LUDIC LOG

Last week, it was "Take Our Children To Work Day".

All day that day, we were told, offices and factories, shops and institutions were filled with the smiling faces of working men and women, urged by the noble-minded and virtuous in high places to show their children the world of work while they're still young. By doing so, rns the uncommon wisdom of civic thinkers, they are teaching their children that business is not some abstract thing, but a concrete reality that they will someday be overjoyed to enter, as they will dance through the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven while rich men are turned away. Bring them along, parents were implored with all the self-righteous scolding normally reserved for those who avoid voting, so they can be made to understand that work works, not just for mommy and daddy, but for Missy and Junior too.

And with an amazingly straight face, we are told that this is a good thing.

"Take Our Children To Work Day" is presented as a positive event, a chance for parent and child to bod while also presenting the young ones with a glimpse at what the future offers: and does it ever. Thankfully, there are a few parents (and more than a few children) who recognize it for what it is: a sham. A preview of the dull, boring, stultifying life that lies ahead for the adults of tomorrow. They see what their parents do away from home, and they don't like it. What "TOCTWD" does is inculcate children with ideas that school is already well on the way to teaching them: obedience, time-wasting, make-work, lack of curiosity, cut-throat competition, conformity, ass-kissing, deference to arbitrary authority, and suppression of cooperation and the play-instinct. Take your children to work and you teach them not to respect themselves, to control their own lives, to prove themselves as human beings, but to spend all day doing something they don't like for someone they hate in return for pitiful financial compensation, ill health, a bad attitude, sexual discomfort, and the systematic extinguishing of whatever spirit they have left after school gets through with them. Once a year, our children are allowed to exchange the slavery of school for the servitude of work. They are presented, as if with a gift or a special treat, with a look at the torpid timekilling that will constitute the rest of their lives. And for this they're supposed to be grateful, and we're supposed to be special?

Frankly, I can think of much better ways to spend an afternoon.

Why must we rob our children of 8 hours of youth -- the only time in their lives they'll get even a small taste of freedom -- to make them sit through joyless and unnecessary work they'll spend the next 50 years trying to get out of? I call on all kids to declare "Keep Your Parents Home From Work Day" today. Instead of providing their misery with company, why not both play hooky? You get the day off school, they get the day off work. Exempt mothers, too, from the ultimate in drudgey shitwork, the "shadow work" of housewifery that assassinates whatever time she has left after 10 or 12 hours of capitalist toil. Engage in real child-parent bonding by spending May Day in true leisure, creative play and constructive idling. No work for the weary!

Kids, keep your parents home from work! Parents, keep your children out of school! Keep daddy home from his high-tech work farm today; tell Missy that since school has nothing to teach her, for once she won't have to learn it. Share some real family values by not letting forced labor split your family apart for another day. No one should ever work; isnt' that the lesson we should be teaching our children?

Happy May Day.