Category Archives: Education

Of Qu’rans and hijabs

Of Qu’rans and Hijabs

I recently made a deliberate study of aspects of Islam, namely the Qu’ran and the wearing of the hijab. I did this to get a better sense of the religion that is often demonized and ridiculed in the West. Much of the prejudices about Islam come from a lack of knowledge aside from sensationalized newscasts and misrepresentations of the religion based on a few people who hide behind Islam and commit acts of atrocity, acts which are against the teachings of the Islamic faith.

Now, as I’ve stated before in one of my earlier posts, Islam is a cousin to both Christianity and Judaism. In Islam, Jesus (pbuh) is seen as a prophet and the Messiah, but not as God. Islam’s respect of Jesus (pbuh) is evident in the phrase “peace be upon him” that is mentioned or written in abbreviated form of pbuh after mention of his name, like I have done here in this article. All three religions trace their lineage back to Abraham of the Torah/Old Testament with the Jewish and Christian religions basing theirs on Isaac and Islam basing theirs on his stepbrother Ishmael. I will not go further into their similarities at this point due to both having written about them before as well as that not being the topic of this article.

Instead, I wish to focus on two other aspects about Islam which are often brought up in an attempt to show the religion as being hostile, intolerant, and sexist: the Qu’ran and the wearing of the hijab.

I have spent time reading the Qu’ran. In fact, I made it a point to read a verse or a surah (chapter) from it each day during the Lenten season. From this and other readings I have done of the Qu’ran, I find it to be no more violent than the Torah/Old Testament of the Bible. There are mentions of attacking non-believers who attack first. Yet, there are also admonishments to not compel belief in anyone. That is, to put it another way, no one is forced to believe in the Islamic faith, unlike the door-to-door proselytizing that occurs with some sects of the Christian church. In fact, there are many verses that sound much like the Bible and seek to convey the same incidents.

When some individuals or groups state that the Qu’ran is filled with violence and calls for violence against non-Muslims, they seem to forget places within the Old Testament/Torah where there are calls for the Israelites to do the same, such as admonishments to kill entire cities in the name of Jehovah. The calls to violence in both the Torah/Old Testament and the Qu’ran are contextual to the time wherein they were written. They are not to be taken as modern day admonishments for believers.

Instead, the practices of Islam are based on what are known as the Five Pillars of Islam: The Profession of Faith (Shahadah), Daily Prayers (Salat), Almsgiving (Zakat), Fasting during Ramadan (Saum), and Pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj). These bear resemblance to Judeo-Christian practices of reciting articles of faith, such as the Apostles Creed or Nicaean Creed; daily prayers or even the hours of prayer once used in the Catholic Church; works of charity; fasting during the 40 days of Lent; and the former practice of Christians who used to make pilgrimages to holy places or as many Jews do now to the Eastern Wall.

But what about the Islamic practice of jihad? What about it? Jihad simply means “the spiritual struggle within oneself against sin”. While some groups have used the term to engage in violence against others, that is not the true meaning nor is it sanctioned by the vast majority of Muslims. Muslims engage in personal jihad every day as they struggle to not commit sins against their faith. This is much like pretty much any religious person does as he or she strives to remain true to the tenets of his or her faith. So, there goes that argument.

The Qu’ran is filled with lovely sections that praise the Creator and the works the Creator has made, much like the Torah and the Bible are filled with similar sections.

My other topic is the hijab or scarf worn by some women who are Muslim. Many believe this is required by the Qu’ran, but it isn’t in the sense that many believe it is. The hijab or other head coverings are simply part of the Islamic faith for women to maintain a sense of modesty in dress. It is not that different from nuns who wear habits or Amish/Mennonites who wear bonnets. While there are some countries who impose the wearing of head coverings or full body coverings for women, they do not do this because it is required by the Qu’ran, but by their own set of moral or legal codes.

Women, particularly those living in the West, wear the hijab or other head coverings (shayla, khimar, chador, niqab, or burqa) for various reasons from believing their faith calls them to do so to a way to visibly express their faith to expressing their cultural identity or even to challenge the prevailing thought in the West that women who wear the hijab are somehow oppressed or silenced. There are also Muslim women who do not wear a head covering, but maintain their modesty in other ways. It’s a personal choice for the woman far more than a religious one. By the way, some Muslim men also wear had coverings for the same reasons, although they are not like the hijab. Even this is somewhat like the reason why some Jewish men wear yarmulkes or hats.

I hope this serves to enlighten my readers a bit about both the Qu’ran and the wearing of a hijab. If you have further questions, I suggest you contact your local mosque with a open mind and simply ask. Many mosques also hold open houses for non-Muslims to learn more about their Muslim neighbors.

The greatest defense against ignorance, prejudice, and fear is education. If more people take the time to learn about other religions and cultures, then the better our world becomes. Humankind has far more similarities than differences once you reach out and learn more about one another.

Peace-Salaam-Shalom

America: Becoming an Under-developed Country

When there is talk of undeveloped countries, the focus usually centers on those countries that make up Southeast Asia, Central America, and even South America. Yet, I would argue that there is a new form of underdevelopment that is sweeping the West, and in particular, the United States. It makes it so that the U.S. is not undeveloped, but rather under-developing. America, one of the most richest countries in the world, is becoming an Under-developing Country. While I am certain that making that comment is certain to anger some people, I hope that even they continue to read to see why I make such a harsh observation about the country of my birth.

First, let me define what it is to be an under-developing country. I did not coin the phrase, but read it on a comment about an article about the rise of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. Being an under-developing country means that we are no longer encouraging ourselves or our children to aspire to gaining an education that is broad in scope nor one that encourages critical thinking. We relegate our teachers to teaching to a test rather than encouraging each individual students to attain their personal best. People who question the status quo are seen as deviant and potentially dangerous. The U.S., through certain facets of our population, is careening toward becoming an underdeveloped country. The members of this facet point to those who are educated as being elitists and being bent on turning the U.S. away from core values and beliefs. They define what they consider to be core values and beliefs rather narrowly into their particular values and beliefs and even extremely narrow interpretations of founding documents such as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Those who advocate this anti-intellectualism use labels such as elitist and liberal as if they are profanity. They accuse those who think critically of wanting to undermine and tear the fabric of our society. In short, being intelligent is seen as dangerous and being uneducated is seen as being desirable. It is desirable, especially for those who want to stay in power. After all, an undereducated populace is easier to control. When people think, they make decisions. When they simply allow others to think for them, then their decisions are made for them as well.

Take public education for example. Many of us, at least those of us above the age of 35 or so, can recall a time when our teachers taught and tested us on material learned in class from a fairly decent textbook. Our job was to think about what we were learning and apply it in some way to life outside the classroom, either directly or indirectly. I recall a teacher I had for both math and science in junior high school whose mantra was ‘Try. Try Again. Suffer. And when you feel as if blood is pouring from your pores from your suffering, then, and only then, will I help you.’ He allowed us to work at our own pace within certain parameters. He circulated the room as we worked on whatever chapter we happened to be in. Most of the class may have easily been on five to ten different chapters at any given time. However, we each learned the material. If we happened to finish a considerable number of chapters and were far ahead of our classmates, he encouraged us to help our classmates who were struggling with the material. We learned not only math and science, but also how to help one another. Talk about learning to a higher standard, that was it. We did projects in most of our classes. Took field trips. Engaged in discussions about current events and our subjects. We were even free to disagree with our teachers provided that we listened to them and they to us and never said they were wrong. We backed our arguments with facts and logic.

