tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50323112136342278702024-02-20T20:51:25.014-05:00drjamesarnold.com To subscribe enter your email and click, "submit".Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-86722369590274238032022-10-10T08:29:00.000-04:002022-10-10T12:55:13.537-04:00Civility Unchained<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Have you noticed a general lack of civility lately in society as a whole and in people in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">general? I have, in myself and in others. Civil behaviors come in a variety of forms, and something as small as waving in a friendly manner to the person that let you merge into traffic or holding a door for the person or family behind you can make a world of difference - more than you might think - in providing a positive moment in a day that, for someone else, might not be going so well. Civility is the grease that allows society to operate effectively, without offensive language, confrontation and angry displays of ignorance.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-735f5201-7fff-ebe8-26ba-b2f82c5528f6"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I think there are several causes for the growth of incivility, and all are at least tangentially</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">related. One of the primary causes is social media and the amount of time we all spend inside</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that imaginary shell. Time spent in SM is not commensurate with family time, no matter how</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">many baby pictures or wedding pictures or trip pictures or food pictures you like or love, and we</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">often confuse our occasional distaste of the messy reality of family life with a preference for the</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">false order and implied happiness of that in SM. If all we see from our cousin is happy pictures and smiling faces and interesting places it gives us a genuinely slanted picture of the cousins’ life, and how everything must be rainbows and hummingbirds and smiles, because nobody ever posts pictures of their toilet leaking or the cobwebs on their ceiling or dust bunnies under the beds, a meal at a bad restaurant, the odor of an overflowing cat box or the fleas and dog hair in their rugs. There is an intentionally false but glowing picture of happiness and flowers and cute little kitties, and nobody sees you throw up after a bad taco or fall down in the bathroom and break an arm trying to put your underwear on. Not unless an evil significant other or a demented sibling posts it, anyway.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The glowing ideal of a beautiful life without pain or adversity is demonstrably false,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">providing an ideal no one can actually recreate because it doesn’t exist in the first place. Those</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">seemingly perfect families and/or lives on SM are like the hopelessly unrealistic ideals of a</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shirley Temple movie, and just about as achievable. The real cost, besides the amount of time</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you spend online scrolling and wishing your life were as perfect as someone else's appears to be, is in the lack of actual human interaction. That interaction is a skill developed over time, and,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like every other human skill, withers and suffers from misuse and lack of use. The more time you spend on social media pretending you are interacting with people the more your actual</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interaction skills suffer and the less human you become. You’ve seen people with no people</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">skills and no good idea about how to respond to questions, observations, greetings, goodbyes or hellos. Teenagers, for example, are by definition, socially awkward and inappropriate on their best days, and any activity that contributes to their further development toward social maladroitism should be avoided as much as possible. Instead, it would seem the socially awkward and inappropriate are multiplying exponentially; at least online.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Online activities also breed the inclination to take advantage of the relative anonymity they</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sometimes provide, and under those conditions people respond more angrily or negatively (or</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">both) than they normally might. Trolls seem to be everywhere; the temptation to argue with people that can’t find out who you are can become an overpowering urge. Fight the inclination to become an ass. Mr. Twain observed (before the internet) “never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” Great advice from a man that never met Mark Zuckerberg. I’m guessing that if your Mama read some of those posts you have written while angry or some of the nasty responses you sent online to some perceived slight or offense you might be sitting in a corner in your parents’ basement with a bar of the little hotel soap duct taped to each finger and one of the big bars of Dial taped to your head to help clean up your nasty synapses and one in your mouth just as a reminder that excessive profanity is a curse and does not demonstrate whatever level of schooling you might have to it’s best advantage.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Arguing online serves no constructive purpose, and responding with anger, no matter the</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">provocation, can only result in an argument with no solution or possibility of resolution. Anger</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is counter-productive and, even though you might see your response as a verbal smackdown for one desperately in need of such, the only purpose you really serve is allowing someone else to trigger (thereby control) your emotions. Surely you could be smarter than that. Sometimes the</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">perfect response is none at all. Think of the masochist that says “beat me, beat me” and the sadist whose reply is “no.” This case might be the only time I have ever recommended a sadistic</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">response as a preferable action.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Like Pavlov’s dogs, we have been trained to respond immediately to the bell, ring or ring tone</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">emitted when our phones or computers receive an incoming call, message, IM, notification or</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">email. The temptation to look is almost overpowering, and only those among us with ingrained</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oppositional defiant disorder or an extremely strong will can defeat the call of the machine to our conditioned reflex, but fight we must if any hope of civility is to be reclaimed. If only we could resist the seemingly irresistible temptation for immediate response to the electronic summons of phone or tablet might we more quickly restore our empathy for the human condition and develop our expertise at human interaction. Notice your own response when any of your electronic devices emanates the siren call of an incoming message; first the eyes dart over to the device, then the irresistible urge to reach for the source to read the vitally important message you have received from the depths of the internet. Perhaps a “sup” from a friend, a heartfelt “where you at?” from a family member, or even the ubiquitous “we are worried your car warranty may have expired.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Susceptible as we are to the pull of an immediate response, our emotions are also affected much more than we realize, and we often think nothing of their effect on our daily lives, demeanor and well-being. Arguments and anger on social media, like tv news, all function to elevate blood pressure, create anxiety and preclude clear, rational thought. Their primary purpose is to create division, argument, outrage and anger because normally rational and at least semi-sane people become irrationally angry at small, though annoyingly repetitive, provocations. Some of the best advice I ever received was to wait at least 24 hours before sending an angry email, making a phone call with a hostile message or quickly answering a negative remark with one in a similar tone. Mama used to say that writing a letter provided a great and almost immediate release for an issue that you allowed to make you angry - as long as you didn’t send it. The same thing applies to texts and emails. Write it, but don’t send it. You get the relief from the anger without the angry response and escalation that always comes after it is sent; just make sure to stay away from that “send” button.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I don’t particularly like the fact that SM has developed algorithms to predict our likes, dislikes and product preferences. How many times have ads mysteriously popped up of something you were thinking about buying? I’m not sure I want any person or machine to know me that well or be able to predict what I will buy, say or do. I’m also sure that those same companies use the same information they have collected on each of us to attempt to influence more than just the way we spend our money. Is that something you are comfortable with? </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have several proposals to do what we can as individuals to begin to work to restore civility in our society. To whit:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1) Put down your cell phone, computer and ipad while eating and/or visiting with others.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turn it down, turn it off, put it on silent or leave it in the other room. Pay attention to</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">your friends, family or associates during the time you have together. Catch up with</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">technology later. I can promise it’s not going away. Yet.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2) Kindness, like anger, is contagious. Kindness is also its own reward, and no reciprocity should be expected. The Golden Rule should always be in effect; you know, the same one we learned in Kindergarten.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3) Anger is always an attempt at manipulation, and does not require a response at all, much less an immediate one. The purpose of anger is ALWAYS to force others into a response, willingly or unwillingly. Avoid being coerced into participation, especially if it’s an activity you don’t believe is right. If you really want to annoy a troll, don’t respond.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4) Look for opportunities to be kind to others, whether acquaintances or not. Buy a bag of pet food for the local pound or animal shelter, buy a meal or a drink or a cupcake for the person behind you in line, pay for someone’s groceries, hold a door, say “How are you?” to someone you don’t know and try to find a chance just to make someone’s day better with a small act of kindness. Be creative. Humanity will thank you, and might even silently applaud.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5) Stop watching the news. Read it on a variety of sites and stop the 30 second video </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bombardment of your sensibilities and testing the limits of your patience. Enticing your anger is not by accident.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6) Limit the videos you watch to those of cats, dogs, humorous people or recipes. You will be happier and a nicer person for doing so.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Civility is not a condition that may be successfully decreed by law or that occurs naturally in society. The conditions that promote civility are individual acts of kindness that occur without coercion or requirement, and do not occur as a condition of personal gain or reward. The judicious application of technology, as opposed to total immersion, might help us all become happier, more productive and more tolerant people, and assist us in relearning how to communicate, socialize and respect our fellow citizens without the religion of division espoused </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">by media, social media and corporate news. Monitor your screen time each day. Your phone will willingly tell you the depths of your addiction. If you haven’t already checked, you will probably be surprised at the amount of time each day you spend staring at a small screen, your head bowed as if in supplication. Do you spend that much time each day with your spouse, children, grandchildren or pet? You already know the answer, don’t you?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Start a trend; be nice and change your life. Focus on people and not an AI. Make it a habit and change the world.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-26369417747656845622022-07-24T16:32:00.000-04:002022-07-24T16:32:12.243-04:00Dammit Boy!<p> I don't usually post stuff from others, but this is from my brother Les. He has what our parents used to call a "smart aleck" sense of humor, or something like that. You can judge for yourself. Names were changed (except for his) to protect the innocent and the guilty.<br /></p><p>Jim Arnold<br /></p><p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-d2cc4731-7fff-9969-2ba1-c10bc61bf1a1" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Dammit Boy!</span></p><br /><p id="docs-internal-guid-d2873011-7fff-83e0-1d6e-0674cd8e16e4" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Names can be confusing. Monikers of all types have been chosen or</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">assigned to people. There are first names, middle names, last names, proper</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">names, given names, nicknames, pet names, aliases as well as derogatory or</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">descriptive names assigned by others or even themselves. Names can be</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">shortened, truncated, even the pronunciation of a name can be altered.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Generally, people accept the name commonly assigned to them by their inner</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">circle of friends and family.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> All of this can cause confusion for a five-year-old boy. I was never the</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">sharpest knife in the drawer anyway. Some sociological interactions escape me.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">At five I tended to answer to whatever I assumed was meant to refer to me. I’ve</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">been referred to as Leslie, Arnold, LT, Lefty and many other things that I will not</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">include and prefer to forget. I remember on occasion when I was young, our</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">home phone would ring indicating an incoming call from an unknown person.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Back then, of course there were no cellphones, this was an event noticed by</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">everyone at home. Anyone within the sound of the ring would automatically look</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">up and often race to be the one who answered. I remember my dad answering</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">several times and all I heard was “There ain’t no Lezlie here” as he slammed the</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">phone into the cradle. He did not tolerate that particular mispronunciation of my</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">name. Unfortunately for me, I never discovered who those calls were from.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> One memorable instance of identity confusion came on my first day of</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">school. We can all remember the excitement and anticipation of the first day at</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">school. At five, you really have no concept of what is or is about to happen. You</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">are told it is time to go to school, so you do. One can never be completely</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">prepared at that youthful age to know what to do or what is expected of you.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">So, I show up to my assigned room and teacher and am immediately</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">directed to a specific seat. It was the second seat from the left front corner on the</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">first row. I naturally assumed that my obvious intelligence and dashing good looks</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">entitled me to be front and center. I was a bit confused why the fatty Susie</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Abernathy was first but who knows? Maybe she has family connections. Nobody</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">liked her and she always smelled like bologna. After all of the desks were</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">populated by new students, our teacher, Miss Buttercup (we ended up having a</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">thing together, her and I) explained that we would stand up one at a time in</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">alphabetical order and tell everyone our name. That explained the thing about</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Susie being first. Susie then stands up, (I’m thinking shut up and sit down fatso - nobody</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">cares), and she shyly proclaimed “I’m Susan Abernathy” in her annoying mousy</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">voice and quickly sat down. My immediate thought was Susan, your name is</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Susie, not Susan you stupid but I recovered quickly knowing my debut as the</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">obvious standout of the crowd was next.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> The anticipation in the room was palpable as I rose gracefully from my</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">desk. I adjusted my stance, stood straight and tall and proudly proclaimed “My</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">name is Dammit Boy Arnold.”</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> There was a moment of stunned silence as this momentous occasion was</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">absorbed by my admirers and even those jealous of my enviable attributions. I</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">smiled knowing that my performance was flawlessly executed. Miss Buttercup</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">was rendered speechless with her mouth open no doubt in awe of the obvious</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">raw talent that she had the honor of witnessing. Miss Buttercup then said “What</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">did you say?”. She obviously wanted to hear my melodious and confident voice</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">again allowing all to enjoy an ovation of my standout performance. I spoke a</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">second time, a little louder thinking she might be hard of hearing and for the</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">benefit of those in the back “My name is Dammit Boy Arnold!”</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Miss Buttercup was, after a moment, able to gather herself and said “Come</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">with me.” She quickly led me out the door and down the hall to the principal’s</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">office no doubt to display my talents to the school Principal Mrs. Ratchet. My</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">admiration for Miss Buttercup grew as I realized her obviously quick ability to</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">identify raw talent. As we walked down the hall, I could only guess what wonders</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">lay in store for me. Would I be asked to speak before the entire student body?</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Would I be referred to Hollywood talent scouts? Was I being moved up to second</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grade? And it all seemed so easy for me. This school thing was going to be a</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">breeze.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Upon entrance to the principal’s office, I was asked to wait while Miss</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Buttercup entered the inner sanctum of Mrs. Ratchet’s private room. The lady at</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">the desk smiled knowingly at me. After a brief moment, I was invited into Mrs.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Ratchet’s personal office. I noticed a gurney being rolled out of what appeared to</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">be a back exit of the office. I only caught what I believe were the feet of someone</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">covered by a white sheet. Immediately to my right was a chair that, in lieu of</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">cushions, had hundreds of spikes sticking up from the seat and back, obviously an</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">expensive artifact from overseas or possibly a family heirloom. Mrs. Ratchet</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">then, exuding authoritativeness, says “What did you say young man?”. I repeated</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">my performance for a third time growing weary of the repetition but</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">understanding the desire someone has to experience the occasion firsthand. She</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">then expressed her intentions to call my parents. I thought silently that it was</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">unnecessary since they were familiar with my admirable characteristics however,</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I just smiled and tried to appear mildly interested. Mrs. Ratchet then invited me</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">to sit in the chair.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> The chair was not that comfortable nor would it be my first choice of</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">seating style. I soon learned that it wasn’t as bad if you didn’t squirm. After not</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">too long a time, I could hear my dad enter the building. Dressed in his full police</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">officer regalia, he had a distinctly familiar sound as he came down the hall. I and</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">my brothers learned that sound to avoid being caught not asleep late at night. He</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">entered the office and using his official policeman voice said “I’m here to see my</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">son”. He appeared in the doorway and immediately upon seeing me he pointed</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">that big bony index finger at me. He used it often to poke me in the chest or</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">forehead. He then said, rather loudly and showing a lack of situational awareness,</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">“DAMMIT BOY”.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Mrs. Ratchet looked at him, Miss Buttercup looked at him, Miss Buttercup</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">and Mrs. Ratchet looked at each other while my dad just stared at me. Adults just</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">never impressed me much.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Miss Buttercup then put her arm around me and we walked slowly back to</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">class. I believe this was the moment when her crush on me was cemented. I</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">would later have to move on from the relationship as I was awarded a higher</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">grade and she, apparently, was not. I always hoped that her scars from</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">disappointment would heal. Sometimes life just isn’t fair.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> As we walked, she explained to me her desire that it would be better if she</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">and the class could address me by my given name Leslie just like my mom does.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">She explained that it would be to everyone’s benefit and avoid undue</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">embarrassment for everyone involved. I agreed as I am generally quite thoughtful</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">and considerate to those less fortunate people around me. I floated down the</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">hallway, my feet never touching the ground. For her, I would remain Leslie.</span></p>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-25747933228853073172022-07-02T14:57:00.000-04:002022-07-02T14:57:46.352-04:00Bush League<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Mama didn’t have much luck growing flowers and plants in the yard. Almost everything she planted, with the exception of the family garden, was dug up, torn apart, eaten or otherwise inhumanely tortured and killed by me, my brothers and our dog. We were allowed an enormous amount of playtime in the yard, and often invented things to do that she may not have approved of if we had thought to ask her before we did them. It was a hard thing to remember, for example, to turn the hose off after it had been turned on, and it was only after a couple of hours that we discovered the mud hole we had accidentally created right where she had just planted gardenias was absolutely perfect for mud wrestling, and we couldn’t resist the temptation. Neither could the dog. Evidently newly planted gardenias come up easily when surrounded by water and a mud wrestling contest, and while she did notice their plight when she thought we had been too quiet for too long and came out to see what we were doing, it was soon forgotten when she had to rinse off our muddy clothes before they went in the washer and us before we went into the tub. By the time she remembered the plants, the dog had successfully chewed them into toothpicks and was rolling in the twigs and leaves that were left. That sort of thing seemed to happen a lot around our house. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Once she bought us one of those little plastic blow up pools. I can see now what she was thinking; she would give us a little outdoor time that meant a little front porch time for her and we would be at least partially clean when it was time to come in. It was a good plan, but adults have forgotten how to think like kids. Adults reason and plan; kids react. We loved the pool, but noticed as the afternoon went on that the sun, even in the pool, was hot, and the pool might work better for us if it was in the shade. It didn’t take much to hold one side of the inflated pool down and let most of the water drain out so we could move it to a cooler and shadier spot and refill it again. Unfortunately, the shady spot we chose was right smack dab on top of the new pansies she had just planted, and they did not survive the ordeal. We felt bad about it, but it wasn’t like we thought the process through with wicked intent, it just seemed to happen because our thinking only went so far and our horticultural responsibility quotient was not very high at that age. Irises, tulips, peonies, day lilies, Four o’clocks, begonias…we could kill almost everything she planted, and her valiant attempts to beautify our yard with something besides us, our cast off clothes and our toys were in vain. Flowers and plants didn’t stand much of a chance against us and the dog.