I often wonder why we have the iiilnnatcon to do this to our children. It seems we are a strange culture of extremes. We’ve got overly hovering litigous parents, and at the same time it is okay for advertising and media to exploit children by giving them access to age inappropriate material and using marketing ploys that are beyond their developmental ability to understand. In addition to marketing junk food to kids, restaurants, schools, etc tend to provide junk food specifically created for kids. In my own experience, many adults, including other parents are more than willing to jump in to discipline (yell and castigate)other people’s kids rather than approach them from a place of concern and teaching. My husband’s frequent refrain, If I had done that when I was a kid, my dad would have let me have it! makes me wonder if our own socialization process is what makes us have some sort of inner drive to squelch anyone who stands out or gets out of line. Regardless of where it comes from, it seems like something that takes effort to curb. Yet the people we admire so much often have stood out for taking the risk to get out of line and lead the way. One other thing that seems to be driving some of the squelching that occurs in schools is the horrible emphasis on testing that is driving so much instruction. Teachers have less freedom to creativitly spark and explore interests that lie outside of the curriculum that is being tested. There is little time to study interests deeply because there is the time pressure to cover certain curriculum.