<p>Disclaimer: I haven’t read all these posts. But I did see some of the ads recently and I liked them.</p>
<p>There was one ad with a little girl on the beach who picks up some weird creature/seaweed/shell and mom/dad is saying “put that down!”. And she does. My reaction is always “but that was SO cool!”</p>
<p>I didn’t experience that scenario as a child–my dad was the one who brought seaweed/fish/shells home and put it in an aquarium to see what hatched out of it (my mom wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic I can assure you). We had bucketfuls of mud that we sifted through. We ran a regular “catch and release” program at our house. We got messy (dad) and had to stay clean (mom). Always a balancing act but dad won the science/experimentation front. But even mom was okay as long as the major mess was outside. Thank goodness for the garden hose. </p>
<p>Now what I see in young parents is the “that is full of germs”, “dirty, put it down”, “eww, gross–don’t touch it” attitude. I don’t know if Purell ads (chlorox, bounty, etc., etc., etc.) and germ phobia has overtaken things but it seems pervasive. I have witnessed it over and over again. There does seem to be a need to counteract the attitude. Sometimes I worry about our own immune systems being compromised by the advertising world’s need to sterilize us (hopefully a hyperbole but you never know!)</p>
<p>On the math front–when I learned my niece hadn’t learned the multiplication tables at age 16 and felt she didn’t have to–because they were “in a book”? And the school never required it because “we have calculators”? We could hang math ANYTHING up from there. For everybody in that system. And that was 10 years ago. My kids weren’t allowed the luxury of a lax school system–we did a good bit of in-home teaching and private school instruction along the way–but I truly hate that the public system seems to be failing in so many aspects. </p>