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Now don’t misunderstand; we didn’t set out to kill her plants, it just seemed to happen in such a way and so frequently that it might appear to the untrained eye that we did it deliberately. Once there was a dodgeball game where, in the heat of the moment of trying to kill each other with the ball and not get killed ourselves we didn’t notice the flowers were hit and trampled repeatedly. We recovered; they didn’t. Once we were going to “mow the yard” with Daddy’s roller blade push mower - you know the kind with the curved blades on the front on rollers that later became something we avoided at all costs - and it took at least two of us to push it and we weren’t always looking where we were going. Goodbye peonies.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Like most kids our age and generation, we usually wore as little clothing as possible at every possible opportunity, especially in the Mississippi spring, summer and fall. Underpants or shorts with no shirt was pretty common attire, and if the opportunity presented itself, we were shameless in our nakedness until the neighbors complained. I think most kids are like that until society tricks us into thinking clothes are not optional.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As much as Mama was committed to the Free Range Parenting concept, we were still expected to follow some rules without question, and compliance was not subject to question or delay. When Mama called our name off the back porch, we knew the correct answer was an immediate “Yes Ma’am” and there were consequences for not following through. There were also dire consequences to not remaining within hearing range. Allowing ourselves to wander out of earshot was no excuse, and we learned that the hard way. We also knew that if we heard two names it was a warning shot and we should be moving toward the porch when we yelled our response. If we heard our full names our heads jerked up and we tried quickly to recall anything we might have done that could be blamed on one of the brothers; there was trouble brewing and we had better report in quickly and not run away and hide. We tried running and hiding. Once. That was the first time we learned about the one plant we couldn’t kill. The Chinese privet hedge that became known to us - and many kids of our generation - as the switch tree.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The switch tree is an invasive species (</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lingustrum sinense</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) imported from China and first used in the US, especially the southeastern states, as an ornamental hedge. It grows rapidly, is almost impossible to kill and the seeds from the berries are spread liberally by birds and small animals. The flowers each spring have a cloyingly sweet smell that many children, with good reason, learned to associate with painful lessons in behavior modification. The trunk can grow to several inches in diameter, and is usually surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of shoots that grow rapidly into an almost impenetrable wall. It grows almost as quickly as kudzu, and most southerners were convinced both were created by the devil, Yankees or both. The branches are long and slender, and when the leaves are removed may be used with a painful effect on the bare legs of youngsters that repeatedly fail to follow directions as they learn the intricate steps of the traditional “switch dance.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The first step in the process is learning just how far parents can be pushed. Unfortunately, this is learned through trial and error, the error part coming when you reach the last nerve Mama has and step on it by refusing her instructions for the third or fourth time. It took a lot to get our Mama to that point, and usually we backed away from the danger point when we took note of the inflection in her voice. She was one of those that got quieter as she got mad, and would not raise her voice beyond a certain point. What she did instead was take one of us by the arm and softly say “go get me a switch.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The walk to the switch tree was in reality about 30 feet, but seemed much farther and in kid time took about an hour. The path to the switch tree was definitely near the event horizon of a local black hole in the space/time continuum, and seconds stretched into hours. The deliberations during the walk ranged from running away to joining the army to extreme degree of self pity and and Machiavellian processes for emotional retribution - “they’ll really be sorry when I’m gone” - that lasted up until we reached the shrub itself. It was about 25 feet high and had thousands of small limbs that might serve the behavior correctional purpose, but that was where the deliberations really began. The thought processes involved were akin to the professional deliberations of a Mississippi politician and just as self centered as to be nearly pointless. We knew what was coming and desperately sought any way to avoid it. “You’d better find a good switch or I’ll go get one myself and you will not like the one I choose” was in the back of our mind. If it was too big, we reasoned, it would hurt more, but actually that wasn’t true. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Choosing a small, flimsy switch would only mean we had to start all over again and repeat the process. I had done that on my very first trip, and she took my hand as we slowly walked back to the shrub. The medium size switch we invariably chose, when the leaves were quickly removed, was far more painful on our bare legs than a larger one, but we always seemed to think that the larger size would hurt even more. It didn’t, but that didn’t stop us from thinking it would. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The flight part of the “flight or fight response” was in full force on the slow walk returning to the porch where she waited. I’m pretty sure the anticipation of the pain on our legs was made far worse by our own expectation of what was coming than the reality of the event itself, and we usually, at this point, tried bargaining. “Mama I promise I won’t do it again!” came out in an agonized, pleading voice, but it never worked. She knew from experience that kids (and people in general) would make impossible promises to avoid consequences, and she wasn’t about to raise disrespectful children. So we learned the switch dance. It was all the rage even before American Bandstand, and the steps, while complicated, were universal.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The switch dance involved intricate gyrations, hopping up and down on one leg then the other, and repeated attempts to levitate while Mama had firm hold of one arm with the switch in the other. The point of contact was never anywhere but on the tender flesh of the back of the thighs, and we were pretty sure it was like getting stung by red wasps over and over again, but I doubt if she ever swung the switch more than 3 or 4 times. It just seemed like 3 or 4 hundred. The prelude and the aftermath lasted far longer than the actual event itself, and what seemed like an eternity was actually 15-20 seconds in real time. Like most childhood remembrances, it seemed far longer, much like the walk to and from school each day. In the snow. Uphill both ways.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My memory, suspect in even the best of circumstances, tells me the worry, anguish and self pity leading up to the event was much worse than the actual event, and that pride suffered far more grievous injury than the body. The lesson, however, was successfully ingrained. When Mama calls, you better listen and respond, and if you ever discovered her last nerve, back away slowly and carefully. She knew there had to be consequences or there would indeed be a next time, for promises made in fear are rarely kept, especially by kids. Her way, our choice of whether the “next time” occurred or not would be accompanied by intense deliberations on our part, and by memories more of ignominy and shame than of pain. She always followed through, because she knew that poor behavior without consequences would only be repeated, and that unacceptable behaviors uncorrected are behaviors reinforced and taught. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I don’t think many of our children or grandchildren have experiences to match the switch tree for behavioral modification, and maybe us thinking time out in a corner or “go to your room” was just as effective was poor judgment on our part. Sometimes it’s difficult to be a parent, and it’s even more difficult to provide the discipline children need to learn the difference between right and wrong. Psychologists tell us that children do not develop reasoning ability until around the age of 7 or so, and by the time that occurs their basic personality traits have already been formed. Ascribing the ability to reason to our children under the age of 5 or 6 seems to have given us the false sense of having taught them a lesson without inflicting a painful consequence, and perhaps all we taught them was there were no real consequences of any consequence for bad behavior. I have noticed that children that argue with, ignore and otherwise do not respect their parents rarely respect anyone else, and that perhaps we were lucky enough to have parents that may not have known much about psychology but knew enough to make sure we knew the differences in right and wrong and had respect for others at an early age. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’ve heard many great coaches say they correct and discipline their players because they love them enough to want them to be the best they can be. Maybe our parents loved us more than we knew, and I’m pretty sure we are better people for them having done so. I remember Mama saying “this is gonna hurt me more than it does you,” and I always thought that was a crazy thing for her to say. Once again, however, she was right, and now I understand just exactly what she meant.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Maybe it’s just me, but it seems there’s a whole bunch of people now that don’t have much respect for others or for themselves. Maybe it’s the internet, maybe it’s societal deterioration or maybe it’s an evil combination of lives lived with more focus on technology than on relationships, or it could be that those time outs didn’t work as well as the switch dance in teaching manners. </span></p><br /><br />Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-20581550261035929632022-06-28T12:14:00.000-04:002022-06-28T12:14:31.373-04:00Railroaded<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Where did public education run off the rails? When did we surrender our pact with children to those only interested in education as a new avenue of personal enrichment? Like most revolutions, it didn’t happen all at once, but over time and with the same ultimate effects - resegregation, the denigration of the teaching profession and indoctrination rather than real education. You remember real education, don’t you? It wasn’t so long ago the purpose of education was still to give students the skills required to develop in an orderly, sequential, age appropriate process into contributing, functioning members of society; to teach students critical thinking and to provide basic reasoning skills. An overabundance of educational initiatives in the past 25 years or so have served to incrementally replace critical thinking as the primary goal with social constructs and standardized test prep that have no business in classrooms or school buildings. My belief is the collective and individual intent of each of these initiatives was, one small piece at a time, to drive away teachers, parents and students,allow the use of public education dollars for private education and personal enrichment and to ensure an undereducated populace that would vote how they were told.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Let’s start with standardized testing. Real educators know that every child is different, every child learns in different ways at different rates and responds to some instructional methods and not as well to others. That’s why teachers are required to use differentiated instructional methods. Simultaneously. Hourly. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Because children are different. If our goal is to continue to be that we teach all children, regardless of physical or mental handicap, then differentiation is a fundamental requirement. Can someone please explain how teachers are required to differentiate for every student but that what they are teaching can be accurately measured by a standardized test created by people that don’t know these children and what they have been taught yet magically determines what they know? Standardized tests and the use of the resultant test scores are educational malpractices designed and implemented to drive parents, students and teachers away from public education. Why? Because enormous sums of money in educational funds are at stake, and the thought is that money might be put to better use than educating commoners. Like you. Like me. Like our children and grandchildren.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Not that teachers had any voice in its implementation, but using standardized test scores to determine any part of a teacher’s annual professional evaluation was implemented by many states without any evidence that teachers themselves, no matter how effective, had any effect on student test scores greater than the effect of parents at home. Assuming any effect teachers may have had on the standardized test scores of their students without compensation for the effects of home life (or the lack of it) requires a leap of logic that would make statisticians shudder with statistical insignificance. It’s like holding doctors accountable for every patients’ health without determining whether the patients are following the doctors prescribed regimen or not, or holding every college responsible for every students’ graduation without considering outside influences, effort or ability level. You know, like we do high schools. Balderdash.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One mistake that we bought into was when we were led to believe that “all children can learn” and “all children can succeed” translates into “all children will succeed at high levels.” No it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter how badly we would like every child to succeed or every child to be “college material” it just isn’t true. My perception is that when we impose impossible expectations on every child that some will absolutely not meet is when we create an untenable situation for some students in school. “Every child will succeed at high levels” also leaves out, in addition to variances in ability level, what Grandma used to call “want to,” and motivation is often an essential ingredient in student learning. “Want to” is an ingredient that more often than not comes from home, from early parental instruction from a two parent home, from reading, from learning the alphabet, from learning to count and from being read to by parents before students reach school age. It’s practically impossible for teachers to overcome parental neglect in these areas before students even begin school. Legislating equity, like legislating excellence, is a dangerous exercise in ego and futility.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Common Core, in essence a national curriculum and an overt attempt at a national control of ideas, was created, approved and implemented without input from teachers, without a trial run or feasibility study, and as part of a bribery program that would give states millions of dollars from the USDOE collected from those states if they would only follow the Common Core gameplan without substantial alteration. Governors jumped at the chance to “win” back money from the USDOE, especially those that had used education budgets to balance state budgets in an economic downturn. The entire program was a nationwide bait-and-switch scheme implemented largely by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, seemingly copied from the Standard Manual of Used Car Sales.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Another bureaucratic fumble in the educational process occurred when teachers attempted to hold students accountable for their failure to do classwork and homework and for their behavior in class. Parents began a wave of pushback and insistence that it wasn’t their child’s fault they didn’t do their classwork or were disruptive in class, but instead was the fault of the teacher. Teachers, often unsupported by administrators and left to defend themselves against a rising tide of blame for what are actually parental failures of responsibility, found that life was much easier, at least in the short term, to just go along to get along and not argue against what they saw as an impossible situation. It was difficult to insist on personal responsibility for students when parents were supporting their child’s irresponsible behaviors with confrontational behaviors themselves. Teachers saw they couldn’t possibly fight against parents without administrative support, and first began by removing zeros for work not done, and allowing a grade of 50% at the lowest. This soon turned into an administrative decree that zeros and failure were unacceptable and no longer allowed, as if they were agreeing that failure was indeed the fault of teachers. Teachers knew that removing the option of failure would be far more detrimental to students than failure itself could ever be, but administrative decrees are not often effectively fought by teachers. Not allowing students the opportunity to learn from their mistakes has created an overwhelming sense of entitlement for students. Don’t think they don’t know about the policy or that adults have successfully hidden it from them. Students that don’t know how to overcome setbacks or defeat will expect life after school to continue the same way they were taught. We are beginning to see the results of that in politics and society in general already. Real teachers know this is not how life works and not how students learn effectively. Giving students grades they didn’t earn, not allowing zeros or F’s or failure or setbacks is counterproductive and counterintuitive, and produces an undeserved series of promotions that life will always make sure ends badly. Ignorance, at one level or another, is always uncovered, and illustrates that the further bureaucrats are from daily contact with children the less educational sense their decisions make.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> At this point I have an important question. What do graduation rates for schools mean when students are not allowed to fail? Not much is my guess. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So what did teachers do at the earliest opportunity? They removed themselves from what had become an untenable situation, both personally and professionally. Since the 1980’s, teachers have retired, changed jobs, learned to do something - anything - else and left classes without teachers and schools and systems begging for replacements that just weren’t there, because students in college saw up close and personal what their teachers had gone through and, just as importantly, what they were paid to go through it, and thought to themselves “there’s got to be something better for me.” And there was. And is.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Even those students who went into education because they were sure they could change the world were prevented from actually teaching students with the implementation of standardized lesson plans, bus duty, lunch duty, professional development opportunities (so administrators can check the box for providing professional development), the documentation of instructional interventions, hundreds and hundreds of clerical duties and, as if that weren’t enough, administrative micro-management from people that don’t believe you can actually do your job unless they are constantly checking to make sure you do. Don’t think for a second that’s just building admin, either; it’s system, state and political interference as well. Teachers will tell those they trust that they succeed in their classrooms far more often in spite of the system than because of it. I can’t think of any other profession more with more people looking over their shoulders to make sure they do their jobs than teachers. “Teach the standards and not the books” became the mantra, and standardized lesson plans - required by many districts - were successful in removing every single possibility that teachers might actually be creative in class and use their own skills to successfully reach students. Here again we have a case of “we will require differentiation in teaching by making sure everyone is teaching the same way for all students.” Horsefeathers.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> No, the solution lies with people that remember what education is supposed to be, and that sometimes students fail and it either motivates them to get better or relegates them to the also-rans - those that made one effort and gave up. The people we need to step up are the teachers that found themselves in an untenable or impossibly unhealthy, unproductive situation and had to retire or find another job or another profession, the parents that will not allow their kids to miss out on an education and face a life of ignorance and the leaders that have the courage to stand up and say “this is enough, and this is as far as this stupidity goes.” Perhaps it’s time to consider the rights of the kids that want to be in school to an equal or even greater extent than the rights of the kids that don’t want to be there, and to consider the learning of the students making an effort, making mistakes and trying again more than those whose only contribution is disruption of the learning experience for others. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Working conditions must be improved for teachers - current and prospective - to continue to want to teach. Today conditions are at the tipping point, and far too many students, teachers and parents are walking away rather than continue in untenable situations. Perhaps it’s time to consider the students that are making an effort and want to be in class to an equal or greater extent than the ones that are only there because they have to be. I’m pretty sure they have just as much right to a Free and Appropriate Education as those that don’t want to be there. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If we don’t do something about it - and quickly - the public educational system that has served so many for so long will cease to exist, and that gap can’t be completely filled by private, religious or charter schools. Public education has been one of the keys of the growth and success of the American dream and the continuation of our Republic. Without it I am convinced many of us will be surrounded by ignorance and stupidity, the growth of crime and lawlessness and the abject hopelessness of an uneducated populace. Or maybe we are already there.</span></p>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-54164851134626757012022-04-11T12:45:00.000-04:002022-04-11T12:45:48.888-04:00Delta Dawn, Wher'd You Learn That Blue Note Song?<p> <span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> People still argue about where the musical genre Blues came from. Some say Memphis, some say St. Louis, and some say other places in between, but if you’ve ever driven a dirt road through the Delta on a Friday night in the summertime with the windows down and the bugs hitting the windshield and the radio turned up loud on a Delta AM station you’ll know for sure the Blues came from right by God HERE and you can feel it in your head and your heart. If you can identify with that feeling then I might know your people, and the chances are better than even that we’re related somewhere back down some hidden genealogical or geographic line. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think it’s pretty safe to say that Memphis used to be part of the Delta. Geographically and musically it still is, but they went and got all citified and international on us and only Beale Street and few barbeque places are left to show how it used to be. Most of it is just like any other big city and nothing really special except for Graceland. I don’t often make travel recommendations but if you’ve never been you should go. I believe the song “Walking in Memphis” is an accurate depiction of the feeling some of us still get when visiting both Beale Street and Graceland, even if both of them are dandied up to attract more tourists now than they were when I first saw them in the 1970’s. I still see Elvis and BB King and the Memphis Mafia and big Cadillacs when the line comes around about “are you a Christian, child? Ma’am I am tonight” and get chills like I used to way back then. Play the song for yourself until you can see and hear and understand that the line above is about the power of music made more powerful with a rare and magical combination of music, geography, religion, upbringing, family and mood, and you just might be able to begin to make sense of the whole Blues thing, and can begin to understand why people love the Blues and the Delta and Elvis and why they are all inseparably related.. It’s as if music and religion and geography all mystically combine with the present moment to make something much more than just an experience for the ear. It’s also an experience of the mind and the heart, and, like Southern cooking, takes a while to cook and meld and brew the individual ingredients into a separate, unique creation that is something special all on its own. It’s sort of like the old preacher said in his prayer: “Lord, I don’t like flour, I don’t care for the taste of buttermilk and I don’t particularly like lard. Mix it up and bake it, Lord, and I shore do love the biscuits that they make together, so thank you Lord for making something wonderful out of three things that by themselves are not so great.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Make a pilgrimage to Graceland if you can, and see the parts of the place they let you visit and you’ll begin to understand even more about the Delta and Elvis and the roots of Delta culture. The Jungle Room is trailer park chic, and underscores the old line about you can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy. You will know for sure that Elvis was Mississippi country when you see that he and his family are buried in the backyard. Really, if that’s not country then neither is cornbread. I’ve heard stories about blues musicians playing the chitlin circuit that sold their soul to the devil in order to be the best blues player that ever was for just a little while until the bill comes due. I don’t know if I believe any of those stories or not, but I can imagine if you sold your soul to that end there would be at least a little momentary happiness underscored by the pain of knowing that the devil’s bill will come due sooner or later, and that just might create just the right effect on your ability to play the blues in all its hurtful glory and pain and make it sound like you KNOW what you’re playing about. If you ain’t hurtin in your heart and soul you ain’t feeling it and you ain’t playing the blues; at least not the real kind.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of Elvis’ hits were covers of songs from the old Chitlin’ Circuit Delta Blues singers. “Hound Dog” was a Big Momma Thornton tune, “Love Me Tender” is the melody from Aura Lee, an old southern ballad, and “I Got A Woman” was originally a Ray Charles song. Elvis and Carl Perkins and Bill Haley were smart enough to use a musical style that was historically black and present it to white audiences. White audiences at the time were where the money was, but it came from the Delta and can still be found there. Say what you want about Elvis and the Colonel’s taste in movie roles and music, the Big E had a vocal range and control and tone like nobody else, and sold a lot of records and had sold out shows because of his voice and his bigger than life personality and in spite of some of his career choices. He could flat out sing.