TWEETING ABORTION:A SAD REFLECTION OF OUR TIMES

Angie Jackson, a 27 year old from Florida who claims to be the granddaughter of Carol Balizet, a former ER nurse whose cult beliefs are also bizarre -read HERE, decided it would be a good thing to Tweet her abortion so that she could do women a service by demystifying it.

She already has a kid, claims that it would be life threatening for her to carry the baby and now a firestorm of attention has come her way, mostly negative with the exception of a handful of similarly minded admiring women, and an ABC TV report scheduled for tomorrow (Sunday) that will no doubt create yet another American Idol celebrity in the style of OctoMom. Just what America needs; another celebrity.

Angie has a series of videos espousing her viewpoints and responds to critics. HERE

Her series of videos, copying the style of Pat Condell’s atheist videos, although far less intelligible, and often video taped in a park or what looks like a bathroom, are more a sad reflection of the freedoms that our generation now takes so much for granted; the right to speak regardless of what emerges, and the right to be right regardless.

Now I will add here that I am not making a judgment on abortion. Legally it is a woman’s right and until that changes, if at all, it is a fact of life – I just wish we had less compassion for those on death row; abortion can be done in an instant but executing a murderer takes a lifetime.

What this post is about is the use of media tools to promote something as of less consequence than it really is.  This should be a private choice and not a public one, especially if, as she claims, her choice is based on the risk factor. By “demystifying” the simple act of terminating a 4 week pregnancy with a few pills and a miscarriage-like reaction is, in my opinion, attention grabbing in the worst way.

“It’s not that bad,” she says. “It’s like having a miscarriage. It’s not shameful. It’s not killing a child.” 

“I don't think it's right to call me a hero,” Angie writes on her blog HERE, “I think there was a lot more naivety than heroism in my initial decision to tweet this. It wasn't even that conscious of a choice - I tweet everything.”  Her stats show 1,878 followers on Twitter.  No doubt her newfound celebrity status will increase that even more.

MisterWriter

FREE WILLY – THEY KEEP WANTING TO CROP IT

A controversial topic to be sure, but one that has reared its head numerous times this decade as the trend of routinely circumcising baby boys has waned with a greater preponderance to leaving willy alone like they do in European countries.

In fact, puritanical America has had an obsession with the hooded one for quite some time, at first citing it as a prevention of urinary tract infections and rare penile cancer only to retract that later as studies proved the great CDC and AMA flacid in their science.

Then came the argument that babies never felt it – a blatant lie to any parent who has watched the procedure and felt the terror and the pain.

Now the claim that chopping the tip reduces the transmission of HIV from female to male is gearing the CDC and AMA to publicly endorse the surgery and mandate the procedure whether you want it or not.

Worldwide the WHO estimates a 30% snipped rate for men with Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom experiencing falling rates.

Iceland,United Kingdom,Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain,France, Switzerland, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Austria, Belarus, Cyprus,Georgia all have a whopping 80% or more men au natural.  And in Finland the neonatal rate of circumcision is zero. Which means that the USA is the one quick to snip worldwide.

In America in the 1970s 91% of men were snipped with the rate declining steadily since, almost opposite of the rates in Europe.

As for the HIV transmission and the whole often talked about topic of penile cleanliness it seems that you won’t have a problem if you are not sleeping around and bathing regularly, don’t you think?  The studies the CDC use are from Africa where the HIV rate is high however fails to take into account (a) the source infection methods (without getting graphic about how one gets HIV) and  (b) Why Europe with an extremely high rate of intact males demonstrates a lower incidence of HIV than the USA.  It cries out “Flawed logic and bad science.”

Could it be like all things hygiene and morality is taught and the failure of parents to do so is hardly reason to allow organizations like the CDC and AMA to adopt a stance that inflicts their power trip on me and mine.

HIV/Aids by USA race and type. Click the pic to see the full size version.  By the end of 2007 the CDC estimated people living with AIDS in America at the rate of 125 per million. In Western countries outside the US the rate is 72 cases per million. Countries with the highest rates in 2008 were San Marino (130.8/million), the United Kingdom (119.3/million) and Portugal (105.9/million). By the way, to put this in perspective, that is similar to the 137/million traffic fatalities in the United States (2007). So much for those amazing statistics that an unfettered willy is much worse health wise.

Now I won’t share with you whether I am a “helmet head or an ant-eater” as my college roomie used to say, because that is irrelevant. Nor will I share the genital state of the three boys in my family.  What I believe is that given the condition of this country, in everything from corruption to the flailing economics, this ongoing need to dictate what the population can or cannot do with its private parts is a violation of the principles of democracy and free choice.  It is a choice and should remain one that every parent can make according to their beliefs on the subject.