Move into today’s public education and you have a vastly different story. Many teachers are given a curriculum map with set deadlines for teaching material. These deadlines must be met so that students can take a standardized test that likely had no input from the local teacher. Many times if students attempt to assist one another, then it is considered cheating and they suffer the consequences. Should students not be able to achieve a passing score on the standardized test, then the teacher is considered at fault rather than the unrealistic deadlines imposed by the curriculum map or the test written from the sterile viewpoint of someone hundreds of miles away from the school. There is no longer time for field trips. The textbooks are vetted through a process that has a limited number of publishers whose books are often pre-vetted by larger and more conservative states education panels that wash from them anything that does not fit into a more conservative agenda. Prime example being Texas where Moses is considered as a major contributor to the ideas of the founding fathers of the U.S. We can add to this the numerous arguments for the teaching of Creationism and the lessening of scientifically based Evolution. When teachers deviate from the curriculum or encourage students to do something about an injustice they see, then they risk their jobs.

An article in The Guardian from May 18, 2012, points to a high school teacher who lost her job after having “asked her students in an upper-level language arts class to look at the American Library Association’s list of ‘100 most frequently challenged books’ and write an essay about censorship” (The Guardian, “Anti-intellectualism is taking over the US”). In a more recent article from The Guardian dated September 24, 2014, they listed seven books banned by Highland Park High School in Dallas, TX, “after parents complained about their children having access to ‘obscene literature’” (The Guardian, “Texas school bans seven ‘obscene’ books in banned books week”), among them were Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This is not an isolated incident, nor is it only just Texas being Texas. There are hundreds of cases where books are banned in our country. There are also hundreds of cases where teachers are told to remain silent and just teach what they are told to teach and that their opinions are never to be heard in the classroom.

I know this from experience as having taught middle and high school for over 12 years in Florida. While I, for the most part, was never directly censored by my administration, I did receive comments and even felt some animosity toward me in the form of my yearly reviews as I encouraged my students to think and reason. I stood up for students, including those with whom I disagreed, as they discussed literature and life in my classroom. I never hid my politics from them, but never told them they were wrong when we did not agree. Rather, I advised them to step out of their belief and see how someone else could believe different from them. The majority of my students realized that their opinions were sometimes just that. Opinions based on emotions or their parents rather than facts. Many of them agreed to disagree with their peers, some even with their parents. Yet, I recall being told that I was to remove my political bumper sticker from my vehicle since it was in a school parking lot. I refused stating that those with opposing political views who also parked in the lot displaying their politics would have to do the same. I didn’t have to remove mine at that point. I recall being told by one administrator, and a colleague by another one the following year, that we should not encourage students to form a Gay-Lesbian-Straight organization as that would disrupt the learning process and the school climate. Students want to be able to learn, discuss, and think, not take tests that only require the rote memorization of facts or a version of the facts in order to pass them. They see more gray in the world than simply black and white. The banning of books and critical thinking only serves to continue the downward spiral of underdeveloping our nation.

Moving from the educational realm and into the political, we see this even more as politicians claim not to be scientists, yet refuse to listen to the vast majority of scientists when they say climate change is real and will have devastating effects on the world. Even the U.S. Department of Defense sees it as a major problem. However, there remain a group of politicians in Congress who deny the facts. They seem to relish in their denial of the facts. Why? Because their wealthy corporate donors want them to do so. These are the same people who advocate for looser gun laws saying that it will prevent crime if more people have guns. One of their standard mantras is that a ‘good guy with a gun’ can prevent mass killings like the ones at Sandy Hook or Columbine, or the theater in Colorado from ever occurring. What they fail to see is that even a supposed good guy with a gun could have a really bad day or a bad temper and easily become a bad guy with a gun. They claim that the liberals and elitists want to take away guns from law abiding citizens through laws requiring background checks and gun registration. What they fail to admit is that would take a change to the current interpretation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution to truly do so.

Those who fear intelligence also claim that the liberals and elitists want to take God out of schools because public entities, including schools, are barred by the First Amendment of the Constitution from placing one religion over another. These ultraconservatives claim that by not having the Christian Bible taught in our schools that this is the reason for all the problems in our country. Yet, they fail to see the real causes for the problems of poverty, crime, homelessness, drugs, and the like. They fail to enact laws or create programs that would help put an end to these social ills by claiming it’s not the government’s job or that there is no money to fund these programs. However, they refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy who can afford to pay more. How do they get away with this? Through the dumbing down of the populace. They bombard the legitimate news stations, as well as using their own media, to claim that raising taxes would result in fewer jobs. They further make claims that those who are homeless, jobless, and on government assistance are simply lazy. By only letting out what they want people to hear, then they can get away with harming the majority of the people in our country. How does this tie into religion? Consider the number of religious figures in the United States that are most often heard that hail from the ultraconservative, anti-intellectual front. People like Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee who claim to be Christians, yet talk about how lazy people are who are on welfare, unless they donate, in the case of Robertson, to his ‘ministry’. He recently told an elderly woman whose husband is ill that she needed to keep tithing rather than use that money to help with medical expenses because that is the way God wants it to be. Huckabee recently said he is in favor of what’s termed the Fair Tax which serves to actually be rather unfair to the poor and what’s left of the middle class. These people, and those like them, rely on their being seen as Christians in order to be seen as being somehow more truthful than if they were not. They are, to paraphrase the Bible, simply wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Instead of using intelligence, they play to irrational fears, much like the above arguments they make about gun control. In the last few years, they have used their media outlets and pundits to push that the evil is in the form of Islam and those who follow that religion. What they fail to mention is that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all stem from the same God and the same human progenitor by the name of Abraham. They have gone so far as to try to paint our President as being a Muslim. Why? Because he is of mixed race, dark-skinned, and his biological father was a Muslim. They use this false argument as a way to try to equate our President with the faces of those who espouse a radical form of Islam who commit terrorist attacks. And through the continued dumbing down of American society, there are actually people who believe this misinformation. These are the same people that claim Obama was not born in the U.S. and other such lies that play into the uninformed psyche of those who lack a decent education or wherewithal to research something about which they are uncertain.

Until we, as a society, are willing to confront anti-intellectualism for what it is, that being a way to keep those who hold the power in power, we are destined to continue down this path that leads to failure. At one time, the U.S. was on the cutting edge of discovery and intellectual progress. We had the strongest colleges and universities. The brightest minds who were allowed to think, wonder, experiment, and create. We made it into space with minds like that. We funded education for all from the daycare to the university. We rewarded intelligence of all kinds from the skilled factory worker to the professor to the mechanic to the inventor. It takes intelligence to progress. We cannot allow our country to become one that is underachieving and underdeveloped. We must take back our schools from being corporate run entities and allowing corporate money to influence free thought. I could go on, but this is already longer than I planned. Thank you for reading.

