No.
I’m not referring to either of the recent Atlantic Monthly articles that seem to have opposite conclusions: Hanna Rosen’s Hey! Parents, Leave Those Kids Alone or Alfie Kohn’s The Over-Protected Kid.
I’m referring to a short New Yorker article entitled New Parenting Study Released with this opening paragraph:
A recent study has shown that if American parents read one more long-form think piece about parenting they will go fucking ape shit.
Read it through yourself, being sure to get to the last couple of paragraphs.
Brian Steinbach said:
Fucking great, and fucking true. Speaking of Crimea:
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
2.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
4.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
Brian Steinbach said:
Interesting postscript to the above, from Wikipedia:
“The poem is based on a misunderstanding of the battle, in which the Light Brigade actually lost only 110 killed out of 666 men. A reporter for a London newspaper got it wrong, writing that it was a disastrous charge by the Light Brigade, according to Andrew Lambert, professor of naval history at King’s College London. He discussed that history with Here & Now’s Robin Young. The Brigade, sent into a nearly hopeless situation due to command confusion and incompetence, actually fought its way out of a Russian trap and got back to its own lines. Tennyson used that mistaken story as the basis for his poem, and refused to change it even after he learned of the mistake, something not taught in British Lit courses, at least in the U.S.”
Of course, losing nearly 1 in 6 due to a bludner is still pretty bad.