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I won’t try to do a history of the Blues here other than to say that it’s a primal, basic sort of music that is often so simple it becomes complicated. The folks listening to it identify with the simplicity and heart and feeling of the lyrics and the fundamental simplicity of the music itself. It’s just like them - basic and simple and unpretentious and looking for a chance to get away from the stress and labor and demands of everyday life for just a little while. I think it’s safe to say the Blues have a lot in common with the old black spirituals that farmers used to hear in the cotton fields and serve much the same purpose. It provides an escape from the tribulations of the world, even if for only a few minutes...and that’s what I mean about the power of music.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Delta folks won’t argue with you about the Blues or where it came from or even what it actually is. They will argue with you about this singer or that guitarist or that sax player or even this song or that one, but not about what it is or what it isn’t. They just figure that if you don’t know or can’t recognize it came from the Delta and you have to talk a long time to describe it then you’re too darn stupid to argue with anyway. Just listen a little while. If you close your eyes and let the music wash over you, you can hear Charley Booker, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Lead Belly, Charley Patton and Elmore James and all the rest somewhere in every tune. You can find their music in beer joints, the back room of grocery stores after hours, front porches of houses or shacks that dot the lonely fields, street corners of small towns or sometimes on a flatbed trailer parked strategically in a park or side road in small towns. You won’t have to look far, especially on Friday or Saturday nights. You’ll know it when you hear it, and you might not be able to articulate what it is or what makes it special or the musical structure and organization, but you’ll know it because you’ll feel it. Like the homemade likker that’s sometimes passed around in a mason jar, it’s an acquired taste. Just imagine Bob Segar’s voice after 2 packs of cigarettes and most of a 5th of Jack Daniels - there’s gravel and a raspiness there, but a softness too that speaks of pain and suffering and dealing with it the best you know how and just carrying on. If you don’t feel it or don’t like it or don’t understand what all the fuss is about for God’s sake don’t say so. To say so out loud to other people there would mean they would have to ignore you or ask you to leave. They might even call you a Yankee. It would be better just to shut up and pretend to listen for a few minutes before you sneak off slowly and quietly and slink away in the shame of your ignorance.</span></p>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-76174482260249208092022-04-01T14:52:00.000-04:002022-04-01T14:52:01.788-04:00The Hollerin' Tree<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Most of you know what I mean when I say “holler.” Like many Southern colloquialisms, it can have several meanings, and context is everything. When I tell you that Uncle Rufus and Ain’t Sally live directly east about 5 miles from us down in a holler, that has nothing to do with yelling and everything to do with the small valley where they live. If, on the other hand, I were about to enter a holler where I thought there might be a still, I would holler loudly before I entered so my relatives wouldn’t think it was revenoors sneaking in to interfere with their alcohol production systems. They don’t take kindly to visitors of any type, but will occasionally tolerate relatives for short periods of time, especially if they don’t drink.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My Dad was a world class profanicist, and used profanity sprinkled around in everyday conversation like most people use salt on their butterbeans. He’d been doing it so long the words just seemed to flow naturally without sounding forced or unnatural. It was the way he spoke, and, while he might tone it down a little when around a preacher or if a school teacher were present, everyone else received the unadulterated version no matter the situation. I’m pretty sure he didn’t think anything of it, and wasn’t intentionally offending anybody, it was just the way he talked and part of his everyday verbiage. He also hollered from time to time, but that was usually because either me or one of my brothers left his tools out or lost one or, even worse, loaned to “one of those damn shiftless neighborhood kids.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Until I was 8 or 9 I was pretty sure he must have learned those words and their effortless inclusion in his speech patterns from his Dad or his older brother or maybe even the Air Force, but learned, accidentally and to my surprise, he had in fact learned a significant portion of them from overhearing his mother. Now don’t misunderstand; Grandma didn’t curse at or to or around anyone, and would have been mortified at the thought that anyone might be aware that she even knew - much less could use proficiently - those words and most of their cousins - first, second and shirt-tail - and other relatives. My Grandad passed away before I was born, and from all accounts was rather quiet, soft spoken and talked just enough to be sociable, but no more. Grandma, on the other hand, was about 5 foot 4, whip thin and what Mama politely called “fiesty.” Grandma sincerely believed that most people thought of her as meek, mild and passionately religious, but I’m not sure what magic mirror she was looking in to see any of that in her behavior.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We used to spend the day with Grandma occasionally when school was out or Mama had to go shopping or, as I learned later, she just needed a break from the three of us. Grandma wasn’t much on entertaining, and usually gave us two choices: we could stay inside and watch her shows on her tiny black and white TV (The Edge of Night was her favorite) while she ironed, or we could go outside and play in the yard. You can guess - Glen and I were about 7 and 8 - which we chose. Les was still too little to hang with us, but he always found plenty to do inside the house. He couldn’t be trusted yet not to play in traffic, but supposedly we could. There wasn’t a swing set or toys or games, but we could climb trees, play chase or dig stuff up and any or all of those were better than TV, because she didn’t watch Bugs Bunny on any of her 3 channels.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One fateful afternoon Glen and I were resting in her detached garage - Grandma didn’t drive, so there was no car - and exploring the interior to see if there might be old tools, paint, half empty oil or paint cans or other valuable treasure. The swinging door on the front was closed because she didn’t really want us in there because some of the stains we got on us the week before had mysteriously transferred themselves to her couch and chair, so she didn’t know exactly where we were but didn’t worry because there was no yelling or fighting going on. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> She walked through her back yard to an old oak tree that had withstood countless storms and kids and woodpeckers and even me and my brother, stopped, looked around, looked back at the trunk of the tree, and began to curse. She started softly and got a little louder as she went along. Glen and I heard her clearly from inside the garage just a few feet away, and we were pretty sure we were not supposed to be hearing this, so we made sure neither of us made a sound and listened carefully. She cursed fluently, seemingly without effort and with amazingly little repetition, and went on for maybe 10 minutes. Her voice got a little louder as she gained momentum, and I looked around the garage for a paper and pencil so maybe I could write down a few of the words that I didn’t know to practice on later. After a few more minutes of a solid, steady stream of verbal abuse, she stopped, took a deep breath, turned and went back into the house.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My brother and I looked at each other with open mouths, and couldn’t believe - much less understand - what we had just witnessed. Was she possessed by demons? Maybe she was a witch. Did it look like maybe the bark on the tree was a little blistered right there about the height of her mouth? Did the rest of the family know about this? If not, we were about to make them aware as soon as someone picked us up after work. We knew better than to try out any of the words we had heard in a sentence to Mama, because the taste of a bar of Ivory soap had been deterrent enough for us to know she really didn’t want to hear those words from us again. Ever.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It seemed as if the hours passed slowly until we heard Mama’s car pull up in the gravel driveway. We couldn’t wait to get in the car and tell her what we had seen and heard, but she had to go inside and get the baby and ask Grandma how her day had been and whether or not we had done anything that deserved punishment when we got home. We hadn’t that day, and it seemed as if the conversation before we left was unusually long and pointless, especially since we had important information to share once we were on the road home.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Mama finally said her last two or three goodbyes and made arrangements to pick us up a little earlier the next day and carry Grandma to the A&P down the street for groceries, and we were all loaded in the car and backing out of the driveway when Glen and I started with our questions. “Mama, do you think Grandma is crazy?” Glen asked. She knew when she was being set up, and didn’t answer right away. “...and Mama she cusses!” I continued. “And she yells at trees,” Glen added. A light went on over Mama’s head. “You heard her at the hollerin’ tree, didn’t you?” she asked. We were both astounded at her perceptiveness. Again. “You know about that?” I asked. “Honey, nobody can know your Grandma for as long as I have and not have heard her at the hollerin’ tree” she replied. “Mama, where did she learn all those words?” Glen asked. “She lived in the country most of her life and plowed with mules and raised 3 boys, including your Daddy” Mama said. That pretty much answered our question about that one.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “Mama, why in the world does she do all that hollerin’ at trees and cussing and stuff?” Glen asked. “She says it relieves her stress and releases the anger that builds up inside, and after she does it for a few minutes she feels calmer and a lot less angry and frustrated. Besides that, usually nobody else is around and it certainly doesn’t hurt the tree. At least not much,” Mama said. I thought I detected a slight emphasis on “usually nobody else is around” part, but decided not to comment. I did have one last question for her, though. “Mama, does it work?”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> She had to think for maybe 2 seconds before she answered. “She hasn’t killed either of you, has she?” We didn't answer. Even at 8 and 9 we knew a rhetorical question when we heard it, even if we couldn’t spell the word. Both of us were quiet the rest of the way back home, thinking and figuring and trying to decide if this was one of those things we were supposed to learn something from. I decided it was, and when we got home I went straight out in the backyard and found a sturdy oak tree and named it Glen. I’m willing to bet he named one after me when I wasn’t looking.</span></p>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-47702298446165231222021-11-01T09:06:00.002-04:002021-11-01T09:07:12.537-04:00Now That All Else Has Failed, Ask Your Teacher<p> Now That All Else Has Failed<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Ask Your Teacher</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have been personally subjected to and persecuted by a rather large number of educational revolutions devised by experts to provide solutions to problems the experts themselves discovered or even created. The very first was in elementary school in the early 60’s when we were subjected to “New Math” because if we didn’t improve our national test scores the Russians would establish world dominance through Sputnik and the race to space that would end The American Way as we knew it. It was quickly obvious to us that our teacher was rather confused about the entire process but dutifully tried her best to implement those processes and teaching methodologies to the extent she understood them, and she managed to struggle through the year without actually crying in front of us. We eventually overcame our fear and loathing of math through years of intensive remedial efforts by junior high and high school teachers, and learned to trust traditional mathematical processes that allowed us to venture into Algebra and Algebra II without fear of regression into the dark shadows of New Math. We achieved, for the most part, just enough proficiency in math to keep from hurting ourselves.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The 1970’s met us with the belief that “schools don’t really matter” until debunked by later studies that concluded “schools do matter,” and not only what they taught but how they taught it mattered indeed, not just to us but to the entire country. “A Nation At Risk” in 1980 predicted national calamity from the “rising tide of mediocrity” not just of our schools but the students they produced through their less-than-rigorous processes, and (again) that the American expectations of growth, world leadership, progress and moral superiority would suffer serious and catastrophic consequences unless the problems in education were addressed. Immediately.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> No Child Left Behind was passed into law by Congress in 2001, and decreed that schools MUST make progress toward the 100% success rate in reading and math for all students or suffer the consequences. Educational experts convinced the President and Congress that teachers weren’t teaching hard enough and that low expectations from those teachers were the reason so many kids were dropping out before graduation, and that if only schools were expected to make sure every kid passed and every kid graduated then everything would be wonderful. If not, there would be consequences for the schools that failed. The consequences ranged from designation as “low performing” to firing administrators to replacing teachers to state takeover. While the “all children must succeed” to “all children must succeed at high levels” to “every child must graduate from high school” to “every child must go to college” may seem like small steps incrementally heading toward educational utopia, each of these grandiose goals ignores - and that ignorance was happily perpetuated by politicians and school leaders and administrators and parent groups that should have known better - basic statistics, human nature and the natural phenomena of the bell curve. An even crazier notion was how educational proficiency would be determined with standardized tests. Nevermind that the tests were never aligned with any given curriculum so that preparation for the tests was never aligned with the tests themselves, experts - in the form of unelected bureaucrats in the USDOE - once again assured us that the tests were guaranteed to have both validity and reliability - both important values when discussing testing - when in fact they had neither. Ever. At all. Not even close. Add that to their insistence that 100% proficiency was an attainable goal if teachers worked hard enough, that every child in every school in every town in every district across America would fit into the mold and be ready, able and willing to take the tests seriously from the 3rd grade on up and that, golly gee willikers we can get every child to pass those tests if they only try hard enough and if we all wish upon a star and just believe and let it go and follow the USDOE instructions and mandates and directives and orders. I mean, would the experts have us spend all those billions of dollars of our money on testing and a misguided, wasteful, pie in the sky effort? So we did.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Guess what happened? Those worthless teachers let us all down. They didn’t try hard enough and test scores didn’t improve so we had to get tough and impose more mandates and more threats and make sure that every child was given an individualized education by requiring teachers to use the same methods, the same scripted lesson plans, the same testing pep rallies and the same emphasis on testing. So to whip those lazy teachers into shape the experts decided to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores. After all, if students weren’t passing the tests it couldn’t be that the tests were bad, could it? We have to hold teachers accountable, don't we? It’s only fair that teachers be judged by the scores their students receive on tests they didn’t create, right? Wait a minute. Teachers had no input on the tests? No they didn’t. They weren’t allowed to even look at the questions. Or the answers. And were prohibited from discussing the tests or the questions or the answers. But they were held accountable for the results. That’s a lot like giving bakers a list of ingredients they are required to use and allowing no deviation but not paying for the cakes when they turn out poorly. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So rather than address the real problem, districts decided what they needed were tests to prepare the students for more testing and provide data points where teachers were falling short so they could work harder and improve those test scores that would prepare kids for the testing that would help improve the testing before the real testing began. So what we had was test prep to prepare for the local tests that were to help prepare for the district tests to prepare for the state tests to prepare for the national rankings. We had 8 year old kids missing PE, music, art and life to participate in mandatory remedial test prep. Testing companies designed, graded and implemented testing procedures. Test security was so restrictive that teachers have been fired because they lost student test booklets. Not the answer sheets, the booklets with the questions in them. Teachers were given extensive training on how to account for student test booklets that had been rendered unusable when students threw up on them. Apparently teachers were not the only ones stressed by the testing. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> After a few years of more failures, the experts decided the problem was that we had no national curriculum, so a guy named Dave was hired to write one and came up with Common Core. You would think that there would be a pilot program or a trial run or maybe a little small scale implementation, but the experts said “No, that’s not necessary. This stuff is great and will positively impact education because when kids move from one city to another they will encounter the same material wherever they go.” State Governors believed them and accepted large sums of money from the USDOE to implement Common Core in their respective states but found that the thing it really did was frustrate teachers because there was little or no attention paid to exactly how teachers were supposed to teach the new curriculum and it frustrated kids and parents by introducing concepts and ideas that their teachers were ill prepared to teach (along many concepts that were not age appropriate or effective) so the politicians fell back on what they knew and blamed the falling test scores once again on those darn lazy teachers. Textbook companies did make a lot of money with their new redesigned and improved textbooks, but student scores didn’t get better. Teachers discovered quickly that stuff like Common Core was the reason national curricula became illegal in the 1965 ESEA.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Now that Common Core is dying a much deserved slow death in many districts, test scores are even lower and kids are still not passing the tests the experts have decided that maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to test everyone for the last 20 years or so, but the test scores have come in really handy at showing us the socio-economic levels the students come from, and pointing out once again that teachers must be the real problem because they have to be held accountable. Teachers, many of whom got really frustrated and tired of being blamed for what they saw as the insanity of standardized testing and the failure of scripted teaching and Common Core, the lack of administrative support, no-fail policies and deteriorating classroom discipline began leaving the profession at ever increasing rates. The experts were a little surprised but thought “let them go. They will be replaced by youthful, dedicated teachers that will save education.” But they weren’t. Not only were experienced teachers leaving, prospective teachers were avoiding the profession because of the low salary, poor working conditions and - believe it or not - the lack of societal appreciation for what teachers are expected to do. Where teachers were once respected members of the professional community, now their standing had sunk to something just below that of a part- time roadie for an accordion jazz quartet. Add that to unrealistic administrative expectations and increased number of students in classes and rising in-class disciplinary issues and no-fail policies and the insistence by some parents that teachers were the problem and not their child and stagnant salaries and it soon became difficult to find teachers at all, much less qualified ones.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The litany of educational failures from the minds of experts should tell us all several things. The first is that the US Department of Education is a waste of time and money. Sending money to Washington DC so 28 year old bureaucrats can send some of it back to states with directions on how to spend it is a self-perpetuating Rube Goldberg machination that serves no educational purpose whatsoever. The second is that standardized testing serves political purposes and not educational ones, and enriches testing companies and politicians. Period. Watching a teacher reading standardized test questions to a non-verbal special education student and attempting to mark their non-verbal answers because they are required to do so is the beginning of understanding the insanity of standardized testing, and the pretense of accountability has been nothing more than a gigantic, expensive exercise in educational malpractice. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Research says the best indicator of student success in college is not any standardized test score or the SAT or ACT but the grades the student earns from high school teachers. The purpose of real testing is to allow teachers to assess what each student knows and immediately apply methods to improve that knowledge. The reason teacher grades and teacher made tests accurately predict student success in college is that the tests are designed, implemented, graded and recorded by the person that knows those students’ strengths and weaknesses, the testing is done over time, over a variety of topics in a variety of methods and used to immediately adjust teaching methods to address deficiencies in student knowledge. Lastly, we should pay teachers what they are worth and not what we can get them for. Don’t let legislative study committees explore this problem; find a team of retired teachers and let them find a solution and present it to the legislature because it’s no longer about what we can afford but has become a matter of what we cannot afford to perpetuate.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Don’t tell me we can’t afford to pay teachers more, we just have to learn to use money more effectively. Congress not sending 79 Billion dollars yearly to the USDOE would be a great start for states to fund teacher salaries with dollars and not the pennies we are used to seeing. I’m not talking about revising the salary scale, but about throwing it out and starting over with salaries for new teachers starting at least double current rates and rising commensurate with experience. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Perhaps the time has also come to allow teachers to be the arbiters of what students have learned. Perhaps teachers should replace the experts in determining what works in education and how it can best be implemented. Considering the financial and educational costs of the disasters of the past 20 years we really can’t afford to allow people that know nothing about education and students and schools to make decisions about education again. After all, teachers have been blamed for the failure of all the experts’ ideas...maybe they have known the answers all along and we just haven’t been smart enough to ask them. Or pay them. Yet.</span></p><br /><br />Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-29959043516859602532021-09-22T10:48:00.000-04:002021-09-22T10:48:01.548-04:00Freedom to Dehyphenate<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Once I was hyphenated. It was all the rage back in the 70’s, along with using only the letter of your first name followed by the other two. J. Snuffy Smith, for example, sounded much more sophisticated and presumptuous that simply James Smith, and we were convinced that German - American and Irish - American and African - American or Cuban - American or whatever - American added an air of aristocracy to our mundane American lives that belied our untraceably mixed racial identities and multi- geographic heredity. In other words, we are all here in America now and our past did not follow narrow genealogical paths to result in us. None of us has ancestors of just one color, type, race or only one geographic area. The people that came before us traveled the seas and the deserts and the mountains and really didn’t have time to worry much about genealogy or hyphenation when they were mostly concerned with basic stuff like food and not getting eaten by a shark or a grizzly bear. </span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-d8cbf72f-7fff-7234-2f63-f85b0a43a797"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Don’t misunderstand. Hyphens in between last names to honor family members or adoptive parents or grandparents are a different thing. That’s an old and honorable tradition and perfectly acceptable under the terms of the non-hyphenation society rules of order and extradition treaty. On the other hand, I doubt very much that those adopting geographic hyphenation would be willing to move back to the homeland they say they are honoring. I suppose honor only goes so far if you have to give up amenities. I have found that geographic hyphenation is an affectation and has a perceived social status intent rather than real meaning.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Have you ever tried to trace your families’ history? I did for a while, but found all the deaths and remarriages and divorces and abandonments and blank spots too much to follow, even when I tried to make a genealogy tree. There were just too many limbs and branches and offshoots to document or follow, but I did discover that sometimes when you find a dead end on a person it meant they were hanged for horse stealing or shot for cheating at cards or married their sister or just disappeared into the wilderness and either died or changed their name to get a restart on what had, at least to them, been a not so good start in life.