The Real Key to Educational Reform–it’s not what the reformers want you to know

A recent article in Salon about the infamous Michelle Rhee reminded me of the one factor all the alleged education reformers seems to miss when it comes to how to really improve the educational system in the United States. It, however, did not address the other side of the coin. It is my hope to address both sides of what is possibly the real key to have students in the United States to succeed beyond current levels.

When most of the alleged education reformers go on the attack, they blame teachers for the lack of educational achievement that is occurring far too often in the United States. The reformers cite studies and research, usually funded by those who agree with them, that say the reason why our students are not achieving is because the teachers are not doing their jobs. They say that tenure has created teachers who are lazy and care only about summers off and their paycheck. As a former teacher, I can honestly say that there are bad teachers out there who take advantage of the existence of tenure, but they are the minority. The vast majority of teachers are competent and caring individuals who wish to educate and bring up the future of our country as well-versed and well-rounded individuals. However, they are stymied by the endless rounds of standardized tests that occur within our nation’s schools as well as scripted curriculum that prevents the actual learning of lessons, but certainly raises great test takers. The gathering of data is not educating nor is having students take endless End of Term, End of Course tests written by those who have not likely graced the walls of a classroom in decades.

The problem is not with our schools. It’s within our society as a whole. It is poverty. On one end it is literal, financial desperation. On the other, it is literal, integrity-deficit desperation also known as privilege. Both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum produce students who have negative educational achievement. Very different reasons, yes, but still the same lack of achievement.

I have taught students at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. Their needs are very different. Providing them with the desire to achieve is also very different.

Students who live in poverty do not perform well in school because their basic human needs are not being met. To put it simplistically, if the stomach is rumbling from hunger, then the brain is not going to focus well on academics. Humans have certain basic needs: food, safe shelter, basic medical and health needs to be met, and proper clothing. If any of these are not being met, then humans tend to focus on ways for those needs to be met. Once the needs are met, then other things can take precedent in their lives, such as education. It does not take a huge research grant to know this, but it does take people from within the social realm.

I’ll give you a couple of good examples, one personal and one from my sister who was a teacher.

My sister, now deceased, was an elementary school teacher. She was a marvel to watch teach. In her first teaching assignment, she taught elementary school in a city near the Appalachian foothills of SE Ohio. The students she taught were poor. Many came to school without food, without supplies, and without proper clothing. She noticed that they were having issues with focusing on lessons, so she did what her heart led her to do. She brought in food. She brought in supplies. She even took what little additional money she could from her own paycheck and bought students coats, gloves, and boots from discount and secondhand stores in the area. Student learning went up in her classroom when they students knew they could get even a basic meal, supplies, and warm clothing. They had their basic needs met.

From my own teaching experience, I witnessed a different form of poverty at my initial assignment in a middle school in Florida. Many students had the clothing, usually such as to mask their poverty. Many did not have the supplies, which I learned to have on hand at all times. Food was sometimes an issue. I tried to have either a little extra to share in my lunch or an extra dollar or two to give them to get something to eat. (It was not exactly against the rules to give them money, but it was certainly frowned upon, but I did it anyway). Many of them lacked active parents in their lives as some of their parents were drug users, alcoholics, and even prostitutes. I had one single mom of one of my students who was an exotic dancer who told me I could have a parent conference with her only if I came to her show and brought dollar bills. She said it might be beneficial for both her student and her if I took her up on the offer. I did not for a number of reasons, including the fact that I might be fired for doing so as teachers are held to a higher standard than to frequent strip clubs. My students needed someone who cared about them first. A classic Ruby Payne observation that many students in poverty value relationships first and foremost. Once you build a rapport, you can teach them anything with relative ease. That worked for me at that middle school as well as the one after that which was a school in the midst of a neighborhood transition from middle to upper class that was slowly getting students from less affluent means.

The fix for poverty at this end of the spectrum is fairly simple. Provide the basic needs for the students and their families first and foremost. Outside the academic realm, this means providing parents with affordable daycare, health care, decent and affordable housing, and a living wage rather than a minimum wage. It means providing expanded free and reduced breakfasts and lunches for students. It means setting up a social safety net for the students and their families for when times are at their roughest. Yes, it means becoming a bit more Socialistic, but that is not a bad thing, except for those who do not believe in helping out their fellow human being.

It also means that teachers in these situations must be willing to build a rapport with their students. They must be willing to see them as unique individuals first and foremost, then as students. It means the teacher must be real with their students for they can sense a phony person and will shut down with them. I saw it happen. It means that the teacher must be flexible when assigning homework and maybe even willing to practice the idea of a flipped classroom where students do their homework at school and review for the next day’s lesson at home. I loved teaching at these schools, except for the administrators who did not espouse these ideas except when convenient for them.

The funny thing is that when I switched to teach at a wealthier, but rural high school, I found that the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum also suffers from negative academic achievement caused by poverty of privilege.

Poverty of privilege is when a child is raised to believe they are entitled to good grades based on their social status. This leads students of financial means to expect high marks because if they do not, then they can simply have their parents call the school and the teacher either forced out or the teacher to modify the assignment or even change the grade for them based on their status. (Other times, the leadership of the school also takes it upon themselves to change the grades after the teacher enters them into the electronic grading system. That happened at least once to me).

Fixing poverty of privilege is trickier. It involves the establishment of a rapport, but it also involves everyone from the administration of the school to the non-teaching staff to not allow those with privilege being able to use their wealth to push others around. I had a student who informed me that it did not matter what grade he received nor even if he passed, just so long as he got a minimum of a GED, his parents would buy him a house like they bought him a car. (A nice Mustang to boot).

Poverty at either end of the socioeconomic spectrum is the real reason why students do not achieve in school. Extremes of poverty and wealth cause a lack of motivation for academics. One needs basic needs met while the other needs limitations to what their means may achieve. Until educational reformers realize this, the American educational system will not improve regardless of how many teachers suffer or tests are given.

Mr. Keating, you inspired me and will be missed

There are a number of tributes coming, as there should be, for Robin Williams. He was a great person, from what I’ve read and heard over the years, and one of, if not the, funniest people to grace our lives. I am no different than most people eulogizing or recalling how much Mr. Williams made us laugh, cry, and think about life. However, I too wish to add my thoughts on the affect he, in one of his roles, had on me and how it relates to my currently former career as a teacher.

In order to do this, I have to go back to when I was in high school. I had a friend who, out of respect for him, I will simply call Ted. Ted was a fellow member of the band with me in high school and ahead of me in grade. He was part of a section in the band who was favored by the director, who shall also remain anonymous. As a member of this favored section, he believed that he could confide in the director about anything and be assisted. He thought the director cared about him as well as everyone else in the organization. I thought this as did most people in the group.

I learned otherwise.

Ted chose a day when I was working in the band classroom for some reason to come in and state he needed to speak with the director. I told him that Mr. Smith (also not his real name) usually came in around a certain time to check on things. Ted asked if he could wait in an adjacent practice room and if I would tell Mr. Smith that he was there to see him. No problem. This happened on occasion where a student would want to see the director out of class time, especially during one of the lunch periods. So, Ted went into the room and I continued with my usual routine of setting up for band later in the day and making certain music was in each folder if new music was being assigned.