All these figures came from a variety of sources including the CDC. I have listed them below.

• Intact America (www.intactamerica.org)
• CDC’s position http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/circumcision.htm
• National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (www.nocirc.org)
• Circumcision Information and Resource Pages (www.cirp.org)
• The Intactivism Pages (www.circumstitions.com)
• Circumcision Resource Centers (www.circumcision.org)
• International Coalition for Genital Integrity (www.icgi.org)
• Doctors Opposing Circumcision (www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org)
• Circumcision Information Site (www.circinfosite.com)
• History of Circumcision (www.historyofcircumcision.org).

[UPDATE:2/28/10 – Newsweek Magazine reported in December that “within certain populations in America, the prevalence of HIV-infected people is higher than in certain parts of Africa… more than 1 in 30 adults in Washington, D.C., are HIV-infected… In New York City 1 in 40 blacks, 1 in 10 men who have sex with men, and 1 in 8 injection-drug users…” Read that story HERE.  But of course we can deflect all that by circumcising out all of our politicians, don’t you think?

MisterWriter

NEW DISTRICT POLICY TO INCREASE ATTENDANCE ENDORSES LAP DANCES BY TEACHERS

(*Joke – do I really need to tell you that or will someone actually think this is a serious posting?)

In a desperate move to increase student attendance as well as the core academic focus that is lacking in today’s high schools, the district endorsed the use of teacher lap dances at pep rallies, after seeing the positive effect that it had on Canadian schools.

Calling the move “Bold” and “Forward thinking and not costing the district any revenue at all,” the district’s director of policy endorsed the conduct as “an excellent way to keep staff and students happy at school.”  Frowning on the aftermath that the Canadian teachers were suspended, the district director added that “No one was hurt,” and “We really could integrate this into the health and family life curriculum.”

Teachers who care!  Gotta love them.

MisterWriter

MOM, CAN I EVER FORGIVE YOU MY COMIC BOOKS A MILLION TIMES OVER?

I confess to being a comic book kid with, at the height of my collection, close to two thousand comics, mostly Superman, Adventures of Superman and so on, anything that would compliment my running around the house with an orange colored bath towel around my neck (we did not have a red one) and leaping off the furniture at a single bound.

It was a grand time of idealistic imagery and a hopeful future unfettered by the ramifications of urban life.

By the time I was thirteen my mother had convinced me that comic books were not worth much and that I should read novels instead. Back then the first thought of what to do with a huge collection was not to sell it. There was no Internet and to advertise anything would mean paying money for a newspaper ad that no one would respond to.

And so they went out with the trash, stacked in neat piles and taken away to make someone else’s day. 

I had some early issues, not number one but some number seventy-five through two hundred, most of which I tallied from my memory of the covers a few years back to have a resale value of a couple of hundred thousand dollars. On mom…comic books taught me everything I know, except the wisdom to never have thrown them out. She hears about it quite often from me, especially whenever the comic books pop up in the news. I have forgiven her.

Years later I collected some again, mostly the covers I remembered so vividly only to realize that paying $3.50 for a ten cent comic book was not a good way to go.  I still own five of the comics but only because the covers bring back good memories.

This week, Action Comics No. 1 (see the cover image on this post, although not the actual issue that sold) sold for $1 million proving that there is a lot to be gained from reading comic books over the years, especially if you keep them safe and plan to sell them later.

A sad MisterWriter

NOW SERVING LOSER NUMBER FIFTY THOUSAND AT WINDOW NUMBER THIRTEEN

It's mind numbing sitting at DMV waiting for the magic number so my son can take his permit test. Every few seconds the DMV voice calls out a number and some lucky sod who has not been sitting with a fine mass of humanity all afternoon, will soon be cutting me off on the road.
There are only another fifty minutes of "now serving..." as thankfully the show ends at 4: 30.
MisterWriter

ARE BLOGS DYING? ARE PEOPLE GETTING BORED?

You have to wonder with the millions of bloggers spewing out a daily missive of content, much of which, like mine, opinion based rather than some dazzling scientific contributions, whether the reading public gets tired of it all.

I’ve been blogging for about 3 years, tried different things with it – I first started MisterWriter as an education reform blog focused on the MDUSD, and then, after the changes in board leadership switched to a writing and commentary blog of things I found interesting.  There are days when I have few readers – some esoteric topic that no one outside of myself cares much about. Other days I might post something that is somewhat controversial – the semi-naked girls car washing on Ygnacio in skimpy wear brought a large response including the much anticipated teen girls blathering about the appropriateness of near nudity fundraising. See, just that one line will cause a spike in readership.