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I also noticed, being an Arnold on my Dad’s side, that it was very difficult to find out any pertinent information on Arnolds in America before 1800. Mama’s family I could trace way back to the Mayflower with only a few skips or leaps of faith that may or may not have been genealogically sound practice. It took me a while to figure out why that hadn't been done for my Dad’s family,, and I’m pretty sure it’s because none of us wanted to dig too deep into the Arnold history and find out that great great great great great grandad was named Benedict. That’s not a branch of anyones’ family tree you want to bring attention to if you can help it. The whole point of knowing where you came from, after all, was to find somebody relatively famous (or at least notorious) that you could point to with pride and say “that’s MY ancestor!” The only exception I could find to the “notorious” label was, of course, traitor. Nobody wants that on their permanent record.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I also noticed that nobody seems to give a rip whether you, your current relations or your ancestors are white or black or brown or red if they live next door or in the same neighborhood or work together, and that skin color only becomes an issue when we are reminded by politicians or the news that it’s supposed to be a dividing line. In the America I live in we may have disagreements and be different but that doesn’t mean we have to hate the ones we disagree with. I really like my neighbors regardless of their color or beliefs or noisy animals. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So what I really learned was that the great majority of us were either born here or worked very hard to get here to make our country their home. While we may have traveled back to visit our supposed homeland, we came back to here , which is the place we call home now, and didn’t stay wherever it was our genealogical roots were supposed to be. What I mean is that maybe you can create an artificial sense of worth and superiority about something your ancestors did or didn’t do, but who you are at this moment is defined by what you do and how you behave and what you personally achieve and stand for and not what they did. There’s never been another place like that on earth since Eden, and I would hate to see all that come to an end so politicians could have a nice life at the expense of everyone else. I have become convinced that all of this stuff about hyphenation, if it has a point, is just another method meant primarily to point out our differences rather than our commonalities. It seems to me there are more commonalities than there are differences if we just take the trouble to look.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We have come to expect that the majority of us have a place to live, own cars, have multiple sets of clothes, carry an individualized computer in our hand that not only costs hundreds of dollars but allows us to communicate almost instantly with almost anyone almost anywhere on earth. There are literally thousands of local restaurants that would love our business if we don’t have the time or inclination to cook, and will deliver food if we use our communicator effectively. We spend more on our pets than most people earn in a calendar year in many other countries, and we can attend or not attend church as we decide and not because we are told to do so - unless your Mama is still alive, then you are going, like it or not. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We have the freedom to use plastic cards that allow us to spend, in the blink of an eye, money we have but can’t see, and we can also buy gas for our cars and travel any number of hours in practically any direction just to see the sights in a different location and discover for ourselves if the people in that area really do talk funny. We have doctors and hospitals in almost every town and locality now that can and do provide health services that would have been not just unavailable but unimaginable only a few years ago.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Our standard of living is higher than any other place in the history of the world, and we have conveniences that other cultures can’t imagine or comprehend. Women are regularly afforded opportunities to work in positions not just equal but superior to men in corporations and companies and positions that would be impossible in other countries. If race were a primary factor for most of us would we really have doctors of all colors or CEO’s from every combination of race possible or college students representing every color, creed and belief system known to man? Yeah, but what about women? It often amazes me that women would want to be thought of as equal to men when any man who has ever been married learns quickly of their superiority, so I don’t see any advantage in them settling for equality. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Many of us can work remotely from home, and our standard work week is 40 hours. Most of our predecessors spent more time than that hunting and gathering food for their families. We spend countless hours watching movies, shows, sports or “news” on video devices in our homes, and in many families those devices are found in pretty much every room of the house. They are controlled by a wireless device with buttons that allows us to move from show to show, and to pause the program if we would like to visit the kitchen for a cold drink from the refrigerator or a quick visit to the inside toilet. The video devices and our handheld communicators are connected wirelessly to a satellite circling the globe or in stationary orbit miles above it. We can use our personal computers or our handheld communicators to order anything we would like or can afford from services that will have them delivered to our homes in less time than it would take a covered wagon to cover 25 miles across the prairie. Would you like to guess how many generations of people in the history of the world have had all those conveniences? Three. And you and I get to be part of it.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I freely acknowledge there are problems and there is injustice and there is crime and there are senseless murders and cruelty and homelessness and all sorts of inequality, but I do not see how arguing with each other about whether black lives matter or white lives matter or no lives matter or if any life matters more than the other life matters helps solve any of those issues. That includes politics. Politics has become a disease that demands everyone be hyphenated in one way or another, and political hyphenation is designed to divide. It divides races, it divides political affiliation, it divides social strata, it divides economically and it divides geographically. How many Democratic - Americans do you know that hate Republican - Americans. How many Republican - American do you know that hate Democratic - Americans? How many Democratic - American and Republican - Americans join in despising Independent - Americans? Where does it say that if you disagree with someone you have to hate them on a personal level? Where does it say that a Southeastern American or a Western - American or a Northeast - American is supposed to be vilified because of where they are from or what their politics might be?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I despise the fact that disagreement has become synonymous with hate, and that political affiliation is now used as an identifier for friend or foe, and I simply refuse to participate. I think we should begin a movement of civility; one where just because we disagree on politics or religion or might be from different places or different races we should remember we are all Americans and have that in common if nothing else. I believe the only people that qualify for the “dislike” label should be those that hurt or take advantage of others, like politicians or others engaged in criminal behavior.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I learned all this from my Mama. She told us in word and deed from our birth until she passed that anger was not a prime motivator, and usually distorted rational thought. “My anger is my own,” she said, “and I don’t have to share it. There are people I don’t like, but I can avoid them or ask God to give me patience when I’m around them. I would rather let them stew in their own anger than get caught up in responding to it. It serves them right. I simply refuse to allow their anger to influence my thoughts or behaviors.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I believe we can overcome at least part of the divisive rhetoric between us today by practicing social distancing from angry responses and not falling for the snarky comments or statements designed, as Mama would say “to get you riled up.” Turn off the news, scroll past those comments that are supposed to elicit a negative response, and be responsible for your own happiness by doing nice things for others. You will be surprised at how much easier life becomes when you implement The Golden Rule. Try it and see, but like Mama used to say “I don’t care if you are mad at your brother, if you get into a fight both of you are going to get me a switch.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-4335110028483060112021-09-01T17:03:00.000-04:002021-09-01T17:03:07.749-04:00Wokeness and The Beaver<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wokeness and The Beaver</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’m pretty sure it all started with Theodore Cleaver. Many of you might not be familiar with the name, but at one time he was the cat’s meow. In the early 1960’s Leave It To Beaver was a hit TV show that a lot of America, to their unknown detriment, watched almost religiously. Every week a new episode about a cute little kid named Theodore - his nickname was Beaver - got into trouble and was rescued by his parents, June and Ward Cleaver. Beaver would do really stupid stuff like order an accordian from a magazine ad and try to hide it from his parents when the bill came in the mail, or give his alcoholic uncle a bottle of bourbon from his Dad’s cabinet without asking his parents or feed a neighbor’s cat and try to hide it in his room. Nothing that really stretched the imagination too much, but usually things that most kids (like me and my brothers) might have thought of but never followed through on because we would be scared to death of our Dad’s reaction when he found out. Trust me - whatever we did and however we tried to hide it, he found out, so fear was an effective deterrent at our house. Most of the time, anyway.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My Dad was a policeman, and was skilled in discovering truth when we didn’t necessarily want him to discover it. He was an artist at asking seemingly innocuous questions that led, like a slow train on a track coming right at you, toward the inescapable truth and we could see where it was going but were pretty powerless to stop the process. At first, anyway. We did learn from our mistakes, and eventually became almost as skilled at evading and sidetracking interrogations as he was at giving them. Sometimes it meant blaming whatever it was on a brother, but when they saw it worked from their side too, life became like a gigantic spy thriller where following the original plot was practically impossible.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The odds of evading consequences for stupid stuff at our house were very, very small. Our Mom was part of a secret network of neighborhood moms that we were pretty sure could contact and communicate telepathically, and kept all the neighborhood dads informed about what we had done, who we had been with and when our transgressions had occurred in spite of everything we could do to cover our respective tracks. Sometimes this secret society of moms stretched across subdivisions and the space-time continuum and they could predict what we were planning even before it happened.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Beaver’s parents weren’t like that at all. Beaver and his brother Wally would talk about their parents yelling at them or their Dad belting them but their conversations didn’t have the ring of truth or the fear in their voices that was in ours when we discussed the same things. They never really did more than superficially hide stuff, and almost always confessed their transgressions when confronted by Ward and June. Even more unbelievably, Ward and June would sit down in their spotless living room at the end of the show and discuss how it was their mistakes that not just allowed the Beaver to experience whatever the weekly situation was, but had actually contributed to or even caused the situation so maybe grounding him in his room without TV for 3 nights was too harsh a punishment and they were pretty sure he had learned his lesson and would never do it again. I not only found that part to be unbelievable and from a made up TV world that was completely divorced from reality but, after lengthy serious consideration, have come to the inescapable conclusion that this was where “wokeness” began in our society.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Follow me on this: even though our personal experiences at home were nothing like those at the Cleaver household, Ward and June and their predilection to blame everything their kids did wrong on themselves left an indelible impression on my generation. As a result, we turned our belief system as young hippyfied adults into peace, love and universal understanding and forgiveness for whatever we did or thought of or experienced and passed it on to our kids. While my parents believed more in free range parenting where the world was our living room and our parents' relief valve, we as a generation tended to be more behaviorally permissive and simultaneously protective and failed to use any constraints beyond an occasional time out on our kids. Reality began to reverse itself. Failure in school, for example, became the teachers’ fault and not making the football team was the coaches’ fault and striking out in baseball was because of a bad umpire...you get the idea. Nothing was the kids’ fault and as a result nothing was their responsibility either. They have managed to take Ward and June’s philosophy of “it’s all our fault” to the third level beyond ours and now believe that everything in life has gone far beyond the collective fault of their generation and has progressed (regressed?) to be the fault of anything that occurred and/or anyone that lived in the past. This is why they hate statues and history and have decided that George Washington helped found a country fundamentally and fatally flawed from its inception, and therefore lacking any merit whatsoever unless it is torn down and replaced by something like Socialism even though it has never worked before but will this time because they are in charge. Or think they are.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I think a key idea they are missing about Socialism is that someone always has to be the ruled party and that their idea is they will be the ruler and not the ruled. I’m also pretty sure the odds on that are not in their favor, but math is something else that seems to have lost its relative importance. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As for me, if it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to relearn history because it was hard enough to learn what I did in the first place and any new version is just another revision of what has always been revisionist. I’m also not learning any new pronouns or or genders because it would be far too difficult at my age to learn where they go when diagramming sentences, and pulling down statues is not something I’m going to approve of or participate in because I think it’s pretty dumb to judge people that lived in the past by whatever rules we might think are applicable today. Statues of Ward and June and Wally and the Beaver are safe from me, but I might have to think a while on Eddie Haskell, though. Come to think of it though, trying to change the past is the main reason that all the time travel episodes on Star Trek never worked out. The past can’t really be changed because all those people are dead now and don’t care what we think.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’m also not sure what “cancelling” is but don’t think I’m participating in that one either because, believe it or not, I’ve said some pretty stupid stuff on occasion in the past and don’t necessarily want me or my life to be judged solely on that basis. If you’ve lived long enough, you don’t either. I’m not asking me or anybody else to apologize for being white or black or red or green because I don’t know of any of you anywhere in the world that had a voice in the result.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Just so you know, I’m not watching Leave It To Beaver anymore. That doesn’t mean I’m cancelling ROKU, just that I won’t click on that particular show anymore. See what I did there? I don’t want to destroy the show or the channel, I just choose not to watch it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how it’s done. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-30010116757425442992021-08-10T09:02:00.000-04:002021-08-10T09:02:07.300-04:00Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’ve mentioned before that I don’t watch news shows. In 1974 I found myself yelling - rather loudly - at a 19 inch black and white TV with Richard Nixon on the screen. A little while later, rather ashamed of raising my blood pressure and having the neighbors knocking on the door to make sure everything was alright, I decided that the TV show had done exactly what it was designed to do; manipulate me into being upset about something, reacting poorly and repeating the cycle endlessly as they moved on the next day to another crisis. The crises never seem to last more than a few days until they’re forgotten, replaced by others, or maybe several more, usually followed by opinions on what or who caused the latest brouhaha and how we should react and, of course, several opinions as to what a terrible crisis this event is. No solution is ever applied and the outrage is rapidly followed with another incident in rather short order. In a rare moment of personal clarity, I saw a progressive and insidious and highly repetitive cyclic plan designed to attract viewers with a scheme almost guaranteed to produce results that only benefited the network. Not solutions, simply numbers of viewers. The shows used to be subtle in their deceptions. That’s no longer the case.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-3461cf5e-7fff-b819-5f4b-b78fd2e4342c"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The first part of the cycle is perhaps the most obvious. Twenty four hour news requires the reporting of incidents that would not have made the daily or weekly newspaper in most towns in the 1950’s. My parents would never have heard about a shooting in Ogden Utah or a murder in Dallas or a fire in California or a drowning in Florida in their newspapers, in casual conversation around the water cooler or on the nightly news with Walter Cronkite unless someone they knew happened to be related to the victim or the alleged perp. All are genuinely tragic events, but are they really worthy of national exposure if you live 2000 miles away? They are if your job is to make it appear that these are not unusual events but a rising national phenomena that represents an immediate threat to EVERY CITIZEN unless we take action and all become concerned NOW. News stories like that are part and parcel of every website or 24 hour news show available on whatever medium you choose. They have to be in order to fill 24 hours of news. No emergency is too small for national attention. It’s on your phone, so you can’t really escape it wherever you go unless you can manage to - hold on - leave your phone at home or in the car. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When Eric Severied or Walter used to report the evening news it seemed like Russia and Washington DC and Tokyo reports were all far away and slightly disconnected from daily life and personal reality. The news seemed to be largely, if not completely, about events that concerned the majority of Americans. Now every crime, every theft, every rape and every carjacking is needed to fill that 24 hour news gap and no town is too small to escape an up to the minute breaking news report. The implication is that violence is rampant and there’s nothing you can do. Only the government can solve these problems; they are simply far above the abilities and scope of average people like us, and the steady, reassuring hand of smarter people than us to imagine and implement solutions.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The second step in the process is selective quotes from celebrities and politicians. There is a definite implication here that rich and famous equates to mystic levels of intelligence and insight. There is, in fact, no correlation between wealth and intelligence. The opinions of the rich or famous, dependent upon whether they took the red pill or blue pill, serve no purpose other than to placate or inflame one side or the other, demonstrate network objectivity and fan the indignation of those on the other side. If you examine the statements closely, you can quickly see that the intent is the same as the original story; to make someone angry. Regardless of which side they are on, I resent the basic supposition that the respective opinions of the moneyed are any better than yours, mine or my little brothers. I think we all know some rich people that are dumber than rocks. Especially entertainers.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The third step in the process is the outrageous quote from someone that should know better but doesn’t. There are more examples than can be counted, but my current favorites are Michigan Representative Rashida Tliab’s bill to produce two one trillion dollar coins to pay for coronavirus relief and Representative Ocasio-Cortez’ proposal to implement “decarceration and prison abolition.” A close third is a story from an actual university that paid thousands of dollars to remove a racist rock. It’s hard to say whether any sane, educated person takes these seriously or not, but that’s hardly the point. The point is to create and amplify outrage. Your outrage. Or mine. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s there. Outrage amplifies emotional response and emotional response is antithetical to reasoned behavior. It’s rather difficult to believe that any official in any capacity in any organization, elected or appointed, could fail to understand the idiocy and the devastating effect on the economy of creating too much money, of legalized crime or insanely stupid expenditures without an instant demand for accountability by someone - anyone - responsible for their being allowed to make such statements or decisions in the first place. That leads me to believe that they might understand how illogical the statements and actions are but are creating them for another purpose. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The fourth purpose of the nightly news is that of misdirection and/or deflection. Like the magician that waves his left hand so you won’t notice what his right hand is doing, or the politician that pledges to right a wrong that he fails to mention he helped create, the purpose is to keep your attention focused on something - anything - other than what they don’t want you to notice. Since what they don’t want you to see is not reported, you probably won’t hear about it until after it becomes law or a mandate. Which, by the way, are not the same thing. Bureaucracy has a way, over time, of growing past the constraints of accountability and allowing unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats to make decisions that have the effect of law, but that’s another subject for another day.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The fifth step is not so obvious unless you look for it, and that is one of division. Once you learn to recognize the tactics of division, it’s easy to see it as an underlying constant in practically every news story, and the only practical purpose of political, racial, gender, geographic, financial and social division is the ultimate destruction of capitalism and its replacement with socialism. That’s not the leap of logic that it seems to be at first. The support of socialist systems may be difficult to understand until we remember that humans are both basically flawed and practiced in self-deception, and that’s why we see socialism in its many forms rise again and again in spite of the fact that it always fails. Always. Earth is dotted with the graves of those that believed “this time will be different.” They all say that, at least at first.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So what’s the alternative? I don’t watch news and absolutely refuse to watch videos of interviews, debates, commentary or “reality” shows of any type, but do not remain ignorant. Mama said it’s OK to be ignorant, but what’s not OK is to remain that way. What passes for debate today simply ends up with the participants talking over each other and each telling the other “oh yeah!” and “get out of my yard” in slightly different forms. The selected 15 second sound bytes make good material for political ads but not much else. I do, however, recommend reading. It’s possible to read interviews, news stories, descriptions of events and glean enough information from a wide variety of sources to stay informed and make informed decisions about the things you need to know without being influenced by the psych-ops of “news” shows. Videos are for music, animals and Fred Astaire and Shirley Temple. You will not get the truth from news shows, and limiting your own investigations to one or two sources is a prime way to preserve ignorance. An educated populace is vital to our continuation as a free republic.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The truth only becomes blurred or fuzzy if you allow it to be, and a partial truth is still a lie any way it’s presented. Having the strength of your convictions is difficult in today’s world, but can be done. Your convictions also have to be taught to your children, because this struggle never ends when the current evil is defeated. Like many other bad ideas and the flu it returns again and again no matter how many times it fails. Freedom demands it, because human stupidity and our capacity for self delusion never die.</span></p><br /><br /></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-7140785435445863162021-06-24T12:26:00.001-04:002021-06-24T12:26:35.003-04:00Make A Joyful Noise<p> <span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I went to Ole Miss to learn to be a band director, but there were some things they didn’t teach me and quite a few things I thought I knew until I found out I didn’t. We did learn how to teach the fundamentals of hand position and mouth formation and care for most instruments, but for some reason the fact that we would be teaching 11 year olds and not each other evaded me until I was confronted with them. In addition, exactly how to gently steer 6th graders toward tuba or French horn when every girl wanted to play the flute or clarinet and every boy wanted to play drums or trumpet was an art that is only acquired, if at all, through trial and error. Mostly error. There were a couple of other things about being Mr. Music in a small town I wasn’t prepared for. Strangely enough, church was one of those things.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-4f42fd6e-7fff-c6e6-ff3d-848ea0eddf89"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Most small towns in the South have more than their share of churches and denominations. Denominations are people’s interpretations of what God said coupled with their firm belief that their particular interpretation is the correct one. I never had the hubris to decide which was right and which was wrong and believed that if they were based on Biblical scripture God would eventually decide whether or not they were what he intended. God does, after all, have a sense of humor. Family usually plays an important part in what denomination people belong to, and I had been brought up in the Baptist church. Mama made sure we went most Sundays and some Wednesdays and that my brothers and I were well known to the other members. I didn’t know until later that our familiarity with church members was part of the secret Mothers’ Neighborhood Tracking and Intervention System, but that’s another story.