Mr. Smith came in and I told him that Ted was waiting to talk with him. Mr. Smith went into the practice room. A few minutes later, he stuck his head out and asked me to get another teacher or principal to help him. As odd of a request that it was, I did so. When I returned, I heard the sound of glass shattering from within the practice room. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Smith came out and returned rather quickly with the school’s security person. Soon, the janitor arrived as Mr. Smith, the security person, and Ted, who was now wearing handcuffs, were leaving the room. I could smell alcohol coming from the room. Ted had gone into the room to drink. But it was more than that. Ted came asking Mr. Smith for help. Rather than attempt to help him, Mr. Smith chose to only see that Ted brought alcohol into the school and see that he was disciplined for this illegal act. I’m certain that Mr. Smith may have thought he was helping, but what Ted needed was someone to listen to him. Mr. Smith did not have the time to do that.

A couple of days later, Ted committed suicide with a gun while sitting in his car in a rural area of the county. I had asked Mr. Smith if Ted had said anything about wanting to do this, but Mr. Smith ignored my question. He also showed little remorse for Ted. At that point, I decided that if I ever became a teacher that I would never allow a student, if I could help it, to feel as if at least one person in their life cared.

Fast forward a couple of years when the movie “Dead Poets Society” came out. In that movie, Robin Williams played an English teacher by the name of Mr. Keating. In this role, he portrayed a teacher who cared about his students beyond the book knowledge of the subject he taught. He cared about them as people. He wanted them to think for themselves and live their lives for themselves. In this movie, a student commits suicide and the administration of the school, after coercing a few students, pin part of the blame on Mr. Keating. The final scene shows Mr. Keating cleaning out his belongings from the room as class is being conducted by the head dean. As he starts to leave, one of the most shy students stands on his desk and calls to Mr. Keating with the words from the Walt Whitman poem, “O Captain, my Captain.” Mr. Keating turns to find this student and a number of others also standing upon their desks and calling out the same words. His words to them were, “Thank you, boys.” He did what every good teacher sets out to do with their students, teach them to think for themselves as well as learn the subject. Beyond that, teach them to stand up for what is right and to learn about themselves as much or even more than the subject being taught.

I know this was simply a role that Mr. Williams played, yet there seemed to be something in his eyes that showed he too, outside of the role, cared about people. I wanted to become a teacher like that. I also became an English teacher. In some ways, I hope I was a teacher like that for my students. One who cared about them outside the classroom and whom they knew would be there to listen to them for more than just my subject.

Robin Williams was a great comedian. He was also a father and a humanitarian. The Armed Forces of the United States acknowledged how he brought laughter to troops asking nothing in return. His involvement with the St. Jude’s Research Hospital for Children is evident, even in one of the roles he played when he portrayed the real person Patch Adams in the movie of the same title. Always in his eyes there seemed to be this loneliness or sadness of a sort. Perhaps he wanted to make the world laugh, but realized that those who wish to make the world feel pain outnumber the abilities of just one man. I’ll remember him as a man who made me laugh, cry, and think about life a bit more deeply. I’ll also remember him as the man who helped me find my calling to teach, if even for a short while.

May he rest in peace and bring laughter to the hereafter.

Thank you, Robin Williams. For everything you did and everything you left us.

Peace.

Homeschooling is not a Panacea

A friend of mine recently posted an article expounding the merits of homeschooling. The article states that children who are homeschooled are more intelligent and creative than their public schooled counterparts. I respect that some people choose to home school their children. If they have the financial means and the ability to teach their own children, then so be it. However, to demonize public education as stifling the creativity and intelligence of children is a travesty. It is also not a fair comparison, as public schools must educate all children regardless of socioeconomic background and preparedness for school.

In sort, public education is what the students and parents make it to be.

Yes, there are teachers who have given up trying to teach for the sake of passing on knowledge and have succumbed to teaching to the test. They have become robotic rather than creative and would rather churn out test-taking automatons and remain employed rather than rage against the system and demand more of themselves and their students. There are even teachers who are demonized for having advised their students not to perform well on pre-tests so that their test scores will increase on the post-test so that they, the teacher, can remain employed the following year. (A trend that will grow with more and more high stakes testing and teacher pay/performance based solely on test data. And, yes, it happens everywhere and even with administrator approval so long as the teacher does not get caught. If that occurs, then the teacher is left alone to suffer the consequences and the administrator acts shocked at the suggestion. How to I know this? I witnessed it on a daily basis as a teacher when the idea of pre-testing and post-testing came out in my former district).

Homeschooled students may progress at a rapid rate because they can specialize in certain areas where they are strongest and there are fewer distractions. However, they must learn to live and work with others who are not family members nor are like them socioeconomically, racially, or theologically. This cannot happen in the sheltered environment of a home school situation unless the parents intentionally expose them to people and situations that are not like them. This rarely happens. How do they learn to date without there being others to practice the rituals of dating and human relations? Some do, with struggles in learning, and some never learn this.

Humans are social animals. Without that socialization comes a myriad of issues from simple isolation to dangerous tendencies that go unnoticed until the stresses of life overwhelm the student and cause him or her pain beyond anything he or she has experienced in the safe confines of the sheltered home school environment.

No, homeschooling is not the answer nor is it the panacea that some make it out to be. It is taking a malleable, sentient being and placing their potential academically and socially in a box their parents determine is safe or within the parameters of what the parent wants rather than what the child or future society may need.

Public schools need to be fully funded with good, current textbooks and have classes taught by teachers who love their subject and the students whom they teach as if they were their own children. Public schools need to allow teachers to teach their subjects without worrying about their jobs. Public schools need to trust that teachers will do everything possible to help their students learn the subject matter as well as a bit about themselves. Public schools need to pay their teachers a living wage as well as a wage that rewards teachers for obtaining higher degrees rather than higher test scores. Public schools need technology that is up-to-date and relevant for their students.

U.S.A.–Bought and Paid for

Over 300,000 people are unable to drink or bathe in water contaminated by a chemical spill by a company whose spokesperson does not want to answer for their crime against nature and the people.

Politicians, many of whom are funded by wealthy corporations, make decisions that negatively affect thousands of people who are poor, under-educated, unemployed, and minorities or considered outside the norm, yet are re-elected by pandering to emotional causes such as abortion or gun control.

Massive political lobbies, wealthy individuals, and wealthy corporations control politics at all levels so that they continue to get wealthier while most Americans get poorer and become trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty.

The United States of America has changed from the Land of Opportunity to the Land of Greed and Plutocracy. We are no longer governed under the principles of being governed of the people, by the people, and for the people. We have allowed our country to be governed by the wealthy for the wealthy and to hell with anyone who is not lucky enough to make it to the top 1% in wealth. Face it, America is bought and paid for by these wealthy individuals, corporations, and special interest groups. We have allowed this to happen through being brainwashed into thinking that big business cares about the well-being of our nation.

