pamby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=5082","title":{"rendered":"Generation Namby-pamby"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When did I turn into that crotchety old lady who talks about the good old days when I had to walk uphill both ways, to and from school?\u00a0 I\u2019d say it was the day before yesterday, when I learned that school had been canceled for my high school student due to anticipated \u201cextreme cold.\u201d\u00a0 When they canceled school a second day in a row due to sub-zero temperatures, my status was confirmed:\u00a0 crotchety AND cranky old lady.<\/p>\n

In my day (OMG, I can\u2019t believe I just used that phrase), the only thing that closed school was a couple of feet of lake-effect snow dumped overnight \u2013 something like the storm that\u2019s hitting the NE US now<\/a> — a fairly common occurrence at the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York in the mid-60\u2019s.\u00a0 Cold was measured by the depth of the frost on your windows, the length of the icicles hanging from your eaves, and the frequency with which you had to stop to scrape the ice off of both sides of the windshield on your Volkswagen Beetle.\u00a0 Neither school nor life was canceled due to cold.\u00a0 It just would not have been practical given that we had an average of 150 days per year below freezing, and an average low temperature each year in the minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit range.<\/p>\n

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Source: http:\/\/www.weatherbase.com\/weather\/weather.php3?s=691527&refer<\/p><\/div>\n

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Girls were required to wear skirts to school, which necessitated the addition of huge, itchy, woolen snowpants to ward off frostbitten knees.\u00a0 The invention of polar fleece was decades away, and four-wheel drive vehicles were only used on farms.<\/p>\n

This week in Boulder, our kids were told to stay home due to temperatures that were certainly nowhere near the average lowest recorded temperature for Boulder of minus 28 degrees in February.\u00a0 While temperatures did dip below zero, it was nothing that a good pair of boots, a warm hat, and some gloves couldn\u2019t handle.\u00a0 So what gives?<\/p>\n

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Source: http:\/\/www.weatherbase.com\/weather\/weather.php3?s=51137&refer<\/p><\/div>\n

My theory is that our reluctance to let our little ones out in the cold is a reflection of our reluctance to let them experience any kind of risk.\u00a0 We slather them in sunscreen in the summer. They can\u2019t ride around the block without a bike helmet and a GPS. And we certainly wouldn\u2019t let them go sledding on Open Space\u2026there are liabilities to consider, after all.<\/p>\n

My fear is that we are raising a generation of namby-pamby kids who are afraid to scrape their knees, afraid to experience the bracing cold on a sunshiny day, afraid to try and fail.\u00a0 I see it reflected in the way we have stripped competitiveness from the classroom, in the way we talk with our kids about sex and drugs and rock and roll and last but not least\u2026in the decision to cancel school in the face of a little cold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When did I turn into that crotchety old lady who talks about the good old days when I had to walk uphill both ways, to and from school?\u00a0 I\u2019d say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[190,215],"class_list":["post-5082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-bvsd","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5082"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5096,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5082\/revisions\/5096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}