On a different topic I may post about a book on reality that I had read and how it got me thinking what an incredible waste of time these electrically charged blivets that produce the blog really are. I like that word “blivets” and even used it in my blog name for a time: MisterWriter’s Daily Blivets.

But that is just me.

Other bloggers, especially local bloggers, expound on everything from the minute by minute decay of our society in the form of crime and other local news (Claycord.com) with a huge following of regulars and as wide a range of people who hate the site but read it faithfully anyway, to bloggers discussing how to save money (The Frugal Find.)

There is even the CBS Eye on Blogs that follows the ocean of blogs and reports daily on the best of the blivets.

We all – well most of us – use stat programs to see where our users are coming from, going to, how they get to us, how long they stay, which page they read and for how long. And we learn several things; passion is fleeting, readers like to stay a short while and scan many blogs, many use reader programs to distill their subscription lists so that they are not wasting more of their life deciding whether to waste their life. Reader programs are like going in a bookstore, scanning the covers, flipping the first page then putting the book back and moving to the next. You cover a lot of ground and by God you get a sense of the world just from the titles alone.

I have noticed, though, while looking at the counters of blogs that have made theirs public, that the tide of visitors is like the ocean tides; it wavers with highs and lows. Monday used to be terrible, but now Monday stats are good – I guess many people turn off the computer over the weekend –a smart move. Fridays used to be good and now vary – more people out drinking their stress away and leaving the computer behind.

Johnny Carson, who has never been bested as host of The Tonight Show, used to joke that more babies were made during his monologue than at any other time. I doubt the same can be said of blogging that tends to keep you and your significant other apart. Or, as trends show, both in bed with laptop open chatting with each other on Facebook. Sad?

But of late the stats seem to have declined overall. The news is just not good. In California the recession is still as sticky as ever with the promise of more political excrement translating into even more cuts. And the nearly nude car washers are nowhere to be found in the gloomy storm speckled winter we have had. H1N1 turned out to be an anti-climax, although there will be one blog adversary who will tell me that is a careless statement towards those who died from it, no doubt.

Are we just getting tired of blogs?  Twitter is even more sparse – thinly worded and abbreviated postings that scatter droppings of events and thoughts at a faster rate. And you can do photos too. Aim that cell phone and add three words and you are a Twit.

This generation of Internuts have found voice over the decade in the blogs and the Twitters and the social media sites that all seem to be a clutter of voices from people lacking physical contact and instead gathering their friends close in digital form. Facebookers play Mafia Wars and Farmville, seemingly addictive and inane entertainment that kills hours of your life without tangible rewards, while other groups get tired of always reading updates about your pig or goat.

We really must be bored.

Like all things in this age, we have an excess. Value used to come from scarcity. Appreciation came from a limited supply. Now, commerce has ensured that all things have been prostituted to a global excess so that no matter where you are, even while being mugged, you can flip out the phone and text your goodbyes to the world, after all, you are only as good as your last Tweet.

Happy Sunday.

MisterWriter

CLEARING MY MIND WITH A CTRL-ALT-DEL

It’s one of “those” days when the mental clutter seems to overwhelm all else. Time for a soft reset of the mind… before the rain comes again.

MisterWriter

IT’S JUST A DIGITAL LIFE AFTER ALL

Time is the enemy of all men (and women.)  Time passes and with it the energy to do the million things you really want to do. It wasn’t that long ago that a day stretched on forever. Back then, lazy seconds ticking so loudly that I often wondered if they would ever end, I used to take pictures with an old Minolta 35mm SLR – you know, load film, wind, take care not to screw up the shot because prints were not that cheap. Click. It took care and effort to study the composition and make sure that the lighting was balanced for the desired effect, camera held steady through practice because there was no digital stabilizer, and you had in your head the image before you captured the facsimile.

Those lazy days are gone. 

I opened my Picasa digital album with the five billion shots in it, many with multiple variations because I can do that in less than a second, and hate to throw any of them away because you never know when there will be a lazy afternoon filled with eternal seconds in which to manipulate these shots into something artistic. Not. That goal is queued up with the lazy afternoon of guitar playing, sketching, novel reading and screenplay writing that I have also on that life To-Do list I will likely never get to.  Instead I have a massive photo file no one will see unless I subject you to a forced Facebook screening. 

Digital is  amazing, but also careless. Digital lets the lazy man rule instead of the skilled artisan. Digital makes all things available, yet of lesser value than that one in a million shot, like the time, in my youth, standing beneath a lightning storm with my old Minolta mounted on a tripod, shutter open in the darkness to capture the massive energy bolts flashing across the sky. Digital means I no longer have to take that care – simply access the shared stock photos I can get for a buck and a lightning shot far better than the ones I got, but also lacking the passion that went into the efforts I once made.