We have been duped into believing that paying the lowest price is always the best way to go. It is the best way to go, for the corporate executives that know those cheap products we consume will need to be replaced shortly because they are of cheap quality. These corporations have moved the jobs out of our country to save money rather than keep them here and help our economy by creating jobs. What they are creating is more wealth for the executives since they continue to lay-off workers and/or move more jobs overseas. They fight against unions claiming they cost jobs because they exist to make working conditions better for the worker rather than the executive. They fight against affordable healthcare because they may lose some profit when they care for their employees needs by spending a little extra on insurance for them. They want fewer regulations claiming it will save or create jobs, yet refuse to admit that fewer regulations means causing environmental and human disasters that will kill people, some in time and others more immediately.

We shop at stores that are filled with junk at affordable prices that we do not need because they have undercut the local shops and sent them out of business. We are made to believe that these store care since they donate a pittance to the local schools or churches. However, we fail to see how much their executives make on the backs of their workers through low wages, no benefits, and fewer hours.

We dine on fast food because we are indoctrinated into it as children as the chain restaurants show cartoon characters who lead us into the world of low quality, calorie and chemically laden foods that are killing us physically, but our wallets still have some cash and we needed to do nothing to get the food but pull through the drive through or order it over our phones and computers. We refuse to see that the cheap food comes at a cost to our health and the ability of people to make a decent living, as the wages in these jobs are low as well as the skills needed to perform them.

We have sat by idly as we have elected people who care more about their next campaign than the people who elect them, except when it comes around to election time. Then, they drag out sound bites paid for by wealthy donors to scare us into believing our rights will be infringed if we elect those “liberals”. Ironically, it is those politicians who are sucking the lifeblood out of our country and our democracy as they pander to the chemical companies who now are in the business of selling genetically enhanced seeds to our farmers and to the oil companies who find new ways of polluting our natural resources rather than clean ways to provide energy that will save both lives and money.

It is time for people who truly care about America to stand up and say enough is enough!

It is time for real Americans to perform an election-driven revolution and unseat the greedy from office and put people into elected positions who will perform the will of the people with openness and honesty. People who will create laws that benefit all rather than the few. Politicians who will raise taxes on those who can afford to pay more and lessen the tax burden on those who cannot. Politicians who are statesmen rather than puppets. Politicians who will do more than promise a better America.

It is time for real Americans to stop patronizing the big box stores and shop locally at stores owned and ran by their neighbors instead of the distant corporations.

It is time for real Americans to realize that value means more than price. Paying a little more for a quality product is worth it in the long run. Putting fellow Americans to work is better than allowing corporations to move their business overseas.

It is time for real Americans to stand up, realize, and demand healthcare for all so that more people can work and contribute to the economy rather than suffer from illnesses and have to work simply to pay their medical bills.

It is time for real Americans to demand regulations on corporations that will protect the welfare of the people and the environment. We only have one earth and

It is time for real Americans to demand that our schools teach usable knowledge rather than teach so that students can pass a test. Bring back vocational courses so that those who want to work in a trade have the ability to learn that trade. With this comes the creation of jobs here for these students after they graduate rather than allowing corporations to move those jobs elsewhere.

Book Promotion

*****Update: I am in the process of revising and renaming my book in order to improve sales and visibility, hopefully. The new title will be “The High School Student’s Guide to life AFTER High School–College and Post-High School. It is still available on Kindle and through Amazon at the reasonable prices of the first edition since I really believe that all students need an affordable book to help them, their parents, and teachers as they navigate their way to college or other post-high school education******

I am not the best at self-promotion, but I am posting this blog entry to promote my first book. It is titled, Professor Otter’s High School Student’s Guide to Life AFTER High School–College and Post-High School. I wrote this book based on my professional experiences as a high school and community college English teacher. I had many students who were the first in their families to attend or even think about attending college. They would talk to their guidance counselors, who were helpful, but were burdened by having to handle all the testing, scheduling, and emotional assistance issues students had.

I wrote this guide in a simple and direct manner to make facilitate clarity. Most chapters have questions at the end to assist potential college/technical college students in their search for colleges/technical colleges as well as ways to succeed once they get to their school. There is an additional chapter written for non-traditional students who are returning to school. As someone who earned his degrees while having to work full time, I understand the challenges of balancing work and school both as an undergraduate and as a graduate students with a job and a family.

I have set the price as affordable as possible so that students can purchase it easily regardless of family financial situation. It is available on Kindle ($2.99) through Amazon as well as a paperback book through Amazon ($5.99). The ISBN numbers for the book are: ISBN-13: 978-1491242971 and ISBN-10: 1491242973. It can be ordered by going to Amazon.com in either Kindle or paperback format.

I am also available to speak with groups of parents and students about the path from high school to college or technical college.

What’s Happening to Our Country?

Events unfolding and having already unfolded in the United States cause me, and I am certain others as well, great concern as to where our country is heading. The horrible racist rants against the recently crowned Miss America. The racist rants against anyone who is not white and sings our national anthem. The recent shootings at the Navy base in Washington, D.C. The proliferation of weapons, particularly guns and automatic rifle.  The lack of funding for social programs such as aid for children and education. The attack on education and classroom curriculum, especially in the area of science. The actions of one political party to hold our country hostage through blocking all efforts to create a budget as well as not allowing for universal healthcare. The attacks on women concerning healthcare that is particular for them. All of these things and more are causes of concern about where our country is heading.

What happened to the United States as a melting pot for all of us to become one? E Pluribus Unum.

Excuses are being made that the rampant racism is due to whites being tired of having to take a backseat to other races. I believe it is due more to some whites, particularly the narrow-minded and socially isolated ones, finally realizing that they are no longer comprise the majority of the people in the United States. This scares some of them, as they have never needed to learn about other cultures. One of the pillars of prejudice is ignorance. It is easier for some people to hate rather than branch out of their comfort zones to embrace cultures different from theirs. Sometimes they go as far to accuse people who do not look like them as being foreigners and even terrorists, even though those people were born in the United States and have been nothing but good citizens.

A case in point is the recently crowned Miss America, Miss Nina Davuluri of New York. She is an American whose parents immigrated, prior to her birth, from India. She is an intelligent and beautiful woman. However, at the announcement of her as Miss America, there were hundreds of racist comments calling her things like “Miss Terrorist”, “Miss 7-11”, “a foreigner”, “Miss Arab”, etcetera. These comments come because she is not Caucasian and she now represents our country for the year to come at pageants, especially the Miss Universe pageant.

Since when did a person’s skin color dictate their nationality? The last I heard anything like this was the idea of the master Aryan race promoted by the Nazis. Is our country coming to this? We have been bombarded for the past five plus years by the political “birthers” who accuse our president of not being an American due to his skin color and that his biological father was from Kenya, yet our president was born in the State of Hawaii and that has been proved countless times including through the release of his birth certificate by that state. Yet, there are those who perpetuate his not being a “real” American.

A funny term, “real” American. What is a real American? For all sake of argument, the closest anyone comes to being a real American are the Native Americans who we have relegated to being second-class citizens through broken treaties and forced moves to reservations. Americans are a mixed bag of different races, cultures, religions, lifestyles, and such. We come from all parts of the world. Our ancestors came from all parts of the world. Over time, the cultures and races started to mix. Therefore, there is no litmus test for who is and who is not a true American, except for being those who were born here and those who immigrated to the United States and have worked for citizenship.

