I made this page for one particular wild claim I didn't want to use, but others might come along in the future. There is also something I said years ago that got some mileage, and was edited slightly for my book. The original writing, though, was around 2002, and was:
March 10, 2015, me, responding to someone whose name I threw away:
This is the wildest claim I've read for years:-=-I once read that until a child is 12-15 their brain cannot tell the difference if what they are watching is real or something on TV. If the child is watching something violent, the body produces adrenaline and other chemicals to keep the child safe in a war like society which would be different than what is being produced chemically in the brain if the brain considered it peace time. There are a bunch of studies on this now.-=-FIFTEEN YEARS OLD and someone thinks they can't tell TV from real life!?Yes, a movie (or book or poem or love song) can evoke emotion or stimulate adrenaline. So can a roller coaster. Is there anyone of any age who can't tell a roller coaster ride from an out-of-control auto on an icy road? A clue should come from the buying a ticket and standing in line part, for sure.
People LIKE "adrenaline and other chemicals." Some like it lots, and will do dangerous things for fun (jumping off the barn, for me as a kid; skiing or speed skating, for friends; motocross, mountain climbing....)
-=-I once read that until a child is 12-15 their brain cannot tell the difference if what they are watching is real or something on TV. -=-I once read all manner of science fiction, racist nonsense, crazed fundamentalist fear-mongering, but I didn't pass any of it off as potentially useful truth.Sandra Dodd
Once someone used "Bullshit!!" in the midst of the wildest, most energetic anti-unschooling rant ever. This is just a small part of a huge tirade:
You all just seem to be feeding off of each other with no clear direction. It's some type of dysfunction disguised as good parenting. Bullshit!! There are some things you just shouldn't mess with, one of them being human nature. Children seek and need limitations in their lives. They don't need to be wholly left to their own devices -- that's why they are children and we are adults!click to see the whole crazy thing
I wish I had saved it, but once when I suggested that unschoolers should be critical thinkers and not believe everything they read, someone went off on me in public saying that "critical thinking" was a thing they taught in school, and she wasn't going to do any kind of SCHOOL stuff—that I shouldn't be recommending the same things schools do.
It was evidence that schooling can harm people's ability to think, or to hear words without flipping out. Mostly, it was evidence of a need to recover from school and the harm it had done this mom, for the sake of her children's peace and the chance of her coaching them to think carefully before believing something.
Outside link to debunking a food blogger's tactics and history: The "Food Babe" Blogger Is Full of Shit