We live a digital life. From the million mp3 songs we download, free of the time to place the vinyl LP on the turntable, clearing the lint from the diamond stylus, settling back to listen to a deeper and richer sound. Digital means we accept less and get more. Digital means that a cheaper faster, lower quality song playing from my cell phone has replaced the high quality room sized speakers that so many music lovers would die for. 

Digital also means that I can access things that I might never have before; with global availability and a world of thieves making pirated media readily available, I can have it even though I may no longer appreciate it.

I used to collect movies. First VHS, then DVD. Digital formats powered by Netflix makes my need to collect obsolete. I can get any movie within a day or requesting it. Why pay for the pleasure of storing my own copy?  Likewise, the LP days had cover rich artwork, large vinyl LP sized jackets that were art works in their own right. Now, CD’s offer pint sized images and little else. Why bother when the mp3 is so readily available.

There is no doubt that we are digital in our mindset as well as in our lifestyle. And there is no doubt that digital has allowed for many things from Avatar-rich film to safe storage of long forgotten songs and movies by artists long dead. But like the road to driving, one should always master the stick shift before accepting the automatic drive.

The photographs on this post were taken by my 16 year old son Nick. Using an old Canon 35mm SLR, he struggles with the learning of the correct aperture and shutter speed, the processing of the film at school and the slow turnaround that forces him to stop and take a closer look. This is his passion, one he discovered on his own and one he is working to master. It has slowed down that hasty adolescent brain to focus in depth on something that requires a skill and effort to even obtain the simplest of results. And he never lets the images that do not turn out deter him. He impresses me with that determination.

Watching him reminds me of those endlessly lazy days of youth when time was undefined, where a million goals could be tackled and headway made, when you could smell the air bursting with the smell of summer grass and take notice of the dragonfly that caught your attention.

There is in this a lesson we have lost for the young people struggling to define their own identities. There is a loss of the care that was required in our studies and in the choice of words we used, long before texting abbreviated every word including the profane. Digital has allowed more from less but returned less for more at an ever faster pace that soon will allow a generation of memories to be stored upon a pinhead. I just wonder who will bother even looking at them after that.

MisterWriter

DUMBING DOWN EDUCATION – DUMP 12th GRADE

In the ever increasing need to keep cutting costs, Utah is boldly going where no senior has gone before – or at least they plan to by removing 12th grade as a way to save a chunk of change.

Here in California where many 12th graders actually need the 13th grade to finish what could have been done in 10th grade, that option may be more dubious.

I still maintain that we need to get rid of the PC notion that all kids have the potential for rocket science and allow the bricklayers of society to emerge early and hone their craft.  In my opinion, 11th and 12th grade should be in the real world – interns, volunteers and apprentices to fields that the students have shown an aptitude for. They can certainly rotate through until a match is found, but let’s be honest, what the kids need is DIRECTION (how many seniors have no clue what they want to to do with their life) and what businesses need is the opportunity to find potential employees and have the chance to cultivate or groom them for work.  Parents will delight in employable teens and the education system will actually be educating in the manner by which school was intended – to produce a decent workforce of employable Americans instead of a bunch of hapless and aimless people wondering why the world is so screwed up.

Should we dump 12th grade or the old high school model for that matter?

Read the piece from the LA Times HERE and add your thoughts.

Oh yeah – happy Monday!

MisterWriter

An excellent printing company if you need one

The Origin of Love – Ah!!! Happy Valentine’s Day

A classic and a good one… nothing like a little Lord Byron on Valentine’s Day.

The "Origin of Love!" - Ah, why
That cruel question ask of me,
When though may'st read in many an eye
He starts to life on seeing thee?

And should'st thou seek his end to know:
My heart forebodes, my fears forsee,
He'll linger long in silent woe;
But live - until I cease to be.

February 14th was a holiday in ancient Rome to honor Juno, Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Feast of Lupercalia started the next day. The boys and girls were kept apart, however on the eve of Lupercalia, the names of the girls were written down and put into a container. The boys each drew a name and they were the partners throughout the celebration of the festival. Needless to say, some pairings lasted and resulted in marriage.

During the reign of the Emperor Claudius II, with trouble getting soldiers who did not wish to leave their loved ones, the Emperor cancelled all the marriages and engagements. It was Valentine, a Roman priest who defied the order and secretly married couples until his arrest and execution on February 14 in the year 270 AD.