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I had been on the job as a brand new band director for almost a week (without pay) my first summer out of college, and was busy doing all the things (without pay) I thought I needed to do to get ready for summer band camp and for school to start when I had a series of preachers stop by to welcome me to the town and to invite me to dinner at their respective houses. Being all of 23 I did not suspect their motives beyond church attendance, and enjoyed the first dinner until, full of fried chicken, sweet tea and mashed potatoes, the Methodist minister asked me if I would like to be their church choir director. I was more than a little surprised but particularly susceptible to his offer of $100 a month because new teachers didn’t get paid until the month after school had started and it was a stretch living on my savings because I had been a college student and didn’t have any. I had never directed a choir, Methodist or otherwise, but had sung in several. Not very well, but I could read music, so how hard could it be? Neither had I ever been to a Methodist church, but the Preacher’s explanation that Baptists and Methodists believed in the same God and differed over minor details seemed good to me. Choir practice every Wednesday at 7pm and church every Sunday at 11am. Oh, and revivals once a year for 5 nights in a row...and a Christmas program.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I found out quickly that, like most things, there was more to it than I had imagined, and that what appeared to be simple and straightforward wasn’t. At all. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My first choir practice didn’t start smoothly. The choir members arrived a few minutes early, and a couple asked to look at the music we would sing that night. Music? I had assumed we would be using the hymnals. You remember them. The big red Broadman hymnals that most every church had in the little wooden pockets on the back of every pew, along with the smaller brown Cokesbury hymnals with the shape notes that the older members loved but didn’t like to use because the print was way too small for them to read. It seemed that the choir was, in addition to the 3 hymns that were at the beginning, middle and end of every service, supposed to sing a “special” from a subscription music service the church paid for. Not only that, the choir director was supposed to pick it out to match the season or the sermon - both if possible - for the Sunday service AND take into consideration which choir members would or would not be there for the performance. I did the adult thing and admitted my ignorance, and they, being faithful practitioners of what they professed, helped me out. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There were several of the choir members that had beautiful voices but few had any musical training at all. My first inclination was to indoctrinate them with a rather lengthy and completely unnecessary explanation of chord structure and the rise and fall of the melodic line of the piece they had chosen, but was saved from this by Betty Ruth, the pianist. She had been a member of the choir for years, and the pianist and organist of record for longer than I had been alive. She informed me quickly at the beginning of my explanation that most of the members didn’t read music that well, but that she would play the parts for them and they would follow along and learn them as she played. I started, in the ignorance of youth and inexperience, to protest against her unmusical approach, but saw several of the choir members nodding their heads in agreement and made a hasty and fortunate decision to do it her way. The key to my decision was when I remembered - and just in the nick of time - this was a volunteer choir, and that if the experience for them wasn’t a combination of fun and positive reinforcement their incentives for participation would be quickly lost. I gave in, and the choir survived.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Later that evening, as the learning progressed, I noticed she seemed to be playing in a key not related to the key in which we were singing. Remembering the way she saved me from myself earlier, I waited until after rehearsal to ask her why, when the key was clearly A that she was playing in Ab. “Oh, I never learned to play in sharps” she answered quickly, “and I just replace the sharps with flats until I find a key that fits.” I thought for about 10 seconds of all the musical ways this was wrong and then said “Betty Ruth, I think you just invented the piano capo. It sounds fine.” For the second time in the same day I had exhibited adult discretion and was learning how to be correct without being right. It was a banner day, and not often repeated.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The first Sunday we rehearsed our song in the choir room before the service. I discovered that, in spite of everything I had been led to believe, my conducting was not the cue for singing or for the song to begin. Betty Ruth did all that from her piano. When she began, the song began at her tempo and with her pauses and with her endings. I was pretty much a figurehead so I tried to focus on leading the congregation when I was in fact simply following the power of the piano player. She was in charge, but was gracious enough to let me think I had control. I don’t think anyone was fooled, and it seemed musically contrarian but it also worked pretty well for a 23 year old director that really didn’t have much idea of what he was doing. In a larger sense, I was being trained on a small scale for what actually happens in marriage, but there again, that’s another story.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The choir and I struggled through several months together, and I learned again and again that sometimes it was better to keep your mouth shut and roll with the punches rather than fight the inevitable. I also learned that the same people that came to practice on Wednesday evening may or may not be the same group for Sunday morning, and the reverse applied equally well. One interesting thing - to me, anyway - I noticed was that if the Pastor thought he had presented an effective sermon we sang all the verses of the last hymn. If he wasn’t sure about it’s effect on the congregation, he cut it down to first and last verses. I don’t think anyone ever actually bet on how many people might come forward on any given Sunday, but the predicted number was a topic of discussion among some of the parishioners.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We had several extraordinary musical events, some intentional and some not. My friend Ken had a beautiful baritone voice, but was afflicted with almost terminal stage fright, and no matter what tips I gave him or how much we all encouraged him he almost always refused to sing solos. The only thing that ever really worked - as long as I didn’t use it too often - was to assign the solo to someone else knowing that person would not be there for the Sunday performance, and only telling Ken he was to sing the solo when we met in the choir room 15 minutes before the Sunday service. He would argue and try his best to nominate someone else, but usually ended up singing and doing a wonderful job. The first morning we pulled this on him, his nerves were clearly on display as his solo approached. As the piano played a short introduction before his solo, very clearly over the microphone in front of him was heard a plaintive moan of “oh hell.” I think most of the congregation missed the first half of his solo. Since it was a church service, we will call it snickering and not outright laughter.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Rose Marie was a soprano, and did not volunteer for solos but had a good voice and was regular in her attendance, which guaranteed her advancement to solo status. Many of the arrangements we sang were based on old hymns, and one morning we sang an arrangement of Let Us Break Bread Together. The 1st verse just happened to be the solo Rose Marie was singing.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let us break bread together on our knees, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let us break bread together on our knees. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">O Lord, have mercy on me. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It’s a beautiful old hymn, but in this instance the 3rd and 4th lines came out “when I fall on my face with my knees to the rising sun” and, as you can imagine, disrupted the service for several minutes. The choir couldn’t sing and the congregation couldn’t listen because they were all attempting valiantly to stifle their laughter. Rose Marie was blissfully unaware of the issue and didn’t know right away what had happened. We stopped, gave everyone a few minutes to catch up with themselves, and began on the 2nd verse. It was a memorable moment indeed.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When I first began working with the choir, my musical self found that there really wasn’t too much difference in teaching kids band and in leading the adult church choir. Neither group responded well to too much correction, however well intended or musically appropriate. As one of my teachers put it, “you have to find a positive way to say negative things.” Another similarity is that if they want to participate it’s your obligation to teach them regardless of their limitations and respective abilities. Teach those that show up. One of my friends - Jerry - gave me some advice soon after I began teaching. “You need to remember a couple of things about small towns. First, everybody knows everybody else and most are usually related in some way or another. They all know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and love each other anyway. Second, it’s a volunteer choir and band is an elective in school. They all feel good about singing for the services and playing in the band and expect good performances but not necessarily musical perfection. Third, the Bible says “make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” It doesn’t say it has to be great, but just needs to be done with the proper spirit and thankfulness. Think for a minute” he continued, “about performances that always get applause no matter the quality.” That one was easy. “Kids” I answered, “and the smaller the kid the greater the applause for the effort. Quality is rarely even considered.” Jerry continued “that’s right, and the audience not only smiles but it touches their hearts, even when it’s musically bad.” I began to catch on. “So God considers the fact that you’re singing more important than how you are singing.” “That’s what I believe” said Jerry, “and that’s why church choirs and school bands are an important part of every small town, no matter what you might think of the quality. Now don’t misunderstand, there are some wonderful bands and church choirs and singers out there and their musical offerings are absolutely beautiful, but God recognizes the joyful noise of the folks you teach and their efforts, good and bad, as equally as important to Him.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So making music, good or not so good, is important. How do I know that? God said so. And so did all those volunteers. Keep making those joyful noises, and those rainbows will keep appearing.</span></p><div><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-62843809288618395582021-05-31T10:54:00.000-04:002021-05-31T10:54:31.404-04:00Decoration Day Memorial<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Here in Columbus GA, one of the places that claims the founding of the Memorial Day (Decoration Day) tradition, I can sit on my porch in the evenings and listen to what my neighbors call “the sound of freedom” as the tanks and guns practice at the firing ranges at Ft. Benning just a few miles south. The really big guns like the 120mm cannon on the M1A2 tanks and some of the larger field pieces sound like thunder heading our way, and the army does a credible job of weather prediction by firing on the ranges just before a rain to limit the possibility of fires in the pine forests around the base. Some people complain about the noise, and I’ll admit it does rattle our windows from time to time, but when I remember they are training to protect us from enemies “domestic and foreign” I find the sounds strangely comforting knowing they will be better prepared for having gone through the experience. Columbus is a town of veterans, and it’s pretty much impossible to go into a store or restaurant without seeing hats from every branch of service covering wispy white hair. It’s also great to see the new soldiers on their first leaves from training in and around town, almost always in small uniformed groups and all sporting the same shaved head haircuts that identify them - even without the uniforms - as part of the cadre of trainees just completing basic training. It seems as if almost every family here has a history of service that goes back deep into our country’s history, and count military service as an important part of their family records.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-cd7f2878-7fff-b56c-4464-99c7c6608e21"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Both my parents’ families both have pretty extensive records of service, all the way back to the Revolutionary War. William Scott Mullen, Mama’s great great grandfather (don’t hold me to the exact number of greats in there) served in the 1st North Carolina Battation of the Continental Army, and enlisted on August 15, 1777. Andrew Jackson Mullen and Benjamin Franklin Mullen died in the Civil War serving the Confederacy as part of the 2nd Battalion of the Mississippi Infantry. Andrew was killed at Williamsburg and Benjamin at Thoroughfare Gap, and both were part of Confederate General James Longstreet’s corps. I still have an old, grainy picture of a ship from around 1918 that my Dad said brought his Dad back from Europe at the end of WW I after he served with Pershing in the American Expeditionary Force in Europe. My Dad’s oldest brother, Carl, was in the Army and landed in Europe on the day the Germans surrendered in 1945. He always said the Germans heard he was coming and decided to surrender before he made it to the front. Dad joined the Army Air Force at 17 in 1945 and went through propeller mechanic school. He was in crew training when the war in Europe ended, and was sent to Fairbanks Alaska to work on B-29 propellers in preparation for the invasion of Japan. He said he thought plowing behind a mule was tough until he started working on “those damn props” in subzero weather. Turns out the Japanese surrendered before they were assigned to combat. That’s when he decided that maybe after that experience the Mississippi Delta wasn’t such a bad place to be after all. His youngest brother Glen was in the Army Air Corp stationed on Guam after the war, but was killed while on leave back home. Roy Lee, the 3rd boy of the bunch, was in the Air Force and retired after 23 years as a Master Sergeant. He came to visit us once when I was about 12, and I asked him what he did in the service. He looked at me with narrowed eyes and didn’t answer for a few moments. I was starting to get a little worried and found it difficult to meet his stare. After a few moments he said “Son, if I told you that I’d have to kill you.” My consternation grew exponentially in the space of the next few moments. I said quickly “you don’t have to tell me if you’re not supposed to” before he smiled and I noticed my Dad laughing at the exchange. He told me later that a lot of what he did really was classified, and it had to do with nuclear surface-to-air missiles most people weren’t supposed to know about. I learned from this experience and never asked him again; you know, just in case. Daddy’s sister Sybil married Lee Roy Logan while he was in the Army at Ft. Benning, and Mama’s brother Carl was also in the army, but a car accident resulted in several broken bones and he missed his units’ assignment to Korea. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Perhaps the veteran I knew the most about was Betsy’s Dad, Bob Black Sr. Bob was a West Virginian from the tiny town of Alderson that joined the Army Air Corps soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was in the 100th Bomb Group, the 449th Squadron in the 8th Army Air Force and was a Radio Operator/Gunner. When Bob was 90 we took him to the airport here in town to see a B-17 on display. The news guys found out he was coming and arranged for him to talk to the pilots. He told them how he went through basic training in Miami (he said the beaches were beautiful but the sand was difficult to run in), gunnery school in San Antonio (we got to shoot at all sorts of stuff every day with everything from shotguns to the 50 cals mounted on the back of a pick up truck) to radio school in Sioux Falls SD (we got to see almost every big band that was anybody coming through the bases) and finally to Thorpe Abbotts in England as part of the crew of a B-17. They got a new plane and had two weeks to practice before their first mission on May 24, 1944. They were part of several hundred planes headed to Berlin that day, and were one of the planes that didn’t come back. Seven of Bob’s crew mates - including his best friend - were killed when they were attacked by a squadron of FW -190 fighters. His plane began to smoke and lose altitude, and they knew they were going down, it was just a matter of where. After being attacked again by fighters, Bob said he was pinned to the floor by centrifugal force as the plane fell, and then all of a sudden he was falling through the air. He was sure someone threw him out, but he was apparently thrown out when his plane broke in half at the radio room bulkhead. His parachute wouldn’t open with the D ring, so he began throwing fistfulls of chute into the air and hoping it worked. It did. He was quickly captured, interrogated and sent to Stalag Luft III near the Baltic Sea. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> After turning 21 as a POW and walking through much of Germany as the Russian armies advanced, he and his buddies were liberated by elements of Patton’s 3rd Army in Moosberg in April 1945. The pilots were graciously listening as Bob went through his story and how he finally arrived back in the States and had to start his life all over again, and how he still cried at night sometimes for his buddies that didn’t make it. The pilots told him they would be honored if he would go on a flight with them in their B-17 free of charge. Before he answered, he toured the plane with me, pointing out what was missing from “his plane” as he remembered it. He was using a walker before he entered the plane, but went up the ladder and through the fuselage and over the catwalk over the bomb bay like a 20 year old. As he went back down the ladder, he thanked the pilots for the tour, but said that was enough for him. “Fellas” he said quietly, “I thank you for the chance to fly again, but I don’t think I can do it. You see, the last flight I took didn’t go so well.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I think every military family has a story of a brother or Dad or Mom or son or daughter whose flight or deployment or ship or service where “things didn’t go so well.” The important thing for us to remember is that they were there when our country called, and scared or not stood up to be counted when it mattered. It’s a wonderful thing that we honor the sacrifice of those brave soldiers and their families. Sometimes it’s harder to be the ones left than the ones remembered, and not all of the scars of war are on the outside.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-12501483135835941452021-05-17T08:22:00.002-04:002021-05-17T11:54:04.872-04:00Forward Into The Past<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When I was in high school I didn’t care much for history unless it was about battles or airplanes. I was pretty sure there was nothing cooler than a WWII airplane, and I must have put together a couple of hundred of the plastic model plane kits. Maybe it was the glue. Now that I am a little older I find myself voluntarily reading history and biographies of famous and infamous people from many countries and eras. It might be that I appreciate it more because I have a larger life sample to provide referential experiences, or maybe I just appreciate discovering that even the best heroes have a bad day or a bad idea or even a bad year sometimes, and that none of us are good all the time. That’s rather comforting in an odd sort of way. We can pretend history didn’t happen but that’s like hiding under the covers when you think there’s a monster in your room. Sooner or later whatever you are afraid of has to be confronted or it will be there again the next night - and every successive night. I have also noticed a strong relationship between youth and self-centeredness, and that I seem to spend more time worrying about the long run now that I’m much closer to its end than I used to be.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-02f82cfe-7fff-0cd3-165d-82bad7544c2c"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I discovered, for example, that our Founding Fathers were not all agreed on just what sort of country we should have since the king-subject thing didn’t work out so well with Britain. The problem with monarchies is that sooner or later you’re going to get a king like George III that may not be mentally stable or competent. Hmmm. There were many arguments before and after the Revolution concerning the underlying principles that would guide our new Republic. What all the speeches and arguments finally came down to was federalism and anti-federalism. Federalism is the belief that the Federal government is the big cheese and that state governments were allowed to make rules and decisions as long as they didn’t conflict with what the federal government wanted or controlled. The anti-federalists believed that too much power would eventually corrupt the central government and allow it to seize more and more power and become a tyrannical entity that did not respond to the will of the people. These anti-federalists, convinced the Constitution by itself would lead to a group of “elitists” controlling the central government, insisted on including a “Bill of Rights” that guaranteed the rights of the individual citizen and limited those of the central government. In addition to a desire to limit the expansion and influence of the Federal government, they also believed in fiscal responsibility, the elimination of the national debt and in the Jeffersonian ideal of strict interpretation of the Constitution. This dichotomy, still present today, was fundamental to the Presidential elections of 1824 and 1828.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In 1823, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson were candidates for the Presidency, and all were members of the Democratic-Republican party, the only national political party at the time. While Jackson won more popular votes and an electoral advantage, Adams and Crawford had significant totals themselves. Clay finished fourth and was eliminated from the race, and the election was decided in the House of Representatives. Clay, a leading member of the House, decided to lend his support and influence to Adams if he were offered the position of Secretary of State in Adam’s administration, since they shared similar views on many issues. Clay also knew the position was considered to be a stepping stone to the Presidency. With Clay’s support, Adams won the vote in the House and was named President. Jackson, the popular choice, was defeated. Clay was indeed named Secretary of State by Adams. Jackson immediately declared the apparent agreement between Clay and Adams as scurrilous and unprincipled, and insisted the election had been stolen as a result of their illicit conspiracy. His supporters began to plan immediately for Jackson’s 1828 campaign.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Jackson believed Clay to be corrupt and more interested in his own advancement than in that of the country, and Clay thought Jackson, despite his military experience and service as the Governor of Tennessee, unprepared for the duties of President. Their mutual animosity was established years before the 1824 election when Clay labeled Jackson’s Florida military campaign as illegal, and denounced not only the expedition but its military leader. Additionally, Clay thought his “American System” of using Federal dollars for roads and projects a legitimate function of the government, and Jackson believed such a system was unconstitutional, illegal and a threat to American prosperity. Jackson was a populistt with ideas that became known later as “Jacksonian Democracy.” He envisioned the power and influence of large corporations and business influences being replaced by the interests of common men and allowing the vast majority of white males, especially laborers and farmers, suffrage. He campaigned on a promise to end rampant corruption in Washington and believed strongly in Manifest Destiny as a governmental policy to push American growth westward, largely at the expense of Native American peoples. Jackson also believed that Native Americans should assimilate or be moved west of the Mississippi. He did not count them as citizens.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Adams, on the other hand, began his term of office acutely aware that ⅔ of the electorate did not support his presidency, and that many of his colleagues considered him aloof and unwilling to compromise on his programs and ideas. Adams’ proposals were extraordinary for the time, and included federal support for scientific and economic development to be paid for with increased tariffs on trade and commerce. His ideas were condemned by Jackson and by Thomas Jefferson as unconstitutional. Both were convinced Adams’ programs would undermine states’ rights and create “an aristocracy...riding and ruling” over the common citizenry. President Adams did little, if anything, to build support for his policies, and refused to fire administration officials that opposed his programs and worked actively to defeat their implementation. His signature on the “Tariff of Abominations” in 1828 also contributed to his unpopularity. Southerners were convinced the tariff on imported goods was beneficial to the industries of the north and unfair and harmful to the South. Adams’ policies on Indian removal were also unpopular. He did believe Indians should be removed from the South to lands west of the Mississippi, but that their lands should be purchased and not just taken. Adams also insisted that treaties made with the Indians be honored. These were not popular stances, especially in the West.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Presidential election process in 1828 differed significantly from campaigning in its present form. State legislatures nominated the candidates, and, since travel was slow and often undependable, newsprint took on an increasingly important role. The number of newspapers in the US almost doubled between 1824 and 1828. Political writings and pamphlets were circulated among newspapers, and political cartoons were especially popular. Rather than attempt to hold rallies at a variety of distant locations, candidates often relied on friends and supporters to present their platforms at meetings and rallies. 1828 was also the first presidential election in which all white males, regardless of whether they owned property or not, were allowed to vote. Qualified citizens had from October 31 until December 2 to vote, and 145,788 votes were cast; about 9.5% of the population.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> While we might believe that mudslinging in political campaigns is a relatively recent development, that is certainly not the case. Adams supporters portrayed Jackson as a military martinet, a heavy drinker and gambler and unfit for the office of President. They also noted his participation in several duels, and accused him of murder because he had several deserters shot during his military campaigns. Jackson’s supporters countered with claims that Adams was an “elitist aristocrat” that did not keep the Sabbath, had installed a pool table in the White House, was a gambler, had married a foreigner and had, while Secretary of State, provided a prostitute for a foreign diplomat. Also prominently featured among the attacks on Adams was his quote from his first address to Congress, when he said “politicians should not be palsied by the will of our constituents”; providing proof to his opponents that his elitist beliefs would lead the nation to disaster. </span><span face=""Droid Sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #515151; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Adams’ supporters also brought up an old story about Jackson courting and marrying his wife before her divorce to another man had been finalized, an attack that Jackson never forgave. Jackson’s wife Rachel died between his election and his inauguration, and Jackson was convinced it was the public airing of the story of their marriage that killed her.