Aloysius Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 Socrates, no I don't think 12 year olds of TODAY are ready. it is very obvious that young girls of the past until very very recently, however, were ready. and it is still in some cultures. your ethnocentric american cultural superiority and chronological arrogancy shine through your posts on this issue. I am not arguing for it being right at the moment of sexual maturity, I am arguing that it should be closer to that time, as close as posible. getting married at 15 would be something perfectly in line with natural law. a culture that postpones it to at its earliest mid-20's is out of sync with the natural law. I hope to get married before I'm twenty (I'm running out of time, but if the wedding is in Spring 2007 like we're thinking I'll be 19 ), but I do wish I had grown up in a culture with arranged marriages where I'd probably already be married by now, it just makes sense. there is no reason for this great divide where teenagers have raging hormones with no outlet, it only makes for a culture with non-marital sex and masturbation and pornography running rampant. when the body is ready for sex you shouldn't wait 10 years. that doesn't mean that it should be directly following sexual maturity, just as soon as possible, a few years maybe. anyway, as you blow right past this historical context and tell me to look at 20th century American 12 year olds, I can see you're not being objective enough to make an honest cultural critique.
skellmeyer Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='Aloysius' date='Sep 16 2005, 01:34 PM']There is no reason for this great divide where teenagers have raging hormones with no outlet, it only makes for a culture with non-marital sex and masturbation and pornography running rampant. when the body is ready for sex you shouldn't wait 10 years. that doesn't mean that it should be directly following sexual maturity, just as soon as possible, a few years maybe. [right][snapback]725751[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Au contraire, there is a very good reason why this great divide exists. It was consciously created by the eugenicists of the late 1900's. They knew perfectly well that compulsory schooling through the teen years would reduce fertility by post-poning marriage. That was intended. The modern mass school system was intended to perform a contraceptive function on the immigrant masses (mostly Catholic) who were streaming into the country. Prior to 1870, the idea of school as we know it was absurd. Indeed, it provoked armed rebellion in several regions of the country when it was first introduced through subsidies from America's Protestant industrialists. Again, my new book "Designed to Fail: Catholic Education in America" (we just changed the title from "Deception" yesterday) describes how all of this happened. It should release within the next two to three weeks.
Aloysius Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 I figured as much. I meant no moral logical reason, but I didn't necessarily doubt that it was probably intended by some modernist error sounds like a great book, I'll have to give it a look-see (though currently I'm a poor college kid). do you have first hand sources in your research that actually show they intended it as contraception? that would make it sweet and explosive!
homeschoolmom Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 Sooooo... High school is a Protestant conspiracy?
Kilroy the Ninja Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='homeschoolmom' date='Sep 16 2005, 02:31 PM']Sooooo... High school is a Protestant conspiracy? [right][snapback]725867[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Finally the secret is revealed!!!! : Sorry, just had to inject so lightness.... argue on...
cmotherofpirl Posted September 16, 2005 Author Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='Don John of Austria' date='Sep 16 2005, 09:20 AM']But once agian I never said that he wasn't guilty of stautory rape, I said that the marriage was fine, and that the act was not one of pedophilia. [right][snapback]725366[/snapback][/right] [/quote] But a 12 year old having sex with an adult IS pedophilia.
Dreamweaver Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 Wow, I never realized how much our culture promotes later marriage until this thread. For the most part, one cannot get a decent paying job unless you have graduated from high school. Through out the years, a college degree is becoming more important in landing even basic jobs. Unless one can care for a family and household with a minimum wage waitressing or fast food job...