The word LOVE itself goes back to the 8th century. Old English lufu, Old German lubu and Gothic lubo that meet with the Latin lubet  and lubido, meaning it is pleasing and desire respectively.

So have a happy day, lovers and friends, and frolic in the moment. Love is eternal or love is fleeting, depending upon your favorite poet, but one thing is for sure; there is no greater addiction in life than love.

Happy Valentine’s Day! And if you have not yet read the February issue of The Concordian – check it out – it is filled with romantic articles and a fun recipe that you can make to impress your romantic other! Click HERE for the PDF of that issue.

 

MisterWriter

LIFE AS A SERIES OF BLIPS

I vividly recall, at age 19, standing on the library balcony of my college, overlooking a valley and in the distance the Pacific Ocean, considering that life was not as complicated as people wanted to make it out to be.

Simplicity, like a child’s fairy tale told by a kindly old man, had a clear beginning, middle and end, with all the morality that could fit between those hardcover pages and large, colorful illustrations that almost seemed to have a life of their own.

Now, much older, pulling my fingers free of the million sticky threads that bog down my day, somehow all tied together and affecting all the other threads so that at the end, exhausted, barely able to contain a cohesive thought, as I collapse onto my pillow and allow the darkness to whisk me away, I wonder how the hell it got to be so complicated.  I just want a simple life. I just want to be able to start my day, do a few things well and retire at night knowing that things were done and something was achieved.

My to do list grows each day. Each item crossed off breeds two or three more than need to be added. It is not about efficiency or organization; it is about the obsessive need we have to keep on doing more than we did before, as though we were now making up for those indolent teen days lost daydreaming about silly things like being super-powered.  Each day has fewer hours and each minute lost seems to bog down the other minutes around it. Why not eat lunch at your desk – better yet save some time by not having to chew your food; drink a liquid lunch, or skip lunch altogether and allow that gurgling stomach to convince you that you have invented the business diet; lose calories while you work, instead of working out, still tired, exhausted and sweaty at the end and grabbing that liquid brew to toast the end of another workday on planet Earth, despite the stress, exhaustion and sticky threads that would boggle even the mind of Spiderman.

Life is a series of blips – those moments when you come to a full stop and ask yourself what the hell you are really achieving. You know those blips, first at thirty, then 35, 40, 45, 50 and so on, usually event oriented like birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, watching your kids go from diapers to automobiles in less than five seconds. And each blip ticks away the credit of your life, those endless years you used to have, until you start noting that icons of your youth have started passing away, and take a look at that girl (or boy for my female readers) who used to be so beautiful when you were in school and now, having been unseen by your eyes for a few decades are simply “My God she looks like she’s ancient” without the reciprocal look in the mirror at how time has stripped you of those same vibrancies that once seemed so commonplace and eternal.

I like to change the counting of the years from age to age independence.  Legally I could drink at 21, so really my AI age is 29 years (totals 50 for you math weary souls.) 29 sounds so much better than 50, but more so, at 50, to look at a life expectancy of 80 years leaves 30 years (without qualifying them as “good years”), But at the AI age of 29, that makes me middle aged with a ton of independent years to look forward to.

When I wonder what we have gained and what we have lost, I quickly realize that the stressors of society have convinced us to move faster, work harder, longer, accepting less while we ponder why that is the case. When you watch one of those “Cleaver” type fifties television shows and how the average worker was not running at breakneck speed and yet still represented the backbone of American progress, you get a sense of how perception has shaped the focus of this period of time.  We work faster because we have to. We cannot afford to not work faster and harder because with so many people in the world just waiting for our jobs we had better be the fastest hardest working smiling fools so that we can keep our jobs and watch our paycheck dwindle to the high fees for health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, food, utilities, clothing and all the million little things that suck it out one dime at a time. So many sticky little threads that bind us. And they just will not come loose.

I visited that college balcony a few years ago during a trip and found that spot where so many dreams flooded past. The view had not changed much, but the impulse to move on with my day, to find something on my to do list to tackle made it an interesting contemplation of what had really changed. And so I made myself sit down and just stare out into the view that I had spent many an hour looking at. Nothing had really changed at all; just a series of blips that had peppered my memory, snippets of joy and sadness, gain and loss, wisdom and stupidity that all blended into a life well lived and one that I intend to keep on living.

And as long as I stayed there, in that seat, nothing had changed from that earlier time moments before my AI birth and I was, for a moment, thread-free.