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> After Jackson was elected, it seemed that most of the residents of his home state of Tennessee decided to attend his inauguration, and Daniel Webster noted with disdain that “most of them seem to think the nation had been saved through his election from some horrible disaster.” Jackson and Adams, in spite of having a good relationship before the campaign, did not reconcile after the election. Jackson refused to call on Adams when he arrived in Washington, and Adams refused to attend the inauguration. In the election of 1832, Jackson beat his old enemy Clay, and, in his estimation, repaid him for the “Corrupt Bargain” with Adams in the 1824 election.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The election of 1828 is often seen as the beginning of the “total war” political campaign that has become the standard we expect to see. The primary difference in then and now is that the Press Corp is not evenly divided among candidates, and they have not only discovered but developed to a high degree the power and ability, through the addictive powers of television, not just to report the news, but report the news in such a way as to effectively sway public opinion. I will leave you with three thoughts; Mark Twain observed “it’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled”; Norm Chomsky noted “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow lively debate within that spectrum”; and William Casey remarked “we’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false.” Maybe the real channel of the news is 666. None of this bodes well for the future of our Country.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Watching the nightly or weekly news is like settling yourself on the couch for your daily dose of angst and a continued indoctrination of fear and hopelessness with a new disaster appearing weekly. Don’t ignore the news, but don’t watch it. Read for yourself and leave the videos for pets, kids and recipes. You’ll be a better and happier person for doing so, and may even discover what it’s like to think for yourself again.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-71604289980754431862021-04-22T08:58:00.000-04:002021-04-22T08:58:53.498-04:00Testing, Testing 123<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Testing, Testing 123</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-8e3593c8-7fff-3b92-5076-6c39cdfcaf22"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Want to see a teacher curse ? Maybe not out loud, but I’m pretty sure they’ll internalize profane thoughts the moment you mention standardized tests. They resent the time spent on testing materials, testing procedures, testing review, testing pep rallies (yes they really are a thing) and the days missed out of actual teaching because of the preparation and administration of the test. They also resent the fact that they are required to assist with test administration AND are blamed when students don’t do well….or well enough. The USDOE has allowed testing companies to determine testing procedures, so during those days and weeks when tests are reviewed or actually given teachers are told not to actually teach or do anything that might possibly distract students from THE TEST. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Tests are nothing new to education. Teachers have been creating and administering their own tests since, well, since there were teachers. They use tests to determine what students know or don’t know, and also to give them an idea of the effectiveness of whatever teaching techniques they use. Every teacher knows that every student learns in different ways at different times and each student responds effectively to some methods but not to others. That’s what differentiation is all about. Want to see this in action? If you have two children, you already know it. For every Wally there is a Beaver, and for every Marsha there’s a Jan. Now take those personalities and add 23 or 24 more completely different entities in one class, mix in two or three students with learning disabilities and a couple of kids with 504 plans and you begin to get an idea of just how difficult teaching really is even without the imposition of other things we think should be a teacher’s responsibility.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So when did these tests become such a big deal to students, to teachers, to schools, to districts and to states? Back in the 1950’s and 60’s (and even before) students would spend a few hours of one school day taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (or something like it) but there was little or no anxiety or commotion because the test results were not used to evaluate students, teachers, schools or states. The results were used to - hold on to your hats - let teachers know which students might benefit from remedial instruction or review in specific academic areas. Teachers and Administrators could look at the results and actually use them to improve instructional practices. That all changed with NCLB in 2002, and education allowed people that had obviously never heard of the bell curve to decide that we would all work toward 100% proficiency for every child in every subject, and if there wasn’t sufficient progress toward that goal then a progressively stringent series of tortures would occur, including more and more tests. When this didn’t work, all the politicians seemed surprised and decided it must be the fault of bad teachers so they decided to do what politicians always do; throw more money at the problem and make it even more punitive with Race to the Top. This initiative was more costly, was still based primarily on student test scores and tried to slip in a national curriculum at the same time. If Lewis Carroll had written this script we all would have thought “this is pretty entertaining but I suspect a profound chemical imbalance affected the script design.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have often wondered how politicians can say with a straight face that every student deserves an individualized, personal education and that we are going to measure that education with a test that’s the same for everybody. They really must believe it, though, because testing companies are raking in over $1.7 BILLION per year from states for mandated standardized testing. Costs per student vary from state to state, but the money totals are significant. Georgia spends about $14 per student on testing per year, Hawaii spends $105 and DC $114. (You can figure that disparity out.) That means Georgia spends over $25 million on mandated standardized tests each year. That’s not just $14 per student, it also means about $209 per teacher and about $10900 per school that could be used for something - anything - else. Whether the money comes from state coffers or from the USDOE, it’s all from taxpayers and provides useless information that teachers cannot use in the classroom to improve instruction.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Wait a minute - what? Of course they can use the information. Not so fast, my friend. Schools don’t receive standardized test scores until the fall of the following school year, too late for them to use because the students have moved on to another grade and other classes. The scores they get are nothing but autopsy reports that benefit only politicians. Teachers are not allowed to know the questions, discuss the questions or have input in designing the questions their students are to answer. Besides that, students and teachers must sign a nondisclosure agreement before the tests are given, and are encouraged to report any student or teacher they overhear discussing the test. I’m not making this up. Just for good measure, you might want to find out what testing coordinators at each school are required to do. If they don’t account for every test booklet, for every set of test questions for every student for every test administered and attest to a mandated chain of custody for those items, they can lose (and have lost) teaching certification. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Then there’s the 95% requirement. That means 95% of every school’s student population must take the test. No excuses. Only 1% exceptions. So no matter about Special Education students or IEP’s or 504’s or learning disabilities or physical handicaps or student absenteeism or behavior disorders or family issues the test is administered. And all scores count. Of course we all expect all scores to improve. Every year. If they don’t then the problem can’t be with the test it has to be those bad teachers again. Maybe we should beat them with the stick that had the carrot on it.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So what do we get from all the taxpayer money the states and the USDOE people spend on testing each year? What we get is - take a deep breath - state and local tests given in an attempt to prepare students for federally mandated standardized tests. Preparing students for testing by giving more tests is like the farmer that wanted to increase the weight of his cows so he weighed them more often. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So surely these test scores are good for something, right? Like predicting success in college? You might think that, but you would be wrong. The best predictor of student success across four years of college study is high school grade point average. Say it with me; HIGH SCHOOL GRADE POINT AVERAGE (ERIC # ED502858). HSGPA, as an admissions criterion for colleges, also has less adverse consequences on disadvantaged and minority students than standardized tests. You might want to read that one again. It seems that the single most consistent result of standardized tests is known as the zip code effect. They have been designed since their inception to discriminate. These inherently biased tests can accurately predict the socio-economic status of the family of the student test taker with uncanny results. In other words, not only are the tests undeniably prejudiced, they have never been accurate and reliable measures of student learning. Ever. Add to that the fact that we are the ONLY country that uses these abominations to judge educational quality. Wonder why? Because the tests were originally designed to replicate racial and economic inequality. They don’t just define the achievement gap, they create and serve to perpetuate that division.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So why do we keep spending this money and giving these tests and subjecting students and teachers to needless pressure and stress? The answer seems to be simple. Testing companies want to continue making big money and they currently make more than enough to be able to contribute to political campaigns. The real purpose goes much deeper; testing is designed to give the appearance that public education is failing. This allows politicians to divert more and more public funds to private education to pay for their kids and grandkids. Standardized testing, in its present form, is nothing more than educational malpractice on a national scale. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I once heard a quote from the CEO of a sandwich company about his business philosophy. “Everyone in this building has one job, and that’s to sell our sandwiches. If you’re not doing that, you’d better be helping someone who is.” I think we should apply that philosophy to teaching and finally put our educational reform efforts toward productive educational policies. What a novel concept - trusting teachers to help kids. That’s a reform from which we could all benefit. Especially students.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-84633491031654577112021-01-29T14:18:00.000-05:002021-01-29T14:18:06.645-05:00How To Eat A Chocolate Cake<p><span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Mrs. Moore at Raines Elementary was one of my favorite teachers of all time, and part of that was because she challenged us to do things we were all pretty sure we couldn’t do. She didn’t come out and verbally issue a challenge like we were going to have a duel, she just expected results that most of us were pretty sure she wasn’t going to get. Not completely, anyway. Like most teachers of the time, she wrote on the blackboard and we were expected to write down pretty much everything she wrote. That doesn’t sound too bad in itself, until I tell you that she wrote with her right hand and erased with her left hand at the same time. The words would be up there for us to see - in cursive, of course - and when she finished two lines she would begin to write on the third and simultaneously erase the first line while continuing on with her writing, so by the time she got to the bottom of the board the top was already clear for her to begin again. It was an impressive thing to watch, especially since most of us couldn’t rub our stomach and pat our head at the same time. It also meant that our room had more chalk dust per capita than any other two rooms at Raines, and I’m pretty sure she had to pay the custodians extra to clean each evening.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a4bfa572-7fff-a452-e820-944e32519e52"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I learned a lot in Mrs. Moore’s room, and still diagram a sentence or two just for fun in my spare time, but there was one time she almost lost me. She handed out a mimeograph, all purple and white and still a little damp, with 100 prepositions in alphabetical order. Remember the smell of mimeographs? It was the smell of elementary school for many years until Xerox ruined it. Every test, every study sheet and every handout was a mimeo, and the first thing every one of us did was sniff it before we looked at it. This one was a full page. There were 5 rows of 20 words each, and I thought it was a pretty neat reference sheet to have handy. That’s when she dropped the bomb - it wasn’t a reference sheet. I will mention that Mrs. Moore was rather insidious in that way. She would say something we thought was innocuous that in the next sentence turned into an impossible situation for us. Here it was again. We had to memorize it. All 100 words. In order. Before next Monday. Since this was Monday afternoon, we figured out pretty quickly that we had a week left to live, because nobody thought they could do it. Nobody in my group, anyway.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The bike ride home after school that day helped me forget, for a while, the impossible assignment. That and the magic saddlebags on the back of my bike. I thought they were magic because a lot of the stuff I put in there - homework, tests for parent signature, report cards and other school stuff - often disappeared and magically reappeared just before or after the due date. I wasn’t sure how that happened, but there did seem to be a combination gravitic/temporal anomaly in there somewhere, but it didn’t happen with this one because I had to let my Mama know that my teacher had finally gone nuts.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I had tried this tactic with Mama before, and it had failed every time. My teachers would make some crazy, off the wall requirement that was clearly impossible or excessive or an exotic combination of the two and I would get home as quickly as I could to show Mama they had finally gone over the edge. I was a little slow in figuring out that Mama and my teachers had a mystic, cosmic connection that required them to agree with each other and for each to not only understand the others’ madness but to approve of and reinforce its manifestations.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It was the same this time. Mama did not seem upset or concerned about the draconian expectations of Mrs. Moore, and, after she sniffed the paper, quickly scanned it and handed it back to me. “You’d better get started” she said, “those prepositions aren’t going to memorize themselves.” I was crestfallen. My biggest supporter, benefactor and confidant had once again taken the teacher’s side. Was it possible that the whole world was crazy and I just hadn’t figured it out yet? Was it possible that once again that mystic, cosmic teacher/parent connection appeared at just the right moment to ruin my life forever? Was there after all a secret parent/teacher society that required one to support the other even to the point of abandoning their children? Alas, that certainly seemed to be the case.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I took the paper with a look of dejection that must have been apparent to Mama. I was, after all, reasonably objective about the ups and downs of life except when it concerned my model planes, Boy Scouts or baseball, and she had the ability to read my moods like a book. “It’s like eating a chocolate cake” she said. “You can do this with no problem.” That pretty much did it for me. She was on the teacher’s side again. I resigned myself at that moment to failing the 6th grade, dropping out of school and joining the army. I already had my own genuine surplus army helmet and canteen belt, so I had a head start there. I was big for my age, so they might believe I was 17 and take me without calling the house. I’ll bet they didn’t have to memorize prepositions in their foxholes.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Mama interrupted my foray into abject self-pity with “did you hear what I said?” “Yes ma’am” I replied, “but I didn’t think you were paying attention.” She smiled at me and asked “how do you eat a chocolate cake?” I knew I had to answer, so I said “as quickly as I can so my brothers won’t steal it.” It was honest, but not what she was looking for. “No, silly,” she said, “you eat it one bite at a time.” She thought that would conclude the matter, but I didn’t get the connection. She saw my confusion and explained further; “if your job was to eat a whole chocolate cake, could you do it?” I had to think. A whole cake was a lot, even for me, and I wasn’t sure I could finish the whole thing at one time, but I was willing to try. I decided to play her silly game to see where it went. “I probably couldn’t eat it all at once” I told her, “but if I could hide it from my brothers I’m sure I could do it in two days.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “I’m sure you could, too” she offered, “but that’s not exactly what I meant. What I mean is that if you have a big cake to eat the best way to finish it is one bite at a time.” She waited a moment for the light bulb to go on over my head. After a few long seconds it finally did, and I told her “so you mean that if I cut the cake into slices and eat one slice now and one later and one later after that pretty soon the whole cake will be finished.” “That’s exactly it, and if it applies to chocolate cake it will also work with prepositions” she stated with a small degree of smugness that I have often noted in teachers. “OK, so just to be clear, you’re telling me that if I memorize 5 or so prepositions today and 5 or so tomorrow that maybe this isn’t quite as impossible as it sounds?” “See” she said cheerfully, “I knew you would find a solution to this” and turned and walked quickly to another room where my little brother had been suspiciously quiet for the last several minutes.. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Left alone for a moment, I tried to think through what had just happened. Again. My teacher had gone nuts, my Mama had backed her up and shown me how to do what I was pretty sure couldn’t be done and had managed to give me credit for figuring out something she had actually figured out and explained and left me to feel good about doing what she was actually responsible for. I gave up after a few minutes of confusion, pulled out the mimeograph for one more sniff and started to memorize the first 5 words. They had tricked me into succeeding once again. I was merely a pawn in the giant chess game of life, and was becoming more and more convinced that real power in life was in the hands of Moms and teachers. Or both.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><div><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-53640664096252129812020-12-29T17:17:00.000-05:002020-12-29T17:17:00.293-05:00WERE YOU THERE WHEN THE CURVE GOT FLAT?<p> <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">WERE YOU THERE WHEN THE CURVE GOT FLAT?</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-754c348f-7fff-267e-8a38-09de581131d1"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We’ve been trying to do our part (mostly) by wearing a mask and staying at home (sort of) and not holding family ...OK, we’ve done a lot of hand washing and stuff, and I just got to thinking about just when that curve might be flattened enough so people that make decrees would think it’s safe to come out again? I can’t find anybody that knows. Some even think that months and years might stretch into practically never, and I’m not prepared for that kind of sacrifice for me or my kids or my grandkids. You’re probably not either.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Trying to find a few answers, I found the place where the curve itself seems to have originated way back in March (</span><a href="https://www.flattenthecurve.com" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.flattenthecurve.com</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). This is also the place where the lockdown idea was thought to have come from, and, according to the site, was developed by some not so well known people and an assistant professor from Oregon State. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of research to back the theory, but I would guess that most people, when asked about the ideas’ validity, heard “well, it’s based on a mathematical concept” and immediately stopped listening and said “If it’s based on math don’t try to explain and I’ll just do whatever it is you want.” So we have. Mostly. Sort of.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> What really happened was that Bill Gates said he thought it would be a great idea and most of us bought it because he must know all the answers because he has most of the world’s money and why would he lie? China did lockdowns, but what they did was several levels above and beyond anything allowed in the US unless you are a Cuomo, and even he can only go so far before someone stands up and says “enough is too much.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’ve never understood why the opinions of Bill and other “famous” people were immediately sought for solutions of any type, much less those opinions about actions to be taken in a health emergency. Do we actually believe that because they are, for whatever reason, famous that means they must be endowed with Mensa level IQs and powers of divination and mystical abilities beyond the ken of mere mortals? Evidently, some of us do. I, for one, do not.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> For those of you, however, that are grounded in reason and facts and seek more information to make your own decisions, the answer you most often will get is whatever you come to believe has been “debunked” as a conspiracy theory. “Debunked” for the uninitiated is a term that originally meant “disproven” but in the 1990’s Hillary changed the definition to “that idea is not something we like or approve of so we will tell everyone you’re nuts if you believe that.” It no longer means proof is involved, simply the application of the term “debunked” to indicate if you believe something besides what we want you to believe, your level of intelligence is not very high. Certainly not on the Clintonian level.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So we are to believe that all doctors and disease transmission experts and microbiologists and mathematicians and Jeff Bezos believe that lockdowns are an effective way of fighting COVID? Maybe even the ONLY way? Not so fast, my friend. It seems that infectious disease epidemiologists and public health officials have other ideas. It doesn’t seem they have yet been “debunked” but maybe that’s why NBC and the other alphabets haven’t said anything about them. As of this moment there are </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #000f2b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">712, 345 concerned citizens, 13,084 medical and public health scientists and 39,544 medical practitioners that believe lockdown are ineffective, inefficient, cruel and counterproductive in solving the COVID crisis, and that maybe, just maybe, there’s another solution.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #000f2b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Short and long term public health effects of lockdowns include drastic decreases in childhood vaccination rates, fewer cancer screenings, higher risk for cardiovascular disease patients - all leading to higher mortality rates in years to come - at least one year of school lost for most students, a drastic increase in mental health issues, and irreparable damage to our economy, especially small business. Our ECONOMY you scream! Is money all you’re worried about you heartless ...No, it’s not just about money, but the connection between personal income and food is an important one. One UN report surmises that lockdown restrictions worldwide will lead to millions suffering from hunger and about 10,000 children per month are perishing from starvation. Lockdowns have ended vaccination projects for measles and polio, and resultant measles outbreaks have already occurred. Estimates of 400,000 deaths from the lack of TB treatments have or will occur in the poorest countries soon, and it’s a sure bet surges in polio will soon follow.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #000f2b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> But lockdowns have been proven to work, right? I mean, surely there’s a history of success with that method in eradicating infectious diseases? So you might think, but you would be wrong. Basic epidemiological disease theory tells us that lockdowns not only fail to reduce the total infection rate, they have NEVER IN HISTORY led to the eradication of any disease. Never. Ever. In History. At best they can delay infection rates for a short period of time and at great human cost. Eventually lockdowns will fail, partly because of human nature and partly because infection rates will eventually rise.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #000f2b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So what’s a better option? Is there one? Yes, Virginia, there is. One methodology is Focused Protection. You can read about it for yourself at </span><a href="https://gbdeclaration.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://gbdeclaration.org/</span></a><span style="color: #000f2b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “What’s this?” you ask. “Why have I never heard of this? It sounds important.” You’ve never heard of it because all of our news people have been replaced by social influencers that don’t really care much about anything but being socially influential. Science tells us that the COVID virus is more than 1000 times more dangerous to our older population than to children and young adults. Adopting measures to protect those in nursing homes and retirees should be a focus while allowing those with minimal risk of death to live normally. Hand washing and staying at home when sick and other common sense procedures will allow our population to reach the herd immunity threshold quickly. Schools should be opened, activities resumed, restaurants and other businesses should be reopened and church services restarted.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="color: #000f2b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Unlike lockdown procedures, herd immunity is not heartless and has not been “debunked” by science. Now that several vaccines have been developed and made available, those and herd immunity will soon contain the disease, and lockdowns will fall into that category of things that were tried and failed, a lot like “duck and cover” that was supposed to protect school children in case of a nearby nuclear blast. Some might still insist that lockdowns be continued in spite of their negative results and the law of unintended consequences. If so, perhaps we should investigate the motives of those that cry “follow the science” and ignore what the science says. Perhaps they are lying dog faced pony soldiers, and their motives are more insidious than the disease itself. Sometimes control can be a dangerous drug in its own right. Maybe there’s a lockdown for that one, too.