We should be past actions that raise up the ghosts of the era prior to the Civil Rights actions of the 1960s and 1970s. If a closer look is taken, though, it can be seen we have a long way yet to go before we get to where we should be when it comes to how we relate to one another.

The terrible shootings that occurred at the Navy base in Washington, D.C. serve as another cause for concern on two levels. The first is the proliferation of handguns and automatic weapons backed by the politically powerful National Rifle Association and their paid politicians who attempt to wrap themselves up in the second amendment of the Constitution as their reason for that proliferation. The second amendment calls for a “well-regulated militia”, not a well-armed, untrained bunch of gun nuts who own any type of firearm ever made. There is no need for private citizens to own automatic or semi-automatic weapons. If the argument is that they hunt with them, then those people seriously need to consider hunting lessons. If you cannot hit a deer with a regular shotgun, then you are a really bad shot and a hazard to society.

Along these same lines, what is wrong with having background checks and registration of individuals who purchase firearms? The argument backed by the NRA claims the registration of firearms is a way for the government to know who has what type and how many weapons and will use that to confiscate those weapons from law-abiding gun owners. That argument is egregious at best.

First, the United States Armed Forces are better armed than any gun owner can be. If the government wanted to take your guns, then they could do so quite easily regardless of whether you have registered them or not.

Second, if the gun owners are law abiding, then they should want someone aside from themselves to have a record of what they own in the event of someone stealing their weapon and using it to commit a crime. If the law-abiding gun owner notices his or her weapon is missing, they can report it to protect themselves from being accused of the crime. If they sell it, then they can switch registration to the buyer much like is done when a car is purchased and the registration is switched. It is a way to protect the gun owner rather than a potential way to punish them.

Background checks for all weapons purchases are to protect people, not to harm them. The argument is made that it is an invasion of privacy to check the criminal and mental health background of a person who purchases a weapon. How much sense does that really make? If a person is a criminal or is mentally unstable, then why should they be able legally to purchase any weapon? It would make it a great deal safer if certain people never owned firearms. Might they still be able to obtain them illegally? Yes, but those weapons either likely would be stolen (and have been reported as such through registration) or brought into our country illegally.

The second point the shooting brings up is the lack of care for veterans who suffered emotional and psychological damage while serving our country in the Armed Services. We are willing to send troops to fight, but not to fund the care they need when they return, unless their wounds are physical in nature. That is ludicrous! I covered this a little while ago in another blog post, but it bears mentioning once again. We need to provide psychological assistance for our veterans as well as physical assistance for them. There are thousands of people who are returning to our country who witnessed atrocities that have left them scarred for life psychologically and they need care for those scars. Without that care, some may become a danger to society through no fault of their own. It is shameful that we can allocate money to send our young men and women to war, but we cannot afford to assist them when they come home shattered in more than a physical manner.

Not funding social programs harms our country deeply and creates future problems that arise, but are ignored in the present. Recently, legislation that traditionally allocates funds for food stamps held cuts to that program, including to the SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Food Program) program. This affects primarily those who have children, are elderly, or are disabled. The number of Americans affected by this could be well over 300,000. It is simply wrong to deny the ability to eat to the old, the infirm, and to children. It is a heartless and callous act taken by those who have against those who have nothing. The excuse is that the program needs fixed, as there are people who take advantage of the system. There are corporations and wealthy who take advantage of the tax system, but the politicians who receive money from them do not seem to care about that very much and would rather attack the elderly, the disabled, and children.

Along this same vein is funding education. While most education funding comes from individual states, the federal government supplements that funding though tax dollars as well. However, the funding to education has decreased significantly over the years at both the federal and state levels. There are schools that have outdated textbooks and buildings that are falling apart. The solution that some politicians are advocating is to privatize our schools and run them like businesses. That is a recipe for disaster. Unlike public education that is free and obtainable for all children, private schools are run like a business. Are there protections for students who do not test well or for whom the standard format of school does not work? Doubtful. The United States needs a strong and free public educational system that treats all students equally and affords everyone with a chance to succeed rather than a select few. As citizens, whether we have children in the schools or not, we need to demand that our schools be funded and should be happy to pay our taxes to make it so.

Within education, there is an attack against sound scientific education being waged by those who believe that our schools should teach a curriculum that is based upon the Christian bible, especially when it comes to science. The advocates for this claim that Creationism needs to be taught alongside Evolution. Creationism has no part in a public school as it is based on faith rather than on the logic of science. If parents want their children to learn the story of creation as told by the Christian scriptures, then they should attend a church and have their children enrolled in a Sunday school class to learn it, not in a public classroom where there are children from different backgrounds and religious preferences. That simply falls under the separation of Church and State guaranteed by the Constitution.

Our country has been held hostage for the past few years by a faction within one of the political parties that wants to cut government funding to its bare bones. They want extremely low taxes and fewer regulations in order to save taxpayer money. Sounds great on the surface, but it is not practical in reality. No one wants to pay more taxes. No one likes to pay taxes. Neither of these are arguable statements. However, if we want safe roads and bridges, good schools, to be protected from enemies without and within, fire and police protection, and a myriad of other items provided by our government, then we need to pay taxes for them. Basic high school government and economics dictates this as needed by a government like ours.

The reality of this faction is that they want to create a utopia for the wealthy on the backs of everyone else. They want the wealthiest to pay less and make the argument that this will create jobs. It has not yet, nor will it ever do so. By having the wealthy pay less, all that is being done is making them wealthier while those who are not wealthy get poorer as a result. Yes, I know this is a rather simplistic view and economics are far more complicated, but this is the agenda in a nutshell that is being shoved down the throats of the American public by this radical political faction. We need to stand up to this faction and the elected officials who are being paid off by the select few and demand that the wealthy pay more in taxes. We need to demand a budget be passed that is fair to all while also reducing the deficit in manageable increments that do not cause harm to the most vulnerable in our society.

Another one of the major reasons why this particular political faction wants to cripple the government has to do with the Affordable Care Act sometimes called Obamacare. They make comments that it will cause insurance premiums to cost more and that people will be denied basic medical services. Most of the information I have read, even from independent sources, state that it will actually save money and more people will have access to care. While it may be true that certain procedures may be delayed in being performed, all should have equal access and be cared for even better than is now available. Those against universal healthcare primarily are so due to it leveling the playing field for all Americans and that those who earn more will fund the care of those who earn less. I find it ironic that many of those against universal healthcare claim to be Christians as well since Jesus healed all people and taught that humans were to love and care for one another. For them to be against universal healthcare that would benefit so many people seems rather hypocritical.

Of particular concern in the realm of healthcare is how much a certain faction is bent on limiting the access women have to healthcare. There are Planned Parenthood and other clinics that are geared toward women’s health issues that are closing down for lack of funding all due to this particular factions attitude toward abortion and access to birth control. Seems odd that this faction also wants a smaller government, but they want to regulate a very personal part of a woman’s life. It should not be surprising that the majority of these people calling for limits in birth control and contraceptives are males, as most males want the ability to procreate until the cows come home. If they had to endure the pregnancy and delivery, then they might think otherwise. (In addition, I say this as a male, by the way). If they truly care about women, not to mention potential children, then they should wholeheartedly back these clinics and access to care for women in particular. As far as the issue of abortion, it is the woman’s decision. The government has no right to regulate moral choices for people’s personal lives so long as they do not harm other beings that are able to live outside the womb.