MisterWriter

BE COUNTED BUT CENSUS SMART – THE CROOKS ARE COUNTING, TOO

Our friend Chuck sends this email article/reminder about the Census…

 

2010 Census to Begin

WARNING: 2010 Census Cautions from the Better Business Bureau

Be Cautious About Giving Info to Census Workers by Susan Johnson

With the U.S. Census process beginning, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) advises people to be cooperative, but cautious, so as not to become a victim of fraud or identity theft. The first phase of the 2010 U.S. Census is under way as workers have begun verifying the addresses of households across the country. Eventually, more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers will count every person in the United   States and will gather information about every person living at each address including name, age, gender, race, and other relevant data.

The big question is - how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice:

** If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag, and a confidentiality notice. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions.  However, you should never invite anyone you don't know into your home.

Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census.

REMEMBER, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ASK, YOU REALLY ONLY NEED TO TELL THEM HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE AT YOUR  ADDRESS.

While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range, 
YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION.

The Census Bureau will NOT ask for Social Security, bank account, or credit card numbers, nor will employees solicit donations.  Any one asking for that information is NOT with the Census Bureau.

AND REMEMBER, THE CENSUS BUREAU HAS DECIDED NOT TO WORK WITH ACORN ON GATHERING THIS INFORMATION.  No Acorn worker should approach you saying s/he is with the Census Bureau.

Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, postal mail, or in-person at home. However, the 
Census Bureau will NOT contact you by Email, so be on the lookout for Email scams impersonating the Census.

Never click on a link or open any attachments in an Email that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.

PLEASE SHARE THIS INFO WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS

 

MisterWriter

IS THE CONSEQUENCE HARSH OR ARE WE IN NEED OF HARSH CONSEQUENCES?

12 year old Alexa Gonzalez hauled to the police station in handcuffs for defacing her school desk at the behest of the school principal. “Humiliating” says her mother on CBS News this very morning. Click her picture to read the story.

“Humiliating” is a word that I have heard bandied about so excessively by parents through the years whenever their little angels got in trouble. I NEVER heard that word come from the mouth of any reasonable parent, however – you know, those parents who recognize that lessons learned are often the ones that bite hard at a child. After all, junior did not learn to not touch a hot stove because mommy said so; junior learned that stoves bite back the hard way. And it was not humiliating.

Okay, I give you that Alexis’ doodling on her desk in class with a pencil should have warranted something more humiliating like staying after school with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge cleaning all the desks in the classroom, and the whole handcuff thing was more theatric than anything else; however, as the parent of several teenagers I will tell you that in the endless retelling of this story by Alexa of being hauled away in handcuffs will come peer admiration and a “cool” status from those peers who think bucking the system constituted intelligence, certainly not the lesson we all think when we hear mommy’s word “humiliation.”  And the fact that mommy will now sue the city and the family will get that Disney World vacation after all will no doubt ease the sting of the humiliation suffered. New York likes to be sued for this sort of thing – they arrested a 13 year old in 2007 for the same thing and settled a lawsuit then.

My point is not that this was justified; it wasn’t, but that we have such extremes in our schools, from absolutely no consequence when students taunt and bully, with a long history of bad behavior, to the handcuffs only goes to show that when they stripped the cane from the school they also stripped away any semblance of authority to govern the conduct of our children.  And despite the endless Education Code policies that clearly state the consequences of distracting, obscene, behavior, rudeness, vandalism, weapons, drugs and other school conduct issues, the proportion of consequence to action is pathetically small. Most teachers will offer stories of students who should have been suspended under the Ed. Code, getting off with warnings, coddled, cajoled, all because hassling with “those parents” makes for an even bigger issue.

Analogous to this is the retention rates. Teachers  are told that students not meeting standards need to be retained. Teachers are told they have the ultimate authority on this point. Teachers are told to submit lists of students in danger of failing throughout the year, preceding the endless retention meetings. At mid to low performing schools you will find teachers each submitting five or six names at least only to be told that the district will not abide by an entire classroom of retentions at a school which would require hiring another teacher. So much for teacher control. Teachers who push are not encouraged; at some schools these teachers are admonished to be reasonable with statements like “You can’t retain them all.”   Like the consequences, the rules set in place only tell part of the story. For all the rules you can have, you still have a mess without enforcement.

We have police officers at our high schools, but we call them “School Safety Officers.” Why? Why do we need police officers at our high schools even if we have assigned them a kindler and gentler title? If behavior and conduct were an enforced expectation (at home and in public) there would be no need to waste taxpayer money for a police presence that generally is inhibited anyway.

Alexa Gonzales should not have been hauled away in handcuffs. But somewhere between that action and the sheepish impotence that our schools display when it comes to stricter discipline, there must be a system that both works and can be enforced. And there is nothing humiliating about that.