Don John of Austria Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Sep 16 2005, 02:43 PM']But a 12 year old having sex with an adult IS pedophilia. [right][snapback]725900[/snapback][/right] [/quote] So agian we come back to --- then you are saying that most men in the history of the world were pedophiles--- including many saints possible Saint Joseph himself. Further this Girl was 13 not 12.
skellmeyer Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='Aloysius' date='Sep 16 2005, 02:25 PM']I figured as much. I meant no moral logical reason, but I didn't necessarily doubt that it was probably intended by some modernist error sounds like a great book, I'll have to give it a look-see (though currently I'm a poor college kid). do you have first hand sources in your research that actually show they intended it as contraception? that would make it sweet and explosive! [right][snapback]725790[/snapback][/right] [/quote] I take most of the references from that section of the book from John Taylor Gatto's marvelous work "The Underground History of American Education." You can read it on-line at www.johntaylorgatto.com What I've done with DTF is use Gatto's work and the Magisterial documents, along with some events in 19th century Europe, to show how the parochial school system was flawed from the moment the American bishops established it. They didn't know it, of course. They thought they were making the right move.
skellmeyer Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='Kilroy the Ninja' date='Sep 16 2005, 03:35 PM']Finally the secret is revealed!!!! : Sorry, just had to inject so lightness.... argue on... [right][snapback]725875[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Well, high school is not so much a Protestant conspiracy as it is a eugenicist and industrialist conspiracy. Gatto has tons more on that aspect of the deal than I do - I just reference him and another guy who did yeoman's work researching the beginning of the "adolescent" concept, and move onto the Magisterial documents. Essentially, the factory owners, the eugenicists and the anti-immigration crowd all pushed for extended education, each for different reasons. The factory owners wanted to create a malleable factory worker population that would respond to bells. This was best accomplished by cutting families off from one of their best sources of income - the work of children - in order to force the fathers into work they might not otherwise consider just to feed the family. Agrarian families were multi-income - every person contributed. The single-income family is an artifact of industrialization and child labor laws. It's been around for only the last century of human existence. Meanwhile, the industrialists went to work on the children in the schools, forcing those children into a specific mold of behaviour so they, in turn, would follow their fathers into the factories. The eugenicists wanted to keep the immigrants from reproducing. Mandatory high school served that purpose by taking away a teen's ability to support a family during prime reproductive years. The anti-immigration crowd wanted to turn the Catholics into Protestants as rapidly as possible. Since most of the schools were viciously Protestant at the time, the rationale there is easy to see as well. Compulsory school, especially compulsory high school, answered all those needs. Still does.
skellmeyer Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='Dreamweaver' date='Sep 16 2005, 03:52 PM']Wow, I never realized how much our culture promotes later marriage until this thread. For the most part, one cannot get a decent paying job unless you have graduated from high school. Through out the years, a college degree is becoming more important in landing even basic jobs. Unless one can care for a family and household with a minimum wage waitressing or fast food job... [right][snapback]725926[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Heck, for the upper echelons, you can't get a job until after post-doc work. That means you can't support a family until you're in your mid-30s. Everybody wonders why the fertility rate drops, but that answer was known over a hundred years ago. The more school you require, the less time there is to have a family. Think about most of the licensing requirements - most of them are just stupid. A licence to be a barber or hairdresser? Give me a break. Licenses are, for the most part, just ways to keep people from earning a living. If we REALLY believed in a free market, no one would have a license - the good ones would win out over the bad ones, right? Licenses are just extensions of the king's ability to grant a monopoly to his friends. Except, in this case, it's one small and powerful group making sure they have a monopoly on one aspect of the market.
