My daughter's elementary school has all but banned Crocs for the past two years. Usually, the principal sends out a pretty-please notice asking parents to stop sending their kids to school shod in Crocs, for safety reasons.
This year, the school is ramping up the anti-Croc offensive to nearly Russian invasion levels. The school nurse has sent a separate letter to parents telling them no Crocs and no flip-flops because kids are trippng in the hallways and the gymnasium.
Here's the conversation in every home where an elementary-age girl lives:
MOM: No Crocs or flip-flips, honey.
GIRL: Years from now, mom, when I'm a crack-addicted whore, you can point to this moment when it all started to go wrong.

I know people from the South do a lot of things differently than us Northeasterners, but this is ridiculous.
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU released a study today that shows more than 200,000 children were spanked or paddled in U.S. schools during the past school year.
According to the report, corporal punishment in schools is legal in 21 U.S. states and is used frequently in 13: Missouri, Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida, according to data received from the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education and cited in the report. The highest percentage of students receiving corporal punishment was in Mississippi, with 7.5 percent of students. The highest number was in Texas, with 48,197 students.
If a teacher hit my kid, I would press criminal charges. I’m pretty sure every other parent I know would do the same. Are parents in Mississippi so different that they would allow or condone their child being assaulted by an adult in a public school classroom? What teacher would want to hit a kid? Are they given special attack training? Go for the soft tissue and make sure they cry?
Let’s say I move to Texas and a teacher hits my kid for acting up in class. I’m going to be told: “You got a problem with the law, pardner?” I always figured our cultural differences ended with and appreciation for biscuits and gravy and NASCAR.
Shall we look at student test scores by geographic region?

It seems a bunch of colleges are throwing in the towel when it comes to drinking.
A group of college big wigs calling themselves the Amethyst Initiative wants the legal drinking age to be 18. They argue keeping the drinking age at 21 has created the binge drinking culture.
They have it all wrong. Being a college student created the binge drinking culture.
Think about it. If you could have bought booze legally in college, would you have bought more or less?
I went to Northeastern University in Boston, beginning in 1981, when the drinking age had just been increased to 19. The drinking age would increase yearly. It was a constant struggle for my friends and I to buy beer freshmen year and every year after that. The kid on your dorm floor with a good fake ID was king. If we could have simply walked to the packy and bought a six of Haffenreffer, we’d all be alcoholics today.
So along comes the Amethyst Initiative. (Amethyst, the group tells us, comes from Greek words meaning “not intoxicated.” College, reality tells us, comes from the Greek words meaning “bed spins.”) The colleges behind the initiative are places like Middlebury in Vermont, Dickenson and Arcadia. Check out the pictures on the Web site. It’s smiling young intellectuals socializing with glasses of wine and Champagne. Maybe that’s the way they drink at Arcadia. But an 18 year old at a real college who could drink legally would be poring beer down the funnel faster than Michael Phelps gets across a pool.
As the father of two daughters who are more than 10 years away from college, I’d like to the keep the drinking age right were it is. I realize they will probably want to drink. But let’s make it has hard as possible.

ME: Isn't it lame China took that little girl singer out of the opening ceremonies because she wasn't cute enough and had another girl with better teeth lip sync?
THIS DUDE I KNOW: I can't tell the difference. They all look alike to me.

A corporation like Disney doesn’t become a multi-billion dollar behemoth by treating its customers like dirt. That’s what makes the company’s decision to cancel the Disney Music Block Party Tour without one word of explanation completely baffling.
The 23-date, nine-city tour of the United States and Canada was supposed to start this week at Rentschler Field in Hartford. Here’s how it was being pitched by Disney: “The Disney Music Block Party Tour is an engaging festival experience for the whole family incorporating live musical performances by They Might Be Giants, Imagination Movers, Dan Zanes, Ralph’s World, and Choo Choo Soul as well as multiple interactive activity areas focused on stimulating the imagination through music, arts, and play. Kids are encouraged to explore their inner superstar in a fun, kid-friendly environment.”
Sounds great. Sort of like a Kidpalooza.
My family wasn’t going, even though our personal favorite — Dan Zanes — was on the bill. But plenty of people showed up and were disappointed. Here’s what Channel 8 said: “Dozens of families found out that the show had suddenly been canceled as they pulled into the empty parking lot. People say they were still buying tickets online even up to an hour before what should have been show time.”
It’s true. The tour Web site is still active and there’s no mention of any shows being cancelled. So unless you got an e-mail from the artist, like we did from Dan Zanes, or you checked Tickemaster, there was no way of knowing Disney pulled the plug at the last moment. All that’s left is three shows at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
The big question is why. One act on the bill, Barenaked Ladies, was kicked off after a member got busted for drugs. The arrest made the news, but is that enough to scrap the whole tour? My guess is ticket sales tanked. This was a big, traveling circus type of show and was probably going to lose a bunch of money, even though tickets cost about $33 each. Plenty of families are making hard choices about where they spend their cash, and filling up the tank and spending more than $100 on a concert is probably low on a list of priorities.
But I’m sure lots of families made some sacrifices and were looking forward to the show. Disney mints money off of Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers, so why not eat the costs and let the tour continue? Sure, Hannah or the Jonas Brothers on the bill would have meant instant sell outs and happy stockholders, but more people should know about Dan Zanes and They Might Be Giants.
Disney has let its fans down.