MisterWriter

LEAVING TEACHERS BEHIND OR BEHIND THE TEACHERS LEAVING?

A study from the group Public Agenda shows that two out of five teachers are disheartened and disillusioned about their jobs while a large majority of those who are not teach at more affluent schools with greater support.

“The view that teaching is “so demanding, it’s a wonder that more people don’t burn out” is remarkably pervasive, particularly among the Disheartened,—they are twice as likely as other teachers to strongly agree with this view. Members of that group, which accounts for 40 percent of K-12 teachers in the United States, tend to have been teaching longer and are older than the Idealists, and more than half teach in low-income schools. They are more likely to voice high levels of frustration about the school administration, disorder in the classroom, and the undue focus on testing. Only 14 percent rate their principals as “excellent”” at supporting them as teachers, and 61 percent cite lack of support from administrators as a major drawback to teaching. Nearly three-quarters cite “discipline and behavior issues” in the classroom, and 7 in 10 say that testing are major drawbacks as well.

Click the graph above for the full text of that survey.

By contrast, of those who are not complaining, about two-thirds are teaching in middle-income or affluent schools, the report states. You can read the whole thing HERE.

Not surprisingly, the highlighted area above tends to correspond with a lot of the complaints heard by teachers in the MDUSD. Discipline issues, despite a clearly defined policy in both the Ed Code and in the District handbook which parents must sign each year, pervade with lots of pussyfooting around a strict consequence. Likewise, without proclaiming principal incompetence a blanket statement, far too many of the administrators running schools should be excised along with the redundant, outdated and useless teachers that are protected by tenure. In short, the whole system needs a major overhaul.

Despite the budget issues, the cuts and the loss of services, this is something that can be achieved starting at a community level by having parents stand up and start vocalizing their criticism or support of the principal at their school site. The louder the voices the faster the change – just be sure to demand that the old favorite game of musical principals is not played – shifting them around. Control discipline at the school site and a more effective learning environment will be prevalent.

There was a time where school discipline meant fear. See the cartoon below. Respect was fear and some degree of intelligence to not be caught in a caning situation.

Now there is NO discipline – it is all “talk therapy” because God help us if we stunt the little angel’s self-esteem (not to mention the large legal settlement.)

One teacher wrote: “Today was another tough day, a male student of mine punched a girl HARD in the face right in front of me! Then he ran down the hall and out the door and started beating up another kid! It was crazy. They had to call the officer out to get him. Then, right after that happened.. a parent called me and got nasty with me on the phone. She accused me of picking on her kid for "no reason." Her son had apparently lied to her and told her that I always "refused to accept his homework". Which is NOT TRUE!! He never HAS his homework to begin with! Her son is a complete smart mouth to me and I send him in the hall often because he talks back to me literally every day. His mom told me that he behaves in all his other classes but when I checked his discipline record, I found he has 16 referrals already (only 3 of those are from me). The mother then told me she was going to come up to the school and "take care of me". So now I am worried to death about having a confrontation with this woman. I am sure most teachers have had to deal with difficult parents... ya know, the type that think their kid is wonderful and the teacher is evil. Can anyone offer me any advice or share a similar experience? This is REALLY stressing me out! But... on the good side of things..its almost time for a badly needed break!”

How many teachers recognize that theme? And then there are the idealists who believe that …

Is the glass half full or half empty now?

MisterWriter

THE CYLONS ARE COMING

NASA imagery captured an unusual shot (See below). It is supposed to be an asteroid collision but looking closely seemed to me to be evidence that the Cylons are making a move to our home world.

You can click on both pictures for their source sites. If you remember that in the hit series Battlestar Galactica, Earth was the original home world of the colonies.

 

Don’t say I did not warn you!!!!!

MisterWriter

WELCOME DR. STEVEN LAWRENCE THE NEW MDUSD SUPER - THE WOLVES ARE ALREADY SCRATCHING AT YOUR DOOR.

Last night we received the first phone message from the new MDUSD superintendent, a strong sounding voice that spoke well about a potential abduction at Oak Grove Middle School, and I thought that it was a good message until he wished me “Have a Good Evening” at the end. Oh well – can’t win them all.

 

Photo courtesy of Dr. Lawrence (click the pic to contact him)

Considering that he has just arrived he has enough on his plate to last him a few terms in office, assuming he chooses to linger and make that difference most people in education wish for.

And while I am aware that the contractual and PC obligations of the board prevent speaking ill of the recently departed administration, I know I am not alone in observing that the stench of abject failure seems to have cleared somewhat now that the Feds are not pissed even though the State has stolen all our pocket money.  Sure there are a few individuals out there hell bent on smearing the district some more, people who like to make careers out of doing so, and there are no shortage of those types in the world. We just must sidestep their droppings and not allow it to slow down change – we need change badly.