cmotherofpirl Posted September 16, 2005 Author Posted September 16, 2005 (edited) [quote name='Don John of Austria' date='Sep 16 2005, 05:05 PM']So agian we come back to --- then you are saying that most men in the history of the world were pedophiles--- including many saints possible Saint Joseph himself. Further this Girl was 13 not 12. [right][snapback]726117[/snapback][/right] [/quote] She was 12 . And we were not discussing world history, we are discussing a 12 year old raped by a 20 year old who should be in jail. I cannot believe you would defend a rapist. Mary would not have been 12. Menarche didn't occur in 12 year olds, it occurred much later because of the leaner diets. Edited September 16, 2005 by cmotherofpirl
Dreamweaver Posted September 16, 2005 Posted September 16, 2005 [quote name='skellmeyer' date='Sep 16 2005, 05:42 PM']Heck, for the upper echelons, you can't get a job until after post-doc work. That means you can't support a family until you're in your mid-30s. Everybody wonders why the fertility rate drops, but that answer was known over a hundred years ago. The more school you require, the less time there is to have a family. Think about most of the licensing requirements - most of them are just stupid. A licence to be a barber or hairdresser? Give me a break. Licenses are, for the most part, just ways to keep people from earning a living. If we REALLY believed in a free market, no one would have a license - the good ones would win out over the bad ones, right? Licenses are just extensions of the king's ability to grant a monopoly to his friends. Except, in this case, it's one small and powerful group making sure they have a monopoly on one aspect of the market. [right][snapback]726258[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Ah yes, post-docs and all that.... I'm majoring in the field of science, so I know all about the "you must go to grad school to get a worthwhile job" stuff. I've known professors and doctors that had to give up family life due to the commitment involved. I could see that for brain surgeons and such, but I don't think a "lab rat" working in a chemical/biotech industry needs to have a doctorate for simple production work. Licensing is a very crazy concept, I agree! Hahaha, and despite licensing, we all know barbers/stylists who should perhaps be in a different career. : Now! Here's an idea. Instead of high school classes where one learns trigonometry and the use of gerunds (yeah, because we all use trig on a daily basis!), we should have classes where teens learn basic, EVERYDAY skills. A communications course, basic car repair, cooking, finances, how to properly do laundry, being a smart consumer. Things that are useful in life and would actually perpare a teen to enter the real world.
cmotherofpirl Posted September 17, 2005 Author Posted September 17, 2005 its called Home Ec and used to be a required course.
Socrates Posted September 17, 2005 Posted September 17, 2005 [quote name='Aloysius' date='Sep 16 2005, 12:34 PM']Socrates, no I don't think 12 year olds of TODAY are ready. it is very obvious that young girls of the past until very very recently, however, were ready. and it is still in some cultures. your ethnocentric american cultural superiority and chronological arrogancy shine through your posts on this issue. I am not arguing for it being right at the moment of sexual maturity, I am arguing that it should be closer to that time, as close as posible. getting married at 15 would be something perfectly in line with natural law. a culture that postpones it to at its earliest mid-20's is out of sync with the natural law. I hope to get married before I'm twenty (I'm running out of time, but if the wedding is in Spring 2007 like we're thinking I'll be 19 ), but I do wish I had grown up in a culture with arranged marriages where I'd probably already be married by now, it just makes sense. there is no reason for this great divide where teenagers have raging hormones with no outlet, it only makes for a culture with non-marital sex and masturbation and pornography running rampant. when the body is ready for sex you shouldn't wait 10 years. that doesn't mean that it should be directly following sexual maturity, just as soon as possible, a few years maybe. anyway, as you blow right past this historical context and tell me to look at 20th century American 12 year olds, I can see you're not being objective enough to make an honest cultural critique. [right][snapback]725751[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Hey Al, congratulations on your engagement! Anyway, on to the debate, I think everyone's basically already made their respective cases, but just though I'd add a few more points. I still think marriages for twelve year olds are a very bad idea. We have to remember also, that in the distant past and more "traditional" or "primitive" (third world) cultures where girls often marry very young, marriage had a very different sociological context. In many of these societies, the role of women extended little beyond bearing and taking care of children. Female education, etc. was not the norm. Also, (as you aluded to) in many such societies, marriages were arranged. Who married whom when had mostly to do with political and economic contracts between families, and those getting married really had no say in the matter. In some of these societies, pre-arranged marriages of infants were not unheard of. Would you use this to argue that infants should have the maturity to make decisions about marriage? You say you wish you'd had an arranged marriage! (Personally, I think you're the first person I've heard express such a desire!) I guess it's a matter of taste, but I'd rather not have who I'd spend the rest of my life with determined for me by someone else. What if politics had dictated that you be married to some woman you could not stand or had no attraction to, rather than the woman you love? What if she was much younger or older than you? In addition to very early marriages, and great age differences, political arranged marriages leventually ed to inbreeding among Europe's royal families. A number of arranged royal marriages required Papal dispensations. I guess I went off on a bit of a tangent, but I'd personally prefer that love and one's choice should play a role in choosing a spouse, rather than marriage be subordinate to political considerations. I'm not condoning the modern mess of the current dating and marriage scene or saying it's superior , but I am merely pointing out that sometimes we over-romanticize the past or other cultures, which had their problems too. I simply don't se arranged marriages and pubescent (or pre-pubescent) weddings as being an ideal.
