Teaching Parents: How We Understand Children

Parents, how do you understand your kids?  Honest question, with a very unclear answer.  How do you figure out the best way to be a parent?  It seems you can’t.  Your child isn’t even born yet, how could you possibly know how to be the best parent to the kid?  Maybe it’s impossible to tailor yourself to the future, but I believe it is possible to better understand the youth in all its forms.  The answer: go back to school.

I wish new parents would spend time in school.  Not night school, but around children.  Not just middle school or high school or elementary school, but every type of school.  Public or private, parents need to be around kids.  The reason why is simple; we understand more about people we share experiences with.  Being around kids of all different age groups would help you know what a kid is like, what kids are doing, what they want to do.  Being around kids is getting to know them.

“But I’m bad around kids”.  I’ve heard this around college, around the workplace…people thinking that they aren’t the best thing for kids.  Not that they are bad role models, they just haven’t found a way to be around children.  My response is be around them.  Children love to teach adults about what it means to be a child.

Has this been a problem, not understanding our children?  Of course.  There are kids in this country who don’t know about our government.  There are kids in this country who don’t care about anything more than getting to the next level of Halo.  I personally don’t care if a student is not the brightest, or the strongest, or the fastest.  But the desire to learn more about the world, the emotional capacity to live in this country as a productive member, we aren’t born with it.  We learn how to be good people from our parents.  And parents are duty-bound to honor this, to become teachers of civility, of society.  Parents are our first teachers.

I’ve spent the last two months teaching high school English.  Not a long time by any means, but the experience has been illuminating.  I have had some great students so far, and teachers that floor me almost daily with their abilities.  They aren’t worried about one or two kids, but twenty.  And they do it with integrity and intelligence.  We need parents like we need teachers.  Compassionate, with just enough discipline to make sure our students stay on the right path.  So parents, be teachers.  Be around kids.  The best teachers, are always learning.

Diary of an Unemployed Wanderer, Part 9

October 14, 2012

I feel like I’m in hiding.

I didn’t post last week.  Not because I was running from the law, and not because I was in fear for my life.  I was somewhere along the Mississippi river, and it was cold.  I’ve been walking a lot more since it’s way too cold to fly very high around populated areas.  And I’ve still had a ton of time to practice flying.  Unfortunately, to practice it I’m finding I have to stay more and more not just under the radar, but completely out of the radar’s scope.  I hadn’t seen someone for three days before I almost smacked my face on this truck stop.  Hadn’t looked where I was going, and I hadn’t seen a wifi station this far west for about ten days.

People don’t realize how unpopulated America really is.  We think of the crowds of New York, Chicago, L.A. and D.C., and we think this entire country is just fit to burst apart at the seams.  But there are whole seas of grass and forest that are populated only by an asphalt road and the wildlife that haven’t seen a man in years.  I can hide, I can be away from anyone, simply because America is freaking huge.

I’ve never been here before.   I might have to buy a compass or something…what am I talking about?  I’m either turning and going south for the winter or using the rest of my cash to hunker down in some cabin or other.  I still have no clue.  Do I want to experience homelessness in frost or fire?

The truckers have been here.  Simple, uncomplicated view on life.  “In front’s where I’m going, behind’s where I’ve been, and the beer is in the back.”  I’m not giving a pastoral view of truckers, they also have some pretty ignorant views of…well, everything.  But I think when you look at a person, you’ve got to acknowledge what they are, not despair at what they’re not.

This is way too philosophical for a truck stop.  Comes from a deprivation of a classroom I suppose.  I miss the students.  I miss the teachers.  Not just the actual students and teachers I was with, but the archetypes.  The students, bright-eyed and eager; the teachers, just enjoying their jobs.  I know it’s not always like that, but just being there does inspire.

…maybe I should find a school and lecture.  I’m going to need an ID… 

Hatred is Stupid, Hatred is Here

A presidential election is coming up.  For the first time in American history, we have an African-American incumbent.  We have a Black President.  And he’s losing in the polls.

The American public is about half-Democrat, half-Republican with just enough Independents to make it interesting.  In 2008, Senator Barack Obama became President by a healthy margin, and started to fulfill an agenda that most political pundits would call compromising and moderate.  And he is looking at the very real possibility that he will not serve for a second term.

Why?  Why is President Obama in danger of losing?  I am not saying this merely as a self-proclaimed liberal, but on his record as President of the United States.  Here are some of the highlights from his presidency.

Passed a stimulus bill that helped save big banks, impeded the rise of unemployment, and placed money in the hands of the populace.

Nominated and confirmed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic woman to the highest court in this country.

