Dear Mr. Hancock:

     This is declaring my first independence with Ernest Hancock. It is actually my first letter to you, Mr. Hancock, and I don’t want to steal your time in politics when it is clear to your supporters that it is where you have to spend more time than reading published articles or reports here at FP.com.

      But I hope that you probably might have noticed that in the May 22, 2010 edition of FP.com, a report was published in front page entitled Books in the home ‘boost children’s education’. It publicized that “Keeping just 20 books in the home can boost children’s chances of doing well at school, according to a major study.” [Read this here in this link: Spoiled Brat.]

        This report is not quite true. FP.com should inform the public what needs to be avoided to stay clear of an impending disaster. The reported study did not warn the public that an over-read child at home and in school can turn into a spoiled brat that in later years could become an emotionally immature intellectually-endowed achiever posing a danger to society.

         Our educational system is not prepared for the dangerous results of indiscriminately over-reading the child with books that shape tender minds into becoming troublemakers.

         The said study recommended books of history to read … including the history of war and peace where the best killers of humankind win.

        We won WWII. We proved and served a warning to any stupid potential enemy that we are the best killers in the world to win any war in the sea, land, air or space when we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ashes. We wiped out civilization in that part of Japan, and that’s what is going to happen to humanity when we want to win a war. What this means is that for the recommended reading of history, we are the best book of war to read, as the study pointed out obliquely.

          Let’s not ignore this questionable side of over-reading the child with books containing mixed teachings of virtue and violence, which the emulating young mind could hardly distinguish and therefore so vulnerable to the deleterious influence of whatever information is read, processed and absorbed. The child, in its formative years of intellectual maturity, has no defense yet against the dangerous intrusion of the bad and the ugly that perverts this tender sponge-like mind, and hardens it like a rock.

           In books of history, the success of any war of attrition is about banging the enemy into submission or annihilation. That is the epicenter of soldiery that like an earthquake shakes the mind of a child into fanciful destruction, and in the extreme, liberation of delusional heroism.

          What the child is actually exposed to is in fact a history of gallantry and heroism through mass killing or bloodletting that growing up with it by the books deprives the kid of that feeling of tenderness and loving care of others, the importance of forgiveness in trials and tribulations as in war is understood as a weakness, so is charity and compassion for the downtrodden, especially the vanquished. A sense of humanity is lost. The child learns and grows up with this impeccable knowledge that there is no mercy in war, only determination to destroy the enemy and win the war.

         Here’s why as a victim of compulsive reading of historical books of war the over-read child is devoid of humanity: When in war killing the enemy teaches patriotism and love of country, to be humane is out of the question because war is never won without brutality or without cruelty in thrusting the sword of war into the heart of the enemy. It is in the book that the over-read child learns with finesse this expertise on how to destroy, kill and vanquish the enemy to win any form of struggle.

         And here as in any struggle, to kill and destroy in this manner is success, not failure that in parenting the child parents dreadfully try to discourage or avoid. This virtual disaster fits into what the child is objectionably becoming to be because in real life to win in any contest or conflict bears this horrifying similarity.

         Recommended books of modern technology are likewise related to this anathema that the study failed to warn against to make the unsuspecting public aware of what to elude or stay away from. 

         For instance, we are now in the age of robotic technology. As we advance in the field of science, over-reading of infomercial literatures becomes even more dangerous. Hand-to-hand combat sells books on martial arts like hotcakes. Video exposure to violence and mayhem comes to the child like a pouring rain.  Young minds are drenched with too much blood as the most modern techniques of killing and skull-bashing are promoted and marketed everywhere.

        Recent surveys revealed that most young boys love the war of robots in video games played in TV or even in laptops that children received as birthday gifts from their parents and well-wishers. It provides great excitement and ultimate pleasure to a growing young mind when fighting robots wham each other for the “kill” and win the championship!

       The real whammy that we unknowingly have when history of war is part of the curriculum taught in school is that our kids are actually being groomed to be real Spartan warriors in life. There is hardly any human compassion for children who grew up with expertise on how to manipulate robots to kill each other for a standing ovation.  Approximate this moral with how they would live life in later years, and it is not hard to see how they become a danger to society.

        Books in the life of children makes them more intellectually advance than those whose parents, home, or in general their environment is less scholarly. In this regard, the FP.com published study offers no surprise at all. The surprise comes from the omission of relevant facts in the report that over-reading could turn a child into a terrifying ogress. Our educational system is not even aware of intellectually book-honed spoiled brats, much less knowing how to handle them in school, in order to prevent them from becoming the bane of society when the grow up.

