Tux of Borg Posted December 20, 2006 Posted December 20, 2006 My Webpage 'No Santa' school teacher axed By ANDREW PARKER A PRIMARY school sacked a woman teacher for telling heartbroken nine-year-olds there is no Father Christmas. Parents were furious when tearful youngsters went home saying they had also been taught elves and fairies did not exist either. The supply teacher, in her 30s, had her contract terminated after complaints to the head. Mum Amanda Piovesana, 30, said her daughter was shocked to be told: “You are old enough to know there is no Santa or fairies. If you ask your parents they will also say there is no such thing.” Amanda said: “It’s taken away the magic.” The mum of another pupil at Boldmere Junior School in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, said: “Everyone is disgusted.” Head Diane Thomas-Wood confirmed: “We have followed up the matter with the agency.”
Cugalabanza Posted December 20, 2006 Posted December 20, 2006 ...tearful youngsters...873193[/snapback]
CoachChuckDickerson Posted December 20, 2006 Posted December 20, 2006 If your kid is in the 3rd grade and still believes in magical fat man who comes down your chimney to give you presents, you and your child both deserve to be hit in the head with a tack hammer.
inkman Posted December 20, 2006 Posted December 20, 2006 Aaaargh! This one hits close to home. Had to recently tell the little one about Santi Claws. He's 10 and old enough to know but he wouldn't let go of it I guess because he feared no presents. This morning I got a panicked, "...but, but if you guys put the presents under the tree then who puts them into the stockings". After a second or two he said, "You guys do that to don't you?" He really seems to have blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. There is much to blame, mostly the loss of his father.
theesir Posted December 20, 2006 Posted December 20, 2006 If your kid is in the 3rd grade and still believes in magical fat man who comes down your chimney to give you presents, you and your child both deserve to be hit in the head with a tack hammer. 873408[/snapback] I want to get this straight. Being 8 years old and believing that there is some magic that surrounds Christmas deserves a beating with a hammer. Yeah that sounds about right. I guess at 8 he should become jaded, and realize that everything we try to teach him about the goodness of people is all crap as well. Perhaps he can grow up and cook puppies in the oven like all those other well adjusted kids out there. Innocence should be cast aside for all the realities of life by 8? Should we stop walking him to the bus stop in the morning? Maybe just send him on his own figuring, what the hell he's 8 he should know by now not to get hit by cars. I treasure every year that my son believes in Santa, and the joy on his face when he sees the gifts under the tree on Christmas morning, thinking the "the magical fat man" again found the gifts that mom and dad said they couldn't. Why the hell would I want to take that away from him? To satisfy some cromuginy ass crack like you?
IDBillzFan Posted December 20, 2006 Posted December 20, 2006 If your kid is in the 3rd grade and still believes in magical fat man who comes down your chimney to give you presents, you and your child both deserve to be hit in the head with a tack hammer. 873408[/snapback] I STILL believe in Santa. So bring your hammer and make sure you swing hard.
CircleTheWagons Posted December 21, 2006 Posted December 21, 2006 I STILL believe in Santa. So bring your hammer and make sure you swing hard. 873562[/snapback] Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
loadofmularkey Posted December 21, 2006 Posted December 21, 2006 I'm pretty sure I was five or six when I first started to think that the logistics of the whole Santa Claus thing were pretty much impossible. I know I was younger than nine when I found out for sure. That said, it's not up to the teacher to tell them.
ieatcrayonz Posted December 21, 2006 Posted December 21, 2006 If your kid is in the 3rd grade and still believes in magical fat man who comes down your chimney to give you presents, you and your child both deserve to be hit in the head with a tack hammer. 873408[/snapback] Kids should believe. Thinking only with logic, they may understand that there is no Santa. The presents part and chimney part and everything seem unlikely but somewhat plausible. In the end, the part that probably gives it away for most kids is this fictional "North Pole". If I have this straight, the North Pole is somewhere colder than Canada. Um, yeah right. I understand that Canadians don't celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, and that is fine because it is up to you. You don't have to criticize American kids for being innocent. Maybe most Canadian kids don't believe in Santa. Most don't believe dentists exist either because they have never seem one. Dentists are real. Maybe Santa is too.
WWVaBeach Posted December 21, 2006 Posted December 21, 2006 SANTA’S BUSY SCHEDULE (A scientific enquiry into Santa Claus) At this time, there is no known species of reindeer that can fly. But there ARE 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children that reduces the workload to 15% of the total or 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes (One presumes there’s at least one good child in each house.) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth (assuming he travels from east to west which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. That is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move onto the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles between each household. So.... in this small time frame of 31 hours, Santa must travel over 70 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us MUST do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. In order to meet this deadline, Santa’s sleigh must move at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. For your information, a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Let’s first assume that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized LEGO set. If each LEGO set weighs about 2 pounds the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons (not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight). On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We would require 214,200 reindeer to pull the job off. This increases the overall payload (not counting the weight of the sleigh) to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, the payload is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship. Imagine, if you will, what this weight would do to an average sized single-family house as Santa makes a landing. Ready for the real nitty-gritty? This asteroid, full of Christmas joy, weighing in at 353,000 tons (plus or minus a few tons) is traveling at 650 miles per second. This mass traveling at this speed creates enormous air resistance and will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. Since the lead reindeer are not adorned with specially designed, NASA approved, heat dissipating ceramic tile, they will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second (each). In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the next pair of reindeer behind them. This process will continue and create deafening sonic booms in the wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force causing a stunning visual effect similar to that of a fat June bug hitting a windshield at 60 MPH. So in conclusion, boys and girls, if Santa ever tried to deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s now defunct!
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