Signed the most comprehensive Health Care Reform bill in thirty years.  This started the beginnings of a government option for health care, extending the life of Medicare, and requiring private insurance companies to not deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition.

Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, allowing gays to serve in the military and can be open about their sexual orientation.  Also, the President has gone on record as being for gay marriage.

Ended the war in Iraq, has a solid deadline for pulling out of the war in Afghanistan, and has ordered the death of Osama Bin Laden.

He’s done all of this, while supporting two daughters who have not reached high school, and even quit smoking whilst in office.  He has not been involved in a personal scandal, and has produced every document that the American public has asked for.  So again I ask, what has the President done that has been so terrible that he does not deserve a second term?

There is something not many people want to recognize about this election, something inherent in it.  Many if not all will deny this is a factor in the election, but I believe that it is so.  That factor is racism.  A big word, a harsh word, something that we hoped had been banished from our hearts.  But it is still here, and I believe it is working to stop the President from serving a second term.

I don’t want this to be true, but there are too many inconsistencies.  No white man would have been asked to show his birth certificate to the American people.  No white man would ever be considered Muslim unless he shouted it from the rooftops.  And no white man in the history of this government would be unilaterally denied his entire agenda by the opposition under the banner of preventing him from having a second term.  These are facts that cannot be ignored or described as Republicans and the American people just don’t agree with the President. 

Racism is real, it is here.  We have measures to stop it in the law, but we cannot banish it from our hearts.  Every single person has to consider why they are voting.  If you believe in Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, vote for them.  If you do not believe in President Obama’s policies, don’t vote for him. 

But if you are voting against President Obama because he is a Muslim, he is not.  If you are voting against President Obama because he is not a citizen of the United States, he is from Hawaii.  And if you are voting against President Obama because he is an African-American, then banish that thought from your mind.  We are a nation where all men are created equal.  Let us prove that today and forever after.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

-Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

Apathy, Thy Name is Youthful

Politics nerd. 

Too intense. 

Lame.

Loser. 

Just get a life.  This is the response nowadays from youth to interest in politics.

If you’ll look to your right, you’ll notice by my picture that I’m not exactly out of the youth spectrum.  But I’ve always prided myself on being abnormal, and my interest in politics, sadly, is no exception to my abnormality.

I watch political talk shows.  I listen to debates.  I have an hour-long commute starting before six in the morning every day.  Do I spend it listening to sports recaps or music?  Nope, NPR.  I’m the extreme end of the political interest spectrum (though I never was elected to anything besides Historian).

I know I’m weird, but I am also bewildered.  I spent four years at college with people who just got the right to vote.  Many people in my graduating class voted in their first election their freshman year, mere months after becoming eligible.  Isn’t that supposed to be fantastic?  I am now a vote.  I matter.  Even if I am one of ten million votes, I am the 9,708,642^nd vote, dammit!  And you’d better make sure it counts.

So why when we get this new right, this right to affect change, do the youth say “whatever”?  I spend way too much time on Facebook, and I see the posts. 

“Why should I choose the lesser of two evils?  They don’t know anything about me.” 

“This guy started talking to me about the upcoming election.  I pointed him to someone who cares.”

“I just made my decision!  On November sixth, I’m going to actually do something productive instead of waste three hours voting!”

Are you kidding me?

I am a part of the most apathetic generation in the history of United States voting.  My friends and classmates don’t care about voting, because it doesn’t matter.  No matter what, everything just stays the same.

And they’re right.  My generation is right.  If they don’t vote, if people my age do not drop the xbox controller and go to the polls, nothing is going to change.  Politicians are never going to care about the rights of our youth.  Why should they, we’re not going to vote against them.  We’re not going to vote, period.

Voting is a right and a weapon.  If even half of 18-30 year olds voted in this country, wouldn’t have alternative energy plans, we’d already have solutions.  Our deficit and debt wouldn’t be so high, and we’d be invested in our education at more than 2% of the federal budget.  Why would all these be realities?  It’s not because politicians will suddenly become more idealist, better people if younger people, quite the opposite.  Politicians pander to those who will show up.  Ask yourself why gutting medicare and social security is so unpopular in Washington.  It’s because seniors vote, and they want their benefits.

We have options in this republic of ours.  Choose not to vote in protest.  Choose not to vote because you believe every single person in American politics is scum, and you won’t support a failed system.  But if you don’t vote because you think that your vote doesn’t matter, it does.  Because you will be a statistic that people look at, and understand as importance.

Maybe someday I can be voter 12,645,027 of the youth population.  Maybe not.  But I want to try.  Do you?

“Decisions are made by those who show up.”

-          C.J. Cregg, Press Secretary

The West Wing