         Case number one I could cite as I stand witness after the fact is this exceptionally gifted boy in grade school who turned out to be a troublemaker.  He was growing up with this problem. His professionally successful parents had seen to it that this boy grows up in a very scholarly environment.  The lad has only books for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The public library is his dining room of what purports to be his second home. While in modern times boys his age eat French fries and Kentucky chicken to survive the day, this schoolboy couldn’t survive the day without eating [reading] a book.

          But this gifted child in question has always trouble in school. Teachers reported him to his parents as a habitual troublemaker -- always the aggressor in a fight.

         Here’s an example of how this “genius” toddler became a troublemaker: In the classroom when the kids are given a test, the boy only uses about one fourth of the time required and submit his test paper ahead of the rest of the class. He almost always ends up with the highest if not a perfect score. Without anything else to do, the teacher orders him to take a seat and be still and quiet while his classmates are still doing or struggling to finish their tests.

          This boy just finished reading all the assigned reading materials before coming to school. He already knew all the answers to the test questions before the teacher distributes the test papers to the class. He is intellectually much ahead of or too advance for his class. So the boy is restless, and he either creates noise by talking or does something else that earned him a seat in the corner for “punishment” before the class is over.  Notice the teacher’s failure to contain the situation. Also notice the teacher’s inability and lack of knowledge on how to handle exceptionally gifted pupils like this boy in her class.  The school curriculum, in particular, and the whole educational system in general, have no response to this problem either.

          If the boy is not reading books of history, especially long and heavy chapters of wars which fascinated him the most, he is playing a video game of robots in his laptop which excited him even more. 

         The banging of metals for a sensational kill of a robot that he learned to master with exceptional skill thrilled him as if he controlled and knew the outcome of the “war” when the winning New Orleans Saints bludgeoned the Indianapolis Colts to a merciless submission in the 2010 Super Bowl.  The ultimate excitement for this “kill” in a nationally televised sports contest watched by millions of Americans was even more heightened by the spiritual agony of defeat displayed by the suffering of the conquered Colts and their rabid fans in tears. This reflects in the behavior of this problem child when he enjoyed the suffering of others he beat up for his emotional conquest.

       He is good at arguing and denying what he has done as a troublemaker not necessarily for fear of punishment or retribution because he will do it over and over again, but for the love of doing it to prove to himself that he can outsmart his elders, teachers, parents or guardians. The parents and even the world at large are taken for a ride believing that he was the victim, not the victimizer. Most super criminals use their superior intelligence to cover up the track of their crimes and like those illusive public offenders or notorious felons, the troubled child uses his advance intellect to lie to hide his mischief when he gets the kick out of making others feel miserable.

        The Journal of Research in Social Stratification and Mobility published the results of the study in China that 500 or more books in the home add more than six years to the child’s education which is equivalent to just over two years in the United States.

        However, with inadequate guidance or lack of needed discipline, turning the growing child into an indiscriminate bookworm has a serious repercussion.

        This simply means that improper exposure to all kinds of books, encouraging reading adult literatures with deleterious effects in the mind of the child, or over-indulgence in reading smutty materials supposedly with artistic value is like exposure to commercialized pornography published in the Internet that grabs the victim’s curious attention and like drugs, hooks the morally weak to addiction. From there rise all forms of crimes against minors, sex criminals take advantage of screwed up runaways, including child molesters that clogged the docket of criminal and juvenile courts.

        In the mind of the “artists”, the cover-up or excuse for publication or public viewing of their “artworks” is that the naked body or any part of the human anatomy is a natural “art”. Landmark legal arguments have been successfully demonstrated in many leading court litigations that it is photography as an art, not pornography when the artists’ “artwork” is captured in film or painted in the canvass, and explicit carnal or intimate relations between two human beings when “artistically” published, is not obscenity but cinematography protected by free speech.

        That’s how objectionable books and improper book-reading incriminate an over-read child into becoming a dangerous bully that society has to contend with in later years, and worse when the young book addict turns into an intellectual criminal that commits crime for a living, or becomes a public offender endowed with perverted super intelligence, like turning into a vicious stalker or an illusive serial killer or their likes joining the ranks of infamous shooters that fired their handguns and automatic weapons indiscriminately at the crowd, in school and school campuses or in any crowed public places and kill so many innocent people.   

          This is how turning the child unconditionally into a bookworm without proper supervision becomes a danger to society.

         Sincerely,

         Bakadude