All these things being said, it is a difficult time to be an American who has a conscience and who engages in thought deeper than what is expected by certain news outlets. We need, as a country, to join with one another and reach out across racial, ethnic, gender, and religious barriers and embrace our diversity in a grand fashion to drown out the racist rants of the few. We need, as a country, to demand strong gun laws to include mandatory background checks and possibly even psychological testing before weapons are allowed to be bought and sold. We need, as a country, to adequately fund education and social programs that assist all Americans and not count the cost as a negative, but as a positive as we can rest assured that we are caring for our neighbors and creating a healthier and happier citizenry. We need, as a country, to demand that our elected officials represent us and not special interests. We need, as a county, to demand that our elected officials pass a budget that helps all people and decreases the deficit in a systematic and responsible manner that does no harm to those who are in need of assistance to survive. We need, as a country, to demand that all people be given access to affordable healthcare regardless of their station in life. We need, as a country, to demand that government stop trying to regulate what goes on in a person’s bedroom or with their bodies.

I love my country, but shake my head in disbelief at the actions going on in it. Maybe I should seriously consider running for public office. Hmmm…

On this date…

As I now join in with the sentiment bandwagon on this the 11th of September 2013, I am lost in rather non-flag waving thoughts. Before I get to those, I will recount where I was on this date in 2001.

I was teaching 8th grade English at Denn John Middle School in Kissimmee, Florida. It was my first teaching assignment in Florida and, to be honest, it was a tough school in which to teach when it comes to the baggage the student body had—low socioeconomic level, absentee and abusive parents, etc. The majority of the students were on free or reduced lunch. Some even had children of their own. Rough place to teach. However, I loved my students. Sure, there were the routine class clowns and gang wannabes, but overall, these kids knew that if they wanted out of their current situation they needed to work for it. I digress.

I cannot recall if it was during my planning or when I was finishing lunch as I usually kept in my classroom avoiding the lunchroom gossip and peer gripe sessions. What I do recall well was that when word came out about the events unfolding in NY, PA, and DC/VA, we were advised NOT to speak about the events with our students and to act as if nothing unusual occurred. Stay the course, to put it another way. However, there were a couple of problems with keeping the status quo and obeying that order from administration.

The first problem was that the kids already either heard a little about it or saw teachers weeping and heard them talking in hushed tones about what was happening. Students are not idiots, they can sense when something is not right. Unfortunately, my administrators either feared mass panic or who knows what else if we talked about it.

The second problem was that many of the students at this school had relatives either in New York City in particular and/or were from there themselves. While the majority of the students were Hispanic, from primarily the Caribbean, they either passed through New York on their way back south to Florida or had relatives who had stayed in New York. As such, it did not surprise me when students entered my classroom clamoring with questions and fraught with emotions. Some were eerily silent. There was no way they could focus on class. They knew what happened from either having overheard it or through text messages they received from family.

The maelstrom of panic was already thick in the air; therefore, I did what any self-respecting real educator would do.

We talked about it.

As we talked, announcements came either by the intercom system or through runners to the classrooms stating parents were arriving to pick up their students. As classes changed, we kept talking through it as necessary. Some students asked to come back to my room so they could feel safe and discuss what they were feeling rather than try to focus on classroom work and pretend all was the same it had been when they arrived at school that morning.
Many students expressed fears that our area would be attacked since it was a heavy tourist area and thus a prime target. I assured them as best I could that we were safe and would remain so and that our government would protect us. I heard stories about their lives and their families. Even those not from the areas attacked felt worried as they had loved ones in the Armed Forces and were concerned that they would have to go to war somewhere or that war was being waged in our own country. Again, as we talked through it, I noticed students starting to calm down more and more rather than panic.

The administration gave me a stern verbal reprimand when school was over for the day. The amusing part was that in the days that followed, many students and parents thanked me for listening to them or their students and not discounting their feelings or trying to make them focus on academics when clearly they could not.

That day changed America. It changed the lives of my students. It changed be a bit as well. I defied my administration for the sake of my students. While they considered me less than professional for doing so, I was probably more professional at that point and beyond than I was before when it came to teaching.

I made the choice to allow the students to see me as a human being rather than a cold professional who could not be flexible or caring enough to listen to them, to their fears. Was my behavior somewhat insubordinate? Yes, it was. I defied a direct order from my principal. Do I regret doing it? Hell, no!

Too many teachers do not allow themselves to be themselves around their students. They see the job and the professionalism of that job, but lose track of the humanity that is an overreaching important component of being a teacher. When a teacher lacks empathy and chooses only to focus on the academics, then they lose having a relationship with their students that makes those students want to succeed, even want to please the teacher because they know the teacher is fully invested in them as people first and students next. Teachers need to be humans first, then teachers. It is not being unprofessional unless the teacher abuses the trust that builds with having a good rapport with his or her students.

Now, for the part where I may seem less that patriotic about this day. Xenophobes, please feel free to stop reading at this point.

Okay. Now, for those of you still with me, I will proceed.

This is not a national holiday.

There is no Patriot Day authorized by Congress.

It is a day of Remembrance. Cowards bent on destroying us as a nation attacked our country.

Notice, I did not call their religion or nationality into this discussion. These people were terrorists. Plain and simple. They just so happened to be from the Middle East and just so happened to be followers of Islam. Too many people mention their religion or cultural background first and make it seem like people from their religion or cultural background are all terrorists bent on the destruction of the United States or the West in general. There are even a few wingnuts out there who threaten to burn the Koran or who terrorize people from the Middle East (or who look like they are from the Middle East), especially on this day.

This is completely unacceptable. More than that, it fails to recognize that we have also been the perpetrators of what should be seen as terrorist acts in the past in order to get what we wanted for our country.

What? The United States engaged in terrorism?!? No! Never!

Tell that to the Native Americans who lived here before our forbears arrived on the North American continent. Our government, in order to expand our territories and gain wealth that was on Native American lands, engaged in acts of terrorism against the Native Americans. There are incidents of giving smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans, the infamous Trail of Tears, and the forced assimilation of Native Americans including the taking of Native American children from their parents and placing them in boarding schools to teach away their culture. How about the involuntary sterilizations of Native American women that took place between the 1930s and 1970s? How about the continued suffering of Native Americans on reservations that have deplorable living conditions? These atrocities continue to this day, albeit on a smaller scale than deliberate murder of innocent people.

How can we as a country dare to flex our supposed grand morals at a country such as Syria with regard to its government’s use of chemical weapons to exterminate innocent people while ignoring our own past? How can we, as a supposed Christian nation, have people here who say that only other religions and/or cultures are brutal toward others and ours is not? The answer is simple. Ignorance coupled with an unwavering belief that we are somehow better than everyone else. We are not. We are humans too. Just like I mentioned earlier, we need to look on the world as human beings first, then as Americans or else we are doomed to do the same atrocities yet claim they are justified because it is for our good.