</span></p><br /><br /></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-62842521535570099842020-07-11T15:55:00.000-04:002020-07-11T15:55:15.133-04:00True Confessions<span id="docs-internal-guid-a3b30a25-7fff-95fe-2d86-853112b9efea"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I used to be a Socialist. Well, sort of anyway. As much of a socialist as an 18 year old in the middle of Mississippi in 1970 with a brand new high school diploma could be. There I was with my long hair, bell bottoms, new saxophone and a hastily developed attitude of moral superiority that seemed to grow with every day that went by. My circadian rhythms were completely backwards because on weekends I usually went to bed around 4 or 5 am and slept till 3 or 4 in the afternoon because most of the stuff I was interested in being a part of was happening at night. Especially Friday and Saturday nights. Mama said that nothing good ever happened after 10 pm, and she was probably aware that at that age “nothing good” was exactly what I was on the lookout for. My parents had been pretty strict, but I had worn them down over the years and when I turned 18 or so they were used to me being out late playing on the weekends because for better or worse I had decided to change the world through music and that meant late nights in some places they would rather I not be. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I made it out to be but at that age it was a taste of freedom I had not known before.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Woodstock had gone on without me just a couple of years before, and I remember the feelings of frustration when my mother wouldn’t let me take her VW bug to New York to at least try to get there through the traffic and blocked roads. I mean really, I had been driving for over a year and I told her I would be careful and we all knew that bad stuff only happened to other people, so what was her problem anyway? I had, as much as possible in the center of Mississippi, developed what I later described as a semi-hippie attitude to go along with my semi-hippie attire (including bell bottom fringe and worn sandals), and money wasn’t really an issue because I had no bills. The $40-50 a week I made being a rock and roll star covered my expenses pretty well, and Mama made sure I had plenty to eat. Daddy had threatened to charge me for sleeping and eating in his house but hadn’t gotten to that point yet.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I had convinced myself, with teenage assurity, that I had an enormous number of solutions to societal problems but couldn’t seem to get anyone to ask me the questions that would allow those solutions suitable widespread presentation and implementation. It probably didn’t help my case or my presentation that I considered my mere presence as beneficial to both my family and the world, and seldom suffered from the self doubt and lack of assurance that I read about in books. Like most teenagers, though, I wasn’t politically active because politics was an ugly game, and because my parents wouldn’t even consider letting me participate in demonstrations and protests.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I was also convinced that LBJ’s Great Society was a good thing, and that giving money to everyone that needed it was part of responsible government policy. That was before I found out that a lot of the money they were giving away was going to come from my paycheck. I spent a summer driving a forklift and stacking plywood at a company in Oxford in between rock bands, and I was at first convinced there had been a processing mistake with how much the government took of my weekly check and, after learning that “no, young man, there’s no mistake” from the company bookkeeper, astounded but resigned to the fact that this legalized appropriation was the price of being allowed to work. That was pretty much the moment I began to believe that maybe socialism wasn’t such a great idea after all.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A lot of my ideas about how things should work had come from sitting around late at night with friends and colleagues in college dorm rooms or off campus housing discussing politics and religion and monetary theory in great depth and detail. We were all completely inexperienced in practical applications of pretty much anything, but without exception sure of the purity and purpose of our intentions and convictions. Our teachers encouraged us to question things, and we had no trouble following their lead. We were all convinced that “the man” was screwing things up and we could show him (them?) how to fix it all just as soon as we got into a management position...like maybe after working a year or two first.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We did read a lot about different forms of government; you know, like plutocracy, republic, democracy, theocracy, Marxist, Socialist, dictatorship and Disney, and decided that maybe labels weren’t a good thing, and that we could all get along if we just all believed in love and gave peace a chance...man. As I got a little older and had to start working full time in order to eat and have electricity and a car and gas - you know the pattern - I started reading things that I wanted to know about instead of stuff I had to read for a grade. One interesting comment that stuck out for me was attributed to William Casey to the effect of “a man at 20 who is not a Socialist has no heart, and a man at 40 who is a Socialist has no brain.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Socialism is an idealistic theory that can’t function effectively in reality because it fails -actually ignores - the fact that all humans are fallible, and when given choices between self interests or altruism will eventually, given enough opportunities, succumb and choose self interest. Once someone in charge decides they deserve a little extra the whole theory reveals itself as the house of cards it is, the supporting idealism falls by the side of the road and life becomes pretty miserable for everyone except those at the top. Time and time again history repeats itself, but then someone always says “yeah, but this time will be different” but it never is. Like Yosemite Sam once observed “people is dumber than anybody.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One of the other strange things I discovered about Socialists is they never seem to want to give their own money away, but have no qualms or compunctions whatsoever about freely distributing yours. I learned in elementary school that effective leaders modeled the behavior they wanted others to display. If that’s true for Socialists, why does Bernie have 3 houses and make millions of dollars? Why do Alexandria and Ilhan not distribute their funds to hospitals or the poor and needy? Could it be that their goal is only Socialism if they get to be in charge of distributing other people’s money? There used to be a kid in our neighborhood like that. We weren’t allowed to use his football unless we played by his rules that he made up as the game went along. We only played that game once, and never fell for it again. Seems to me that the history of Socialism is full of examples just like the kid that owned the football and made his own rules and always rigged the game to his advantage. It’s a pretty good deal if you’re the one in charge and not doing without food and electricity and toilet paper or having to eat your neighbor’s pet, but not much fun for anybody else. I must also admit to being a little confused as to why they would want to tear down a system that allowed them to rise to their current positions. I mean really, isn’t being a representative for your state a pretty significant step up from bar tender or unemployed refugee? Would scrapping a system that not only allowed but encouraged that much upward mobility be a good thing?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Strangely enough, though, as time went on the more money I made the more money I noticed being taken out of my checks and the less convinced I became that other people deserved part of it without my input. This gradual change in my belief system coincided, strangely enough, with the addition of experience and maturity, and while neither expanded to the extent I might have hoped I have managed to live longer than I ever expected to, so there’s that. Now don’t misunderstand - we pay taxes and give money and goods to charities of all types, but we choose those charities and how much of our income we distribute. Taxes are pretty arbitrary, but I look at them as a necessary cost of doing business, and pretty much balanced out by being born in America.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I also have noted similarities in my attitudes and idealism and beliefs at 18 and those who call themselves socialists today. Very few have any work experience, very few are contributing members of society, even fewer actually pay the taxes they are willing to designate for free this and free that and the current “if you live here you deserve someone else’s money” programs, and most seem convinced, as I was then, that the way to change a light bulb is to stand on a ladder, hold the bulb up and wait for the world to revolve around you.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> So maybe the answer to anybody screaming about the unfairness of capitalism is to let them have their little socialism fantasies for the 4 or 5 years of college and wait until they graduate or flunk out and have to get a job and life changes their mind. Perhaps they should have the privilege of living in a socialist country for a year or two just to reap a little bit of what they are trying to sow. Maybe while they’re at it they could pay for all the stuff they broke while having their little tantrums about having their way or holding their breath until they turn blue. Like the little kid having the tantrum in the grocery store, the only way they can win is if nobody steps in to be the parent and just gives them what they want to make them stop. Mama had a saying for that situation too. “If you don’t correct it, you are teaching it.” These tantrums are the height of selfishness and juvenile behavior, and need to be corrected. Immediately. Somebody has to be the adult around here. It’s probably too late to teach them what it means to get the switch they’re gonna get used on them, but somebody has to stand up and tell them no...and mean it. I don’t think timeout is going to work at this point.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-92050150248251262392020-05-21T09:14:00.000-04:002020-05-21T09:14:27.234-04:00Singing Those Stay At Home Covid Blues<span id="docs-internal-guid-48bcbaf1-7fff-cb9a-ad0f-888073548781"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Betsy and I have been mostly following the latest version of the required and/or suggested stay-at-home-shelter-in-place-if-you-don’t-want-to-die policies since this whole thing started, either in February or 3 years ago, one or the other. Most of it hasn’t been too hard, but we did experience a few unintended consequences with the online ordering thing that eventually took over most of our daily activities. She ordered, for example, the requisite face masks online but didn’t notice they came from China and cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 apiece shipping costs, and we got 100 of them. They arrived after about 4 weeks, which wasn’t too bad considering where they came from, but they were sort of lost in the flurry of deliveries that soon became a flood. We live on a gravel road that is essentially one way with no room to pass, so the UPS and FedEx trucks found themselves meeting each other coming and going, and there were occasions where words were exchanged between drivers and a fistfight or two was narrowly avoided by me negotiating a coin flip to see who would back up and allow the other truck to enter or leave the only access road to our driveway. It was pretty cool to watch the trucks radiator to radiator as one of them backed skillfully at 30 mph or so along the twists and turns of the half mile one lane gravel road so the other guy could enter or exit, dependent of course, on the result of the coin toss. After a few days of traffic jams I solved this problem by installing, right where our gravel road meets the paved road, a red light/green light system activated by an infrared sensor so when one truck or the other was on the way or returning to the pavement from our house it wouldn’t meet another one bringing yet another delivery. In addition to solving the traffic issue, this also provided, for those trucks waiting for the road to clear, a few moments to get out of their trucks and socialize with the other guys in line and already waiting. There were sometimes as many as 3 or 4 delivery trucks waiting for their turn for the light to turn green so they could enter our one lane road. An enterprising young kid from the neighborhood set up a small shelter just off the pavement with a few chairs and donuts and soft drinks and coffee. He recognized a business opportunity when he saw it. I think he’s raising money to help his parents support his Call of Duty habit, but regardless of the reason it’s nice to see capitalism at work in the young.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Our iphones have received a good bit more attention than usual and I think the dog is beginning to get jealous. When one of us picks up a phone, she sniffs disdainfully, looks away and goes to another room. I’ve also noticed that both of us respond like Pavlov’s dogs when the little “ding” announces a text or message. Neither of us can let the notice go unnoticed, and pick up the phone to see what’s there, even if the other one is in the middle of a sentence. When that happens I can hear my Mom in the back of my head saying “hmmmm” which means “don’t ignore another person to look at a telephone. It’s rude.” She’s right, but it’s an easier habit to get than to break.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We were a little concerned that the grandkids were not really getting too much out of their online lessons, and offered to help their parents out by conducting “school” at our house - with appropriate social distancing of course - for one day. The class went fine for about 30 minutes until the snacks ran out, and then the students became surly and uncooperative...or maybe that was the teachers. Either way, the math lessons quickly deteriorated into a knot tying class that never made it past the knots on my fishing rods because there were several and they all needed new lines and swivels and stuff. We took the kids home after lunch and wondered if they would ever get out of their current grade level. I reassured Nana that our parents once thought the same thing about us, and that sometimes taking a class 3 or 4 times could be, in the long run, beneficial in many ways. After that experience I read where the homeschooling experience had resulted in a rather sharp increase of reports of teacher intoxication and the inappropriate use of profanity during class. The report failed to mention whether the profanity was from parents, students or both. I predict significant raises in both status and pay for teachers in all grades as soon as this thing is over and schools open again.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Like most Americans, we have increased our television time significantly and originally thought we might improve our knowledge base by watching interesting documentaries or educational shows, but that hasn’t happened. We discovered that Betsy and I have radically different tastes in television. She follows local and national news religiously, and is an expert on all things COVID, at least until the next day’s report has new facts that prove the old ones false. She also watches reruns of Shark Tank and every house show ever made, and finds herself telling the contestants “you’re gonna be sorry you didn’t finance that kid” and “any idiot can see there’s no room for entertaining in the 2nd house.” I despise news shows of any type and refuse to watch, and generally limit my television to Civil War documentaries. I keep hoping McClellan will send in his reserves at Antietam or that Lee will finally listen to Longstreet on the 3rd day of Gettysburg, but find myself forlornly humming bits and pieces of “Ashokan Farewell” when the result is always the same. Both of us enjoy Andy Griffith, and we’ve watched all 8 seasons of Andy so many times we find ourselves using quotes from the show in almost every conversation, and both understand exactly what the other means. “Thelma Lou, I believe you’re trying to change me!” one of us will say. “Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest!” replies the other. “Aunt Bee, call the man!” or “It’s me, it’s me, it’s Ernest T” or Andy’s signature “I’ll see ya” usually ends the conversation. Neither of us thought Eleanor Donohue a good match for Andy.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I was a little hesitant about my first 2 or 3 post-lockdown trips to the grocery store, but I did feel better when they blocked off every entrance but one and a guy with a face mask and an ipad was keeping track of the number of customers that entered and left. I never saw him stop anybody or say “hold on, sir, we’re at capacity until someone else leaves” but maybe I was there at just the right -or wrong - times. I wore one of the masks from China and put sanitizer on my hands at every opportunity and ended up finding about half the items on my list but got 4 or 5 times the quantities I had written down. I did not feel the temptation to buy cases of toilet paper because I had not heard anything about diarrhea being one of the primary symptoms of the virus, and was pretty sure TP wouldn’t freeze well, but I did get enough canned food and dog food to last us and the dog for a while. We don’t normally eat a lot of beans, but that was about to change for the next few weeks, anyway. There were long empty spaces on shelves where the TP and Lysol and hand sanitizer used to be, but there seemed to be plenty of canned food, fresh vegetables, meat and poultry and ice cream, so we were good, and had all the basic food groups covered. Betsy always wears her full biohazard gear, carries extra sani-wipes in every pocket and pretends to sneeze every time someone gets within her imaginary 10 foot circle. She still goes with me once a week or so to continue her futile search for Lysol aerosol or sanitizing hand wipes. It may be awhile before we see those again.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I had an extensive list of recipes from my Mom and Betsy’s Mom but stuck pretty much to soup and banana pudding for our daily meals since one of us decided they might be vegan. She will eat chicken from time to time, as long as it’s been baked and finely shredded and I don’t remind her it’s in there. Most of the soup recipes I’ve made from Food Network turned out to be a one time event because it doesn’t seem to matter how you fix kale it’s still kale, but we have fixated on chicken and rice and taco soup as our two favorites, and are hoping we don’t get tired of them before all this is over. Don’t let anybody fool you, though - sugar free pudding mix does not mean calorie free pudding, especially when you use most of a box of vanilla wafers and 3 or 4 bananas per bowl. We had to stop that after a couple of weeks because we had already spent our summer vacation allowance and our stimulus money (plus a good bit extra) on things we really needed; clothes for the grandkids, crimson clover seed for the front yard, a new sax mouthpiece, several orders of wrinkle cream (my suggestion to buy it in bulk for a reduced price was not taken well), self-help books, wildflower seeds, repainting most of the interior of the house, recarpeting most of the interior of the house, replacing the upstairs A/C, around 250 new picture albums and some new fishing gear - all done online, of course - and at a pretty significant savings, I’m told; and couldn’t afford new clothes for us without another mortgage or another stimulus check. I’m not sure what we’ll do financially if the grandkids’ travel ball seasons suddenly start back up in July and we have to start traveling again. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I mentioned the new picture albums - Betsy has always said that one day she would gather up all her photographs she has saved in the 8 or 9 steamer trunks stored in my closet and organize them and place them in chronological order in photo albums. The first 3 weeks of isolation she made great progress, and emptied 3 of the trunks and immediately filled them back up with the completed albums. I can’t wait for her to complete the other 5 or 6 trunks and fill those back up with albums too. The bad thing is they all have to go back in my closet because the upstairs room and the garage are full of furniture from her parents’ house.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’ve tried to imagine how our parents would have reacted to the current pandemic, and how they would have handled not going to work and being at home every day with the kids. All day. I’m pretty sure the answer would not have been homeschool, since both of my parents worked at what they considered essential jobs; essential because there was no money coming in if they didn’t work; and they didn’t take off for much of anything. If one of us was sick we got the old “go on to school and you’ll feel better later” speech. At the most we got mercurochrome and a bandaid on a cut or scrape and Daddy might say “rub a little dirt on it and it will probably stop bleeding after a few minutes.” Since Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet at that time, online lessons would not have been possible, and I don’t see my teachers doing party line calls on the phone to make sure we were keeping up. My guess is we were going to school and were going to stay there until the final bell rang, and when we weren’t in school we were expected to play outside. Nobody was taking off to come pick one of us up during school unless there was a fire or part of an appendage was missing. I heard there was rioting in our town in the late 60’s, but we never got a day out of school because of it, and in addition to riots we had smallpox and measles and flu making the rounds every year but schools were open regardless of how many kids were out. It was probably because we were so much tougher than today’s kids because we had to walk 5 miles uphill to school and 7 miles uphill back home. In the snow. In short sleeves. Carrying our lunch. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My Dad and Betsy’s Dad were WWII veterans. My Dad spent a couple of years repairing B-29’s in Fairbanks Alaska and Betsy’s Dad was a POW survivor after being shot down over Germany. Both experienced social isolation but of a much different type than what we experience now, and would have - I guarantee it - refused to participate in more social isolation of any type. I can hear their arguments now. You probably can too, so I don’t need to repeat any profanity other than both of them adding at the end of the discussion “and I ain’t wearing no damn mask.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One of my brothers feels the same about wearing masks, and says he’s read doctors expressing both pro mask and con mask opinions, and, after reading both sides, decided that if doctors couldn’t present a united front he wasn’t wearing one either. I reminded him that 50% of all doctors graduated in the bottom half of their class, at present I couldn’t tell if they were all in the pro mask or con mask group, so statistically they must be spread evenly in both so his decision was more or less supported by medical opinion. Sort of. I usually wear a mask just because I like to make other people feel better if not necessarily safer.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> While none of us wants to be the cause of another getting infected with Covid, I’ve decided that the only thing more infectious than the disease itself is the fear of the disease these guys doing the news have manufactured. That fear seems to be a major part of every “news” story now, and none of the networks every really goes back and says “well our original estimates of worldwide population reduction of 25% may have been a little overblown,” they just continue with more dire predictions that we are all going to die tomorrow unless we do what they tell us to do. Now the narrative is “well sure infections are slowing down but just wait for the spike.” After there is or isn’t a spike then there will be something else, then something else after that. I’m not sure a whole lot of them know exactly what to tell us other than “be afraid, be very very afraid when we tell you to” and that just doesn’t work for most Americans. It seems their real concern is not for America or Americans but for the continual manipulation of their audience to greater and smaller degrees and to hell with the consequences. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Remember the Great Virus Scare of 1967? Me either, but evidently the Marburg virus had an 80% fatality rate and was a pretty big deal at the time, and apparently bats were once again the culprits there. How about the Bird Flu scare of 2013? The mortality rate was around 39% but I don’t think we closed the country. I remember a little about SARS in 2002, but didn’t know the mortality rate was 9.9%. I don’t remember school closing for that one, either, but here we are with a virus that seems more contagious but less deadly but is more of a threat to modern civilization?</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Go back and look at the daily crises that were the lead stories over the last 4 weeks and how many actually happened and how many just went away on their own. The same thing happens, albeit on a smaller scale, with the weather when every storm is predicted to be “devastating” and every tornado watch now makes even Toto and Dorothy cringe with fear and trepidation and want to hide in the bathroom. I don’t know about you but it’s a hard sell to convince me to wear a mask after being told to wear a mask by a bunch of guys that don’t wear masks while they’re telling you it’s a requirement to wear them because they said so even if masks don’t work. That’s why people are going back to work, that’s why more and more people are taking charge of their lives again and that’s why a lot of people aren’t waiting for an official “resume your lives” order before they decided enough was just too much. I’m pretty sure many of you can see this too...except for my dog. She just sniffed and turned her head away. She doesn’t understand why any of us would ever want to leave the house in the first place..</span></p><div><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-32577680092813632642020-05-12T13:28:00.001-04:002020-05-12T13:28:20.858-04:00Reform Public Ed by Retiring Fed ED<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Happy Birthday to the United States Department of Education! Once a relatively innocuous part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, President Carter decided he could create two bureaucracies where only one existed, and the USDOE began operating on its own as a Director level agency on May 4, 1980. The Department of Health and Human Services continued without the education part, and ostensibly serves our citizens in areas other than education. