paul@axiom.UUCP (Paul O`Shaughnessy) (03/22/86)
This is something I posted to net.space in reply to some comments about the shuttle traumatizing our children. When I was a tyke, my relatives and neighbors were being turned into hamberger in Vietnam, so I take a dim view of the idea that a few deaths, however public and tragic, are going to warp a generation. That, however, has been the position of uncountable TV talk show psychiatrists and a few people on the net. So, with warning, FLAME ON! I know that the shuttle tragedy was traumatic for the children watching, and I was upset for days afterward. However, I'd like to offer this counterpoint to all the talk of children being scarred for life by this event. I have friends who teach at the Concord NH school where Christa McCauliffe taught. Apart from eyewitness news creeps trying to get camera shots of children crying, they were descended upon by flocks of social workers and psychologists reminding each and every child that they *will* remember this event and they *will* be scarred for life and space flight *really* isn't that dangerous. J.C. Almighty! The kids are going to be more screwed up by the efforts to "cure" them than by anything else! Space flight is dangerous, NASA is fallible, several greatly admired personal heros were killed, and that's that! These children will be no more scarred by this than I am by President Kennedy's assasination. Unless, of course, the psychologists are interested in job security. My profound apologies to social workers and psychologists in general, but what I have been told about this school borders on the absurd. ------ Paul O'Shaughnessy @ Axiom Technology, home of the "Management Team"