Along with this is that too many fail to realize that, like so many other things that happen to our country or the world, we helped to cause the animosity that brought about the tragedy. When the Russians attempted to defeat the Afghan mujahedeen, we supplied the mujahedeen with weapons and training to defeat them. We gave monetary aid to the Afghan people in exchange for their helping us to keep Communism from spreading. When the Russians left, so did we, to an extent. Even one of the major players in the aid to Afghanistan, Charlie Wilson, warned that we needed to help rebuild the country. Instead, we continued to fund the mujahedeen until they defeated the government that the Soviets left in place. The problem was that the mujahedeen were often worse than the Soviet-backed government that was in place. The mujahedeen that were allied with the more extreme Pashtun from Pakistan soon formed what became known as the Taliban who promised to bring order to Afghanistan. The United States, as the mujahedeen and warlords within Afghanistan continued to battle with one another, decided to stop aid. The Taliban then imposed strict Islamic law and the rest led to Bin Laden to take exile there and set up al-Qaeda.

Through our interference with regional matters and wanting to stop the spread of Communism, we helped to bring about the very enemy that attacked us.

Now, as we stand on the cusp of a possible conflict with Syria, we must ask ourselves if it is worth it. Yes, the international community must find a way to respond to the Syrian government’s slaughter of innocent people. However, before we proceed, we need to look at our internal and external history to prevent even further and possibly more destructive acts of terrorism against us or anyone in the world for that matter.

Finally, on this day that we stop to remember the heinous act that occurred on our soil, we need to step out of our comfort zone and take a look at all the acts of terrorism that occur on a daily basis in the world. Daily, there are innocent people across the world suffering from acts of terrorism-both domestic and foreign-we need to remember them as well. From the child who fears being discovered going to school for she is not allowed to do so under her country’s law, to the children who are forced in marriage across the world or into the world of human trafficking. We need to remember Columbine. We need to remember those killed in Oklahoma City by a domestic terrorist. We need to remember those killed at Fort Hood. We need to remember the people in the theater in Colorado. We need to remember the children at Sandy Hook Elementary. These are terrorist acts as well.

Terrorism, as defined by Merriam-Webster as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion”. It further elaborates through the Concise Encyclopedia by stating it is:

Systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. It has been used throughout history by political organizations of both the left and the right, by nationalist and ethnic groups, and by revolutionaries. Although usually thought of as a means of destabilizing or overthrowing existing political institutions, terror also has been employed by governments against their own people to suppress dissent; examples include the reigns of certain Roman emperors, the French Revolution, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and Argentina during the “dirty war” of the 1970s.

Rather than just focus on the act of terrorism that occurred to us on this date in 2001; we need to see the other acts of terrorism that occur each day—domestic and foreign—and work to end acts of terrorism and bring about a more peaceful world.

Common Core and Issues Surrounding it

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the term standard means, “something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example” (Merriam-Webster). Recently, 45 states have chosen to adopt standards known as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) which are, according to the Common Core website, meant to “establish what students need to learn, but they do not dictate how teachers should teach” (Common Core). The website continues by stating that educators “will continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms” and that “no state in the country was asked to lower their standards for their students in adopting the Common Core” (Common Core).

Sounds good, right? The idea of having students in our nation’s schools be able to move from state to state both while in school and after graduation and having learned basically the same content at relatively the same pace as one another would level the playing field a great deal. After all, having taught in Florida, I recall having honors students who moved to states such as Wisconsin communicate with me that they were 2-3 years behind their classmates after they moved. A set of national standards might have leveled that playing field and eased the transition.The implementation of a national set of standards is a noble idea. However, like anything else politicians and corporations get their hands on; it has surfaced as something far more sinister and damaging to our nation’s students.

Corporations bent on making more money have taken the standards and turned them into a profit machine as they churn out textbooks they feel are aligned with the standards as well as scripted lessons that many teachers are now being forced to use rather than being able to “continue to devise lesson plans and tailor instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms” (Common Core). These same companies have also received contracts to produce the tests for these standards. They have taken a great idea and are making millions off it at the cost of the education of our children. The standards were not created to be moneymakers, but education changers.

Politicians, especially those bent on cutting money from education and who stand to profit from donations they receive from the corporations as well as charter schools run by corporations, have also jumped onto the bastardization of the Common Core State Standards by making certain they are tied to high stakes testing which, in turn, is tied to both education funding and teacher salaries and even their jobs. Many states are creating legislation that penalizes a teacher if his or her students do not pass these tests, some even to the point of the teacher being rated ineffective and losing his or her job. These politicians are advocating more charter schools, which are businesses in school’s clothing, that are either not subject to the same standards or testing as the public schools are as well as being free to choose which students attend them and which do not. Many of these charter schools are staffed by people who have had only 5 days training prior to their entering a classroom and being granted the title of teacher. Many do not even teach a subject where they have any prior knowledge of it.

Is this what we want for our children? Is this actually going to help our children to learn and retain knowledge that will train them for productive lives after high school? It is going to help us close the perceived education gap between the United States and the world? Sadly, it is not. By tying the standards to high stakes tests that penalize teachers and demoralize students, it is more of the same for our education system. We are training test takers rather than thinkers. We are mapping curriculum so that what our students are supposed to be learning is covered rather than learned. Teaching is an art form. Teaching is a vocation. People who become teachers are not the same as those who choose to become business people because teaching is not a business and should not be treated as such.

An additional problem with the Common Core State Standards is that they were implemented too early and without enough input from teachers from all grade levels. Yes, there were select groups of teachers and administrators who had input on the standards. Unfortunately, many of those teachers were the same ones who implemented the individual state tests that have beleaguered students in the past. There are standards that are inadequate as well as some that are simply too high for students at the grade level to reach from a developmental standpoint. They need fixed, but can only be fixed appropriately with teacher input from a wide range of teachers.

Another issue with the implementation of the CCSS is that, rather than being used as models or examples of what is expected, they are being seen as hard and fast rules for educating our students. In doing so, this leaves our nation’s special education and English learner student populations at a great disadvantage. It also works on a principle that is inhumane as it assumes that every student learns at the same pace and in the same way. Students are human as we all are. Even more, they are developmentally at different stages even if they share the same chronological age as their peers. To have the standards enforced with such rigidity is completely against education. It is unfair to students and to teachers. It cannot be expected that a student who is able to read at the sixth grade level as a tenth grader can be able to suddenly read at the tenth grade level just because the standards say he or she should be at the tenth grade level.

Is there a solution? Yes. The CCSS need to be rethought and reworked by teachers at every level and from schools that model the true economic disparity of our country. Once they are re-worked, they need to be brought out as guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. They should never be tied to high stakes standardized testing. There is a good chance if that were to happen, then they would be more beneficial to our children.
If there are any real crises in education, they stem from larger societal problems that no amount of education reform or standards can repair. What needs repaired are the widespread issues with poverty, drugs, lack of affordable housing, parental involvement, and lack of good jobs. If those were fixed, then there is a good chance that what is a perceived crisis in education would also become outdated.