Socrates Posted September 17, 2005 Posted September 17, 2005 [quote name='skellmeyer' date='Sep 16 2005, 05:38 PM']Well, high school is not so much a Protestant conspiracy as it is a eugenicist and industrialist conspiracy. Gatto has tons more on that aspect of the deal than I do - I just reference him and another guy who did yeoman's work researching the beginning of the "adolescent" concept, and move onto the Magisterial documents. Essentially, the factory owners, the eugenicists and the anti-immigration crowd all pushed for extended education, each for different reasons. The factory owners wanted to create a malleable factory worker population that would respond to bells. This was best accomplished by cutting families off from one of their best sources of income - the work of children - in order to force the fathers into work they might not otherwise consider just to feed the family. Agrarian families were multi-income - every person contributed. The single-income family is an artifact of industrialization and child labor laws. It's been around for only the last century of human existence. Meanwhile, the industrialists went to work on the children in the schools, forcing those children into a specific mold of behaviour so they, in turn, would follow their fathers into the factories. The eugenicists wanted to keep the immigrants from reproducing. Mandatory high school served that purpose by taking away a teen's ability to support a family during prime reproductive years. The anti-immigration crowd wanted to turn the Catholics into Protestants as rapidly as possible. Since most of the schools were viciously Protestant at the time, the rationale there is easy to see as well. Compulsory school, especially compulsory high school, answered all those needs. Still does. [right][snapback]726251[/snapback][/right] [/quote] I'm sure this is covered in your book, but do you have any actual documentation of this alledged Capitalist Conspiracy surrounding schools? Here you say that industrialists wanted schools to seperate children from their fathers to convince them to slave away in the factories. (Wouldn't these evil industrialists wish to keep kids out of shcool to use as cheap factory labor?) In an earlier post, you also blame "capitalists" for "inventing adolescence" in order to exploit their immaturity for marketing purposes. (Children/adolescents did not have significant amounts of disposable income to spend until the 1950s - a long time after 1904, and in very different economic conditions. I would argue that merchandisers exploited these conditions, rather than created them.) Do you have any actual records or documents from the time of these alleged conspiracies? (I'll regard them as very dubious otherwise.) I've recently read a book of essays by an author who would agree with you on many things about "adolescence" and modern schools, but who also makes a very convincing case for free-market economics.
Kilroy the Ninja Posted September 17, 2005 Posted September 17, 2005 Interestingly enough... the couple in question was just on 20/20. It's a sad situation. I wish them the best.
IcePrincessKRS Posted September 17, 2005 Posted September 17, 2005 (edited) [quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Sep 16 2005, 06:54 PM']She was 12 . And we were not discussing world history, we are discussing a 12 year old raped by a 20 year old who should be in jail. I cannot believe you would defend a rapist. Mary would not have been 12. Menarche didn't occur in 12 year olds, it occurred much later because of the leaner diets. [right][snapback]726266[/snapback][/right] [/quote] I thought that she was 12 when they began dating? That doesn't necessarily mean that they had sex from the very beginning. She conceived the child when she was 13, and turned 14 before she was born. I don't want to get in the thick of the argument, but according to the articles she was 13. I'm not saying it was ok or anything, because in todays society I think its rather gross--without even touching on the legal aspects of it--but thats my opinion. [quote]Prosecutors have alleged Koso and the girl began having sex as early as December 2003, when she was 13 and he was 21[/quote] [url="http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/08/18/local/doc4303e5c83131d041613285.txt"]http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2005/0...1d041613285.txt[/url] Edited September 17, 2005 by IcePrincessKRS