So Dr. Lawrence, a warm welcome and I look forward to an interview where we can get some questions answered. I wish I could say you had a tough act to follow but you don’t; you do however have tough challenges ahead that I hope you will face by recognizing that the stakeholders in this district have really had their fill of political B.S. and need now to deal up front, openly and honestly with what we have to work with and what we have to do to change things. PLEASE be the first to dispense with the LoveBoat rhetoric about how we can all just get along and if We Wish Upon A Star…  We do not need to make people happy. We need to provide a great education on the leftover chicken bones in the pot – our grandmothers would have made a bitchin soup from those scraps.

You have some big problems at your schools. For one thing, there are a whole lot of demigod like Principals that cannot govern a school if their life depended on it, relics from the McHenry top down micromanagement style. It’s not hard to find these principals – just ask the parents at the school. If you can’t get information I will be happy to give you some parents who will be happy to help you cultivate the list.  You can make your teachers jump through any number of hoops, but these principals drag your schools down, regardless of the API scores. First step – root em out. Then you can root out the teachers that should have been pastured but for tenure. Old cows do not make good milk –sorry.

Second, you have limited funding – you need more than a PTA at your sites – you need a community village running the school. Using their contacts through work etc, you have access to many funding sources for programs.

Third – behavior issues. You are old enough to remember a time of no behavior issues. Back then it was fear of the stick. Now we just play talk therapy, pop a candy and send ‘em back to class to the disgust of the teacher and the other students.  You need to ENFORCE the

behavior rules that are in the ED CODE and in the HANDBOOK all parents sign. Simply put your child has a a right to an education in an LRE but your child has NO right to create problems. Problem children go to problem schools.  When I suggested this before I was told “No one would want to teach at those schools.” Well those fine military personnel coming out of service should be fast tracked through a credentialing program and into a classroom for the parentally challenged children of the district. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one – it’s time to bring learning back to school at ALL grade levels.

There’s so much more on my list – but I do not want to sour my welcome message. I do believe that your fresh outlook, and the good work of the Board since the ouster of the former super at least lends itself to a positive direction of hope. I know that you still must deal with the mess left by the Terminator’s cronies, all of whom should be recalled (and flogged), but I guess you can only deal with that which you have.

Welcome and best of wishes.

MisterWriter

I’D LIKE TO MOON YOU IN A NEW WAY

The President’s budget cuts will chop into NASA’s plans to return to the moon. On the surface this seems like a bad thing but honestly, after the screwups of NASA since the first moon landing, it is time that space travel and the development of space transfers to the foray of the private sector and the corporations.

As any avid science fiction fan will tell you, virtually all the sci-fi involving interstellar intrigue has, at its heart, corporate control and financing.

Anyone over the age of ten will know what this image is without having to be told.

Before you slam me for my NASA comments – understanding that I am a sci-fi nut, let’s examine how the government screwed up the space program. 1969 was Apollo 11’s moment of glory. I was ten years old. That was forty years ago and what have we managed to do?   For starters the Space Shuttle fleet was originally intended to have no heat tiles – a solid titanium shielding and a cost that was back then overbudget, but in hindsight hugely cost savings. The original design was for a full reusable vehicle, none of the disposable components and leaky O-rings, exploding and disintegrating shuttles and the loss of astronauts and confidence.

Making the whole space program a private venture is both possible and offering much potential to those inclined to invest.  Enter Richard Branson’s grand concepts, taking the Virgin line to Virgin Galactic and beyond. Take a look at what he is cooking HERE.

Space is the beginning of mankind’s future and not the end. Even Stephan Hawking stated that if our race is to survive it must venture beyond this planet. “The Moon is a good place to start because it is "close by and relatively easy to reach", Hawking said. "The Moon could be a base for travel to the rest of the solar system," he added. Mars would be "the obvious next target", with its abundant supplies of



frozen water, and the tantalising possibility that life may have been present there in the past.” Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed despite the fact that his intellect has rivaled and exceeded that of Albert Einstein in his quest for a better understanding of the universe.

NASA deployed astronauts and other experts to say the Constellation program, begun under former President George W. Bush to return humans to the moon, was too slow and wasteful. The space agency's budget would grow to $19 billion in 2011 under the proposed budget released on Monday, with an emphasis on science and less spent on space exploration.

I see this more as the start of the age of a non-government space program until such time as the military decides that it should take over whatever has been done by the private sector.

Yup - “To boldly think where no one has thought before…”

So what is your space view?

MisterWriter