I was browsing the Toronto Daily Star this morning and stopped to nibble at an article by Catherine Mulroney about what she calls the "rising tide of rudeness". She explains that she was seated in a chair at the hairdresser's when she overheard an elderly client raising her voice to be heard above the hairdryer. The woman was detailing her belief that "there's no discipline today" and laying all the blame at the feet of today's children.
   Now, dear reader, I just have to give you this full quote, so bear with me for a paragraph.    "One of the givens in life is that anyone over the age of 25 can freely dump all over children, perhaps the only segment of society left who can still be stereotyped without their critics being slapped with a harsh label."
   Such righteous indigantion, Catherine! I am only thankful that I wasn't reading this article anywhere near you, say in a coffee shop, or even that hairdresser's, where you say you go to 'relax' as long as no-one is "yapping loudly". (Newsflash, Catherine! Everybody who wants to talk, AND be heard in such a setting has to raise their voice. Those dryers are noisy. Maybe a hairdresser's salon is not the best place to look for your "quiet time".) I wouldn't have been able to help myself. The laughter exploded from me, when I read your next line, and if that had happened in your hearing, you would have lumped me in with the older people about whom you write with such stereotypes. I am not "blue-rinsed" or "over 70 and given to entertaining the whole room, whether the room wants to listen or not", but you, I am sure, would have looked at the grey creeping into my hair, and dismissed me with one pass of your pen across the paper of your next column.
   The problem, you see, Catherine, is that your very next line is one of the biggest stereotypes there is. "But children are born a blank slate." is how you actually chose to follow up that indignant outburst. John Locke (1632-1704) would have loved you for that line, Catherine. He was an empiricist who believed that all knowledge is based on experience, and that children are, indeed, born blank slates, upon which their adults must inscribe a life-script. Of course, children do learn a great deal from example, but they are not born "blank". How arrogant of you to imagine that your children will learn only what you teach them, and will bring nothing of their own to the span of their years. Do you know about Ludwig Van Beethoven and his nephew Karl? Such a famous example of how the writing on those slates does not always retain the syntax the adults seek to craft. Do you want more modern examples? I have worked long years with children, in my capacity as an educator, and I have seen so many children who were like those apples we all speak of, as not falling far from the tree. Children five years old have spouted racist hatred at me. Blank slates? Other children have talked to me so seriously of their ongoing struggles to argue with their parents against such beliefs, and how they seek with such earnestness to change their parents' mindset. Blank slates?
   Think more carefully, Catherine, before you go off half-cocked with a weapon in your hands, because words written for public consumption can indeed carry all the power of the lowly quill that bests the infamous sword.