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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

The Meso-Americans believed (or so report the Spaniards) that if they did not 
hold annual human sacrifices to Left-Handed-Hummingbird, the sun would fail 
to wax after the winter solstice and life would end.

Now, no one had tested this.   Utter horrors, why take the chance!  But when 
the Spaniard forbade it, the Nauatl hid themselves in terror at what was 
about 
to happen!

Like a sixtheenth centruy Y2K, though, nothing happned.


Alas, the human sacrifice goes on to this day unabated.   People sacrifice 
their children's childhood to the terrrible gods of education in abject fear 
of 
what might happen if they don't.

But as with  the Aztecs, no one has ever really tested the propostion, not on 
an extensive scale at least.  Like the Aztecs cowering in the corners, look 
how many times you all have brought up, "Well, if this or that person, or 
this 
or that group, wasn't compelled to attend school ... doom, disease, 
pestilence 
would be the result!!"

And your control group for this would be ...... whom?

On the contrary, the evidence is crushingly, overwhelmingly that left alone, 
children learn what they need to know.  Confinement, regimentation, testing, 
and all such are utterly unnecessary unless you have some other goal in mind 
besides the academics.

The evidence is that the parents' level of education, the value parents place 
o education, and the child's cultural and academic surroundings don't really 
have a lot to do with it.  Given the opportunity to seek out what they need 
to 
know, children will seek it, find it, and learn it with a far, far better 
success rate than schools have.

IF THEY HAVE NOT BEEN CONDITIONED TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE.

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