Hi to you!
I am not sure why I am doing this, but I have a lot on my mind and want some feedback at times. I don't expect everyone to agree with me all the time. I realize we are all coming from different experiences and tastes, even ages.
I am interested in MANY things. I am sorry I do not have my profile completed yet, but I will get to that.
I am concerned about our country and where it is headed. I am really concerned with Education in our country and would love to hear how you feel. I became an educator after raising a family. I am not out to pasture yet and have a great deal to offer. I do not want to apologize to anyone for being who I am. I am still an educator. I have several college degrees that are diverse in purpose. I have studied interior design, art history, history, and have two areas of licensure in education for teaching in K-12, and close to a masters in Educational Leadership, which I have no interest in a career in leadership.
I am one of those people who feels that most Americans want about the same things for our lives and our laws. I like to think that I believe in moderation, only sometimes when I get angry, I do not sound like a moderate or sane person, so forgive me now if I ever offend you. That thing that Senator John Kerry said is so true, "citizens of this country are not just conservative or just liberal, it is not that simple." I do like people. I believe in family and like to think of how families used to be compared to how they are today. If you have ever read Mary Pipher,PHD. who has written about girls and families and how various people choose to educate their children you will know what I mean.
I am very grounded in history, but I do NOT live in the past. I am missing how some things were. I try to make some younger people, even my adult children know about the heritage of how we lived in the past. It could be the 1960's or it could be a different century. I am cool, I am Mid-Century, like the description of 1950's furnishings! I don't really see myself as a steel and early formica dinette set though! Born in 1951. Or should I say that, I don't want people to label me or place me in a taboo category. I am trying to run naked with this blog!
Back to education. It used to be that teachers were respected. Today one does not want to let anyone know on is a teacher. I find that people have very high expectations of you, (like knowing everything, or being mean)and have for the most part, bad memories of their schooling. Today, few people in our society want to be accountable. I never thought of myself as a goodie 2 shoes, that is for sure, but I do believe in respect and still like to see men take their hats off in restaurants, inside buildings and at reverent occassions.
I forgot to tell you about my experience as a rural Social Worker in a Meth amphetamine infested area of our country. I guess that is just about everywhere now. That experience made me see that there are people who have no clue what the underbelly of society really looks like or how huge it is growing. These are a portion of the people who don't take hats off, don't like educators, seldom work and pay taxes. These are people who are killing themselves and hurting children in the process. This is one area of decay in America that really pains me greatly.
But then many people cannot relate to educators, because they think school is what it was when they were there! This is the biggest misconception of all!!! Unless you are in the trenches you don't know how schools are being run, or what goes on inside the buildings each day. (I probably should include outside the school buildings in that last remark.) The best way to tell you how schools have changed is to say how my children who are now adults told me their impression of schools today. They said, "Mom, I have only been out of high school 5 years, or 10 years, and the kids are way way worse behaved than we were in the 1990's!" I said, "yeah, tell me about it!" This is a real telltale story of how bad it is to manage students in 10 years!
(And please don't expect my writing mechanics and grammar, etc. to be perfect all the time that I am writing this blog people!" I am trying to have fun here.)
To make a long story short. Here is the recipe for lousy schools; add 30% drug culture, to 50% lack of family governance (which includes letting kids have anything they want or go anywhere they want and allowing them to play violent video games (read Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, http://www.killology.com/) and "have versus have nots" mentality add in 20% purposelessness, over entertained and consumer driven lifestyle which has created a big dash of poverty of the spirit.
I have grandchildren now, and I am still in my 50's. The fast decay of America and the blindness to it, is frightening me for these new people who are coming to this earth. The lack of common sense is frightening, the fascist top down style of managing schools and companies is horrific!
So, I go home and I read stuff to depart from reality a bit. I read interior design stuff, I read novels, biographies, history and I watch period movies or series. I have gotten rid of the mind numbing television, because it is only BBC or Public TV that offer anything good. If you watch HGTV, you have to watch a hell of a lot of paint dry until you get to the juicy people like Sarah Richardson. If I see one more show about how to decorate cakes, I will never eat cake again!!!! I have the best versions of Jane Austen literature that has been made into film and those are worn out! There is so much more history that could be done "accurately" in movie form. The really upsetting part is that the government is really placing social studies at the bottom of what is important when it should be in the middle of the education curriculum and all else should spin off of it. Our children need to know where they come from, before they know where they are going and they do not have to have sexual advertising and so forth thrown at them to pull them off course.
I can remember as a child, having popcorn and a soft drink and watching a movie or playing a game with our parents on a Friday night as "really exciting". Innocense in children is all but gone when they are babysat by television and allowed to play video games and to visit with children whose parents are clueless.
(And then there are the guns laying around the house in some cases. I am all for having guns, but don't leave them where your kids can get them and don't talk about them radically in front of your kids. ) That person who gets angry at me for saying these things is the creten who I am targeting as the bottom of the barrel parent. We do not need assault weapons in our homes! Yes, those of you who unfortunately live in gangland, probaby need them. When do we stop this madness?
I care and that is why I want to see a sane America as parts of it were in the past. I don't want any of the bad stuff to return like cruelty to ethnic groups. We are so lost now! Government can take us and do what they want with us, because we are too busy having our minds numbed by television and spending too much time and money at the mall!
Oh yes and healthy eating affects education a great deal. I will save that for another time. Love, Aesthetic Woman