skellmeyer Posted September 17, 2005 Posted September 17, 2005 [quote name='Socrates' date='Sep 16 2005, 09:01 PM']I'm sure this is covered in your book, but do you have any actual documentation of this alledged Capitalist Conspiracy surrounding schools? Here you say that industrialists wanted schools to seperate children from their fathers to convince them to slave away in the factories. (Wouldn't these evil industrialists wish to keep kids out of shcool to use as cheap factory labor?)[/quote] The problem in late 18th century America was that fathers put family before work. Eli Whitney's factories were not consistently manned in the early part of the 1800's because the farmers would only come in to work there when it suited them. Half of an agrarian family's income came from the women and children. They didn't NEED the factory job, and they treated it as one-off labor. If the industrialists had employed the children alongside the father, half the income would STILL come from the women and the children and no one in the family would NEED the job. The idea was to isolate the income to fewer members of the family (ideally, just one) so that the farmers couldn't afford to stay away from a sure paycheck. England accomplished this through the enclosure system, wherein farming land was simply taken from the yeoman farmers. That forced them into the cities and the factories. We did it by gradually stripping the teens away from their parents through child labor laws and compulsory schools. Notice how they cut the children out - child labor laws were created because "the workplace was too dangerous." Factory owners weren't forced to make the workplace safer for the workers, instead, workers were forced to reduce the number of potential income earners in the family by forcibly stripping the teens out of the workforce. [quote]In an earlier post, you also blame "capitalists" for "inventing adolescence" in order to exploit their immaturity for marketing purposes. (Children/adolescents did not have significant amounts of disposable income to spend until the 1950s - a long time after 1904, and in very different economic conditions. I would argue that merchandisers exploited these conditions, rather than created them.)[/quote] OK, have it your way. Either way, I think we agree that it is in the market's best interest to keep people in adolescence for as long as possible. But the fact is, there were virtually no high schools in the country prior to 1904. The child labor laws were always passed first, then compulsory schooling was brought in to deal with the "delinquents" on the street, then the school year was gradually extended. Even now, it's being turned into a year-long thing in some areas (eg., California). In 1850, school was six to twelve weeks long, and not necessarily consecutive weeks. But they were reading Shakespeare and Milton in 5th grade. [quote]Do you have any actual records or documents from the time of these alleged conspiracies? (I'll regard them as very dubious otherwise.) I've recently read a book of essays by an author who would agree with you on many things about "adolescence" and modern schools, but who also makes a very convincing case for free-market economics. [right][snapback]726389[/snapback][/right] [/quote] Read Gatto's work for all the details. What I spend a chapter on, he spends an entire 8.5x11 300 page book on. He's got quotes from the Congressional Record, all the leading educators of the time, etc. To my knowledge, no one disputes what Gatto brings forward. Now, I'm not saying capitalism is all bad - it does a much better job of answering supply and demand problems than any other system out there. While Marx was a looney-tunes in most respects and is justifiably relegated to the trash heap for believing the commune would work, he DID understand that capitalism would eventually create this dissonance. In fact, that's why he thought atheism was the final end of man. He understood that the factory system - to be effective - HAS to make everyone in the society depend on the factory. The Church, the family, every other tie has to be severed in order to make the factory run. Now, he was silly enough to believe Rousseau and think man did not suffer from concupiscence, so he thought the workers would eventually unite, throw off the slavery and share everything in a lovey-dovey fashion. Stupid. He failed to recognize that greed could be turned into a weapon. Every person could be made immature, adolescent, so dependent on the factory that they WOULD eat at their desk, live at their job. So, ultimately, Marx was an idiot. He only saw as far as his nose and no farther.
Don John of Austria Posted September 17, 2005 Posted September 17, 2005 she was 13, And regardless of the average age of Menarche in ancient Israel the average age of marriage was 12 to 14, Tradition has it that Mary was in that age range. Tradition also has it that Joseph was much older, possibly a widower 40 or older. So when he contracted for Marriage to Mary, not knowing that she was going to be come upon by the Lord he would have expected to have sex with her so St. Joseph according to your standard was a Pedophile. And for the record I'm not defending him at all, I have never said he didn't commit Statutory rape. But it was not Pedphilia, nor was it rape in the traditional sense of the term. By the way she looked very hapy on the television tonight, not like a victim at all.
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