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The USDOE, affectionately and unfortunately known by those employed there as The ED has somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,400 employees as of 2020, and a budget of about $68 billion. Their website says that “education is primarily a state and local responsibility” and they are funded primarily from tax monies collected from states and allocated by Congress. Somewhere around 8.5% of every state’s educational funding comes from The ED, and about 90% of The ED’s funding comes from state and local taxpayers. This year post-secondary grants, loans and work study programs, for example, cost $129.8 billion, Pell Grants account for $29 billion, the Federal Direct Student Loan Program about $23.67 billion, Title I Grants to states $14.4 billion, Special Education grants $12.52 billion and “other” $7.92 billion round out The ED budget. I suppose the $7.92 billion in “other” means salaries and travel and building leases and furniture and printing costs and miscellaneous stuff. What that means is that states send tax money to the Federal government to support The ED and The ED sends some of it back to states if they qualify and follow all the rules. The rest is, in simple terms, loaned to students that apply for loans ostensibly to pay for school costs. After graduation for some or a change in life goals or direction, many loan recipients come to resent the loan they requested and believe the money should be labeled “gift” instead of “loan.” Like many other Federal programs, mismanagement, poor accounting practices and the fact that the loans are not underwritten by private sector sources lead to losses that could not be justified in any other than a Federal program. The student loan program as of this moment is owed by students over $1.5 trillion dollars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The mission of The ED is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” They neglect to mention that the real motivation for its creation was political power and influence for the National Education Association as a reward for their support for President Carter during his campaign. Bureaucratic interpretation of policy by The ED has far too often had the effect of creating law when they simply interpret terms and policies. The ED has never had the power of creating laws; they simply assumed it and no one thought to challenge them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Constitutionality was evidently not a primary consideration or topic of discussion when The ED was created, and over the last 40 years it has managed to expand its scope and authority to exceed by far its financial re-contributions to state education departments. While Federal education funding is less than 3% of the total Federal budget, The ED insists that education funding be allocated to ONLY those public school districts that follow federal guidelines. Even though the US Constitution grants no authority over education to the Federal government, the Federal government has in fact given itself that authority through ESEA and subsequent educational laws. The ED’s authority, that many consider unconstitutional in and of itself, far exceeds its limited financial contributions in whatever form, and that authority has grown exponentially, especially over the past 20 years. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The actual results of Federal intervention and ever increasing control over state and local education have, like most Federal programs, been less than impressive. If you believe that standardized test scores are reflective of student learning, then The ED has been an expensive fiasco. Beginning with NCLB and the federal mandates for grade-by- grade accountability testing and ever increasing intrusive requirements from The ED required of state education departments, the only discernible result has been a test driven school culture that frustrates parents, drives teachers from the profession and teaches far too many kids to hate school. Unless you count a growing bureaucracy or the ability to use test scores to identify areas of poverty as indicative of mission fulfillment, The ED has been nothing more than just another gigantic Federal boondoggle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 adds on to the red tape by requiring states to submit their plans to the US DOE. Because these plans require Federal approval for funding (another top down effort), there is little or no incentive or autonomy allowed to design state, local and parent driven education reforms. The ED has essentially become an enormous Federal “accountabully” whose sole purpose is to mandate those things politicians and bureaucrats believe would improve teaching and education without considering that most professional educators would never agree. Unless their true purpose is one other than the improvement of education, their insistence that a personal education for every student can only be achieved if everyone does everything exactly the same way at the same time and to the same degree flies directly in the face of common sense and a basic understanding of human action.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Now, however, is a great time to correct one of the great examples of Federal overreach left over from the 1970’s and phase out what has been at best an ineffective institution that has few if any positive contributions or redeeming qualities to extoll its existence other than just another high dollar bureaucratic failure we really don’t have to afford any longer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It’s time for The ED, through Congressional action, to allow states:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To opt out of all federal programs under the auspices of ESEA and put those dollars to work within their own states as defined by state law;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To eliminate federal curriculum standards and testing mandates;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remove ESEA state and local planning mandates;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Allow school choice within constitutional requirements;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remove itself from the student loan program;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Allow states to assume control and operation of early childhood education programs;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Move civil rights enforcement from the USDOE to the Department of Justice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Onerous, expensive and completely unnecessary federal testing requirements for public schools created what was essentially the antithesis of effective educational policies for many years. Removing those mandates and allowing teachers the freedom to teach and parents the freedom to choose the curriculum taught would go a long way in restoring the effectiveness and the academic achievements of public schools. The vast majority of educational leaders I know would welcome competition for students between public and private schools if those testing, curricular and regulatory barriers were removed from public education..</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Phasing out The ED and returning to the states the constitutional responsibility and authority for educating their own students in the ways their citizens best determine would go a long way toward allowing true educational reform, not to mention the enormous reduction of paperwork for educational administrators at all levels. If you are looking for a culprit to blame for stagnant test scores, teachers leaving the profession and myriad other “failures of public education,” look no further than the bureaucratic Gordian knot created by The ED. The Federal government could launch a massive overhaul of the public education process by gradually removing itself from education altogether. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Dismantling The ED would be the single greatest contribution to improving our system of public education Secretary DeVos could hope to accomplish. While those employed by The ED may have wonderful intentions, the actual effects of their policies and controls have been at best misguided and at worst educational malpractice. It would seem the department’s minuscule positive contributions to public education have been far exceeded by The ED’s confidence that excellence can and should be mandated. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amendment X</span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More details on this topic may be found at: Policy Analysis No. 891, Cato Institute, Washington DC, May 4, 2020</span></div>
<br />Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-80780298042770589562020-02-02T14:39:00.003-05:002020-02-03T14:02:24.652-05:00The Teacher Lunch Table<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> One of the great disappointments in my budding career as an educator was the teacher lunch table, but had nothing to do with food. Teachers were expected to eat in the lunchroom and help supervise students even if they brought their lunch from home and I was surprised to see that each lunch period - there were 3 for grades 7-12 - had groups of teachers that sat together in the same spots almost every day. The groups rarely changed and were always segregated by sex and not by race or teaching experience. I had always imagined that teachers had interesting philosophical discussions about education, politics, religion, history - you name it. I was sure the laughter and collegial debate that I thought I was observing among my high school teachers - we wouldn’t sit close enough to hear what they were actually saying because then they might overhear what we were talking about - but it just HAD to be interesting, philosophical, stimulating and intelligent intellectual discourse - would be a wonderful thing to be a part of after I became a member of the teaching fraternity. My first few days in the lunchroom as a teacher were met with trepidation and a fear I wouldn’t be able to follow or participate in lofty conversations and discussions about whatever heady topics they chose to discuss. I was more than a little disconcerted when my first few days at the lunch table with the other male teachers - they had made a place for me at their table when I came out of the serving lines area with a tray - and the conversations were centered around the local in-season sport, gossip about who was dating whom and who was getting a divorce and who was running around with whom and, well, sex of all things.</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I thought maybe they were just lowering the level of conversation so the new guy wouldn’t be too intimidated and that the real discussions would begin after a few days, but no - the topics never really changed. Sports, hunting, fishing and sex. The first three I had no real problem with but I was pretty sure teachers were not allowed to talk or even think about sex, and especially not at the lunch table. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The only thing different about the teacher table and the student table was that students sometimes - quietly - discussed teachers, but teachers never, ever discussed students at lunch. I suppose spending all day 5 days a week with kids meant they really needed that 30 minutes during lunch to think about something besides kids.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">After a few weeks I was at a loss - surely they were just waiting on me to get comfortable within the group or maybe, just maybe...that was IT! They wanted me to bring up a topic of interest that would stimulate a great discussion and prove to them that I was indeed worthy to be a part of their table talk and Teacher Conversation. What could I choose? Religion? No, I hadn’t really joined a local church yet and wasn’t quite sure I understood the difference in Methodist, Baptist, Church of Christ and Primitive Baptist and didn’t really want to offend anybody by bringing up a topic that had such personal implications. Politics? There was a potential for danger there, but most of the conversations I had heard seemed to lean toward a Democratic viewpoint primarily because of that party’s traditional support of FFA, agriculture and farmers in general, and this was, above all, a rural farming community. Maybe that was it - but how could I specifically pick a political conversational strand that would interest and excite such a varied group of professionals, some with almost as much teaching experience as God? Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered a college professor saying something about “a man of 20 who is not a communist has no heart, but a man of 35 who is a communist has no brain”. The more I thought about it the better that seemed for an opening gambit for my initial entrance into what was bound to be a stimulating discussion that might even last for weeks! I could hit an intellectual home run - so to speak - on my very first conversation starter. I really did my homework and, in the days before Google and Apple and before Al Gore invented the internet, went to the school library and looked up “communism” and took copious notes. I wrote down quotes from Marx and Lenin and discovered the original quote was by William Casey and read “I pass the test that says the man at 20 that is not a socialist has no heart; the man at 40 that is a socialist has no brain”. I spent several hours poring over the school library’s Encyclopedia Britannica and prepared myself in ways that should I have exerted such energy and zeal for studying in college might have led to a GPA much higher than the 2.57 I recorded with as little academic focus and effort as possible. I did know where the library at Ole Miss was and had been there on several occasions, but it was not a place I had spent an enormous amount of time. After several hours of study and looking up related topics - communism, Vietnam, the domino theory, socialism, the OSS and the CIA, I was ready. All I had to do now was wait for just the right conversational opening and I was headed for the teacher lunch table hall of fame.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The anticipated moment came the very next day. I hurried across the campus to the lunchroom - built conveniently between the high school and the elementary school and just in front of the gym used by both - and quickly went through the line so I could be one of the first at the table. I would, of course, wait for the entire male crew to gather before trying to find just the right moment to introduce my discussion point. They wandered in singly, gathered their trays and received servings of food from the lunchroom ladies and spoke amiably to each of them - it never paid to tick off the ladies that made your lunch every day - and wandered to the men’s teacher table where I was impatiently waiting in as outwardly nonchalant manner as possible. As the last one arrived it was all I could do to wait for just the right moment. The conversation began with the prospects of the Bulldogs against the Sulligent Blue Devils in Friday night’s contest and, after a few remarks about the general health and attitude of the team by the Head Coach someone asked him if he thought there would be a big crowd at the stadium. “I sure hope so” Coach said. “Football has always been a big social event in town and we sure could use a good gate early in the season in case we hit a small crowd or two later in the season or at one of our out of town games”. This was it! He said “social”. I could just squeeze social and get socialism without it being too much of a stretch and I had to take a chance - the rewards and the possibilities were just too good to ignore and let the moment slip by and not take advantage of the opening - however small - to introduce my topic. Fate seemed to agree with my decision because there was at just that moment a slight pause in the conversation and I took a deep breath and mentioned casually “Funny you should mention social - I was reading one of my philosophy books from college last night and came across a great quote from William Casey - you know, the guy that was one of the heads of the OSS in WW II...” There was no response, but I forged ahead. They were just waiting, I was sure, to see how I presented this. They weren’t going to just hand it to me. “OK” I thought and took another deep breath. “I can handle this. Just push ahead and they’ll pick it up and the discussion will begin.” “He said something to the effect of ‘a man of 20 that is not a socialist has no heart…..”. I paused to see if there was a glimmer of familiarity or interest in any of their eyes. I looked around the table. Not only was there no glimmer, there was more interest in the lunchroom lady gravy on the instant mashed potatoes than in what I had said, but, in for a penny in for a pound so I continued “and a man of 40 that is a socialist has no brain”. Silence. No flicker of recognition in any eye at the table. No look that indicated that any of them was about to debate or even comment on what I had said. Coach cleared his throat and my sunken hopes rose for just a second. Maybe, just maybe… “I wonder what Millport has this year. They finished the season last year pretty strong and almost beat us for the county championship. They got any real athletes we need to watch out for?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was crushed and, hiding my disappointment turned my attention to the consistency of the brown gravy on those mashed potatoes on my plate. I finished lunch without really contributing anything to the NFL or college game comments, the observation that one of the math teachers was dating a coach from New Hope, that ole’ Steve and his wife were separated and did Mrs. G look like she might be pregnant again? It took me several days before I realized that my fears were true. I could find no other solution. There were no philosophical debates or witty repartee or Mensa level discussions at the teacher table. The topics were the same as those at the student table with the occasional damn or hell allowed - softly, of course - because we were, after all, adults, but my illusions were completely shattered. After moping around for a few days, privately disappointed beyond belief I did manage to find a bright side - at least I wouldn’t have to spend afternoons in the library looking up stuff I didn’t know anything about so I wouldn’t be embarrassed or completely excluded from conversations at the teacher lunch table. I had, after all, been going to football games since junior high and was, by guy standards, considered as something of an authority because of longevity in terms of watching sports if not actual participation, had played little league baseball and met male qualifications for “expert” status though that, and darn sure knew which female teachers were attractive enough to comment on and which were out of bounds - there WAS a bright side here! “Damn” I thought, “being one of the guys may not be so bad after all”. I did wonder if maybe the female teachers at the other table talked about….oh no. I wasn’t falling for that again. Even if they had book discussions on Plato’s “Republic” I wasn’t about to move to their table. There were some things a guy - especially a new guy - just couldn’t risk. I did wonder just how you asked one of the women teachers if she was pregnant. If the answer were “no” then you had just embarrassed her by calling her fat - not the positive impression I really wanted to make. Men were in the minority in the teaching profession and it would not pay to alienate all teaching females by calling one of their number noticeably pudgy. I decided it best just to wait for the announcement if pregnancy were indeed the cause, otherwise the best course of action seemed silence. I could do that. Discretion was not always my strong suit, but in this case I managed, but there was a fleeting moment of regret at the scintillating conversations I wouldn’t be having with the guys, but a small inner sigh of relief that I wouldn’t be cramming every night for conversations at the teacher lunch table. In this case, I suppose ignorance could indeed be equated to bliss.</span></div>
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Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-53850297200354212632019-07-30T05:16:00.000-04:002019-07-30T05:16:40.814-04:00A Program That WORKS<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A;Program That WORKS</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> School Boards and Educational Leaders have struggled for many years with school disciplinary issues; more specifically the negative impact of disciplinary issues on student learning for the offender and the offended (Balfanz, R, byrnes, v., and Fox, J 2018). Traditionally, school discipline codes have been based on conformity and modeled on the criminal justice system. Rules (laws) are established, penalties for infractions are set, incidents investigated, students are charged and penalties are imposed. Order has been kept by punishing those that do not or will not conform, rewarding those that do, and, if the infractions continue, either pushing out or assigning the habitual offenders to an alternative setting. Disciplinary consequences in schools and classes are very often as much about allowing conforming students the opportunity to learn without disruption as about providing a consequence for the habitually disruptive student, and teachers and administrators are seemingly more concerned with following procedures than providing an educational opportunity for the offenders (Jones, E.P., 2018). Schools, in other words, rarely have the resources and/or training to deal effectively with the countless behavioral issues that students bring from their homes and communities, and the disciplinary consequences are often disproportionately administered to minority students (Rumberger, R. W.; Losen, D. J. 2016). Very few educators, if any, would dare to argue that alternative school settings in the overwhelming majority of school systems were equal to regular schools academically. The UCLA Civil Rights Project (</span><a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) noted that schools with high suspension rates are less safe, less equitable and have lower academic performance outcomes than schools with lower suspension rates (Steinberg, M., Allensworth, E., Johnson, D. 2013).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Zero tolerance policies for students, once seen as an answer to disruptive behavior in schools, have been found to be counterproductive and ineffective in preventing recidivism (</span><a href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2006/08/zero-tolerance" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2006/08/zero-tolerance</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). These policies not only fail to make schools safer or smarter, the unintended consequences are increased incidents of bad behavior, higher dropout rates and the punishments and consequences are disproportionately applied to students of color.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Restorative justice for schools is a set of principles and practices that looks at student misbehavior and disruption with the goal of not only repairing the harm done and restoring the relationships of those involved but ultimately teaching the common values of respect, inclusion, responsibility, empathy, honesty, openness and accountability (Zehr, 2003) without resorting to suspensions, expulsions and alternative school assignments. Instead of focusing on the crime and punishment of offenders, restorative justice asks who has been hurt, what are their needs and who has the obligation of addressing those needs and resolving the harm done. School -based restorative justice includes prevention, intervention and re-integration aspects. Since a school is an easily defined community of teachers, staff, students and their families, restorative practices can help schools create and maintain a positive school culture and climate (edutopia.org/stw/glenview-case-study). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> John Hattie (Hattie, 2009) developed a method of ranking various influences related to learning and achievement according to their effect size. Effect sizes greater than .4 have an above average impact on student achievement. Home Factors, for example, including social class, help with homework, the extent to which the learner’s education is thought to be important, maternal involvement and play materials, were measured at .52 effect size. Parental involvement and parent aspirations (.51 effect size), were also an important influence on student academic achievement. Teacher students relationships (.72 effect size) were emphasized as an important influence on student learning by students, parents, and Principals but not by Teachers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Another important influence on student learning (.84 effect size) was the number of hours the student was actively taught per day. Frequent removal of the student through suspension, In-School suspension or other factors may have a negative influence on student achievement. Comprehensive school reform efforts have consistently documented the academic effectiveness of programs designed to increase the time students spend engaged in learning (Borman, Hewes, Overman and Brown 2003) (Zurawsky, 2004). Additionally, in classrooms where management appears to be ineffective and disciplinary power struggles between students and the Teachers are apparent instructional time is substantially reduced (Vavrus and Cole, 2002). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The WORKS (Working On Refocusing, Redirecting, Realigning Kids Successfully) program is a restorative justice based program currently in use in several public schools and systems in Georgia. The stated purposes of the program are to improve the relationship between school and home through parental involvement, implement strategies to improve teacher - student relationships and to implement alternatives to suspension and strategies to improve student behavior and decrease the amount of instructional time lost. The programs’ goals are to improve targeted students’ attendance, increase academic performance, improve parental engagement and provide strategies for parents and teachers to more effectively guide student success than in traditional disciplinary methods..</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> George Washington Carver High School is a majority -minority high school in the Muscogee County School District in Columbus GA. The school is a STEM school and has about 1136 students and 92 faculty and staff. The graduation rate at the school has increased from 76.4% in 2015 to 86.31% in 2018. About 91% of Carver’s students are minority students. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Second Chance WORKS program has been partnered with George Washington Carver High School in the Muscogee County School District in Columbus GA for the past two academic years. The program, instituted first as a pilot program and continued in 2018 upon approval for funding, paired a certified restorative justice trainer/consultant with the needs of the school through interviews with Administrators, Teachers and an LEA Administrator, and implemented a comprehensive program of 36 modules based on leadership, social emotional learning and academic achievement skills in place of ISS or OSS for disciplinary and/or attendance issues Each module contains a statement of purpose, a video to explain the purpose of the lesson, an engaging scenario that allows the student to role play and see a situation from multiple perspectives and an opportunity for reflection about what has been learned. Students are selected for participation by a team composed of the WORKS consultant, school administrators, LEA administrators and the ISS Coordinator. Students are recommended for program participation based on a combination of disciplinary and attendance factors. Rather than serve time in In School Suspension or Out of School Suspension the students and parents agree to participate in the WORKS program modules. Parent participation in Saturday programs/modules are a requirement for student enrollment in the WORKS program. In January 2017 and again in January 2018 forty (40) GWCHS students were selected for the WORKS program and assigned times to begin working with the WORKS consultant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The WORKS Consultant supervises the students during the school day as they work individually on the modules, and students work at their own pace. WORKS sessions, each led by a certified Restorative Justice trainer, are held each school week Tuesdays and Thursdays. Friday and Saturday sessions for students assigned out of school suspensions are held every other week, and the Saturday sessions are those that parents of student offenders are required to attend. Results, as indicated in the data below, show comparisons of discipline rates for GWCHS for the 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years. Of the 40 students originally assigned to the WORKS program in January 2018, two students were withdrawn from school by their parents rather than participate. Of the 38 remaining students, parents of 8 individual students were required to attend Saturday sessions with their children as an alternative to OSS. All 8 did so, and completed the program. The 38 students from all four grade levels (9, 10, 11 and 12) had compiled a total of 116 disciplinary referrals for the current school year in the five months prior to their January assignment to the WORKS program. During and after their participation, there were 26 disciplinary referrals issued to participating students. Students that recognize their own lack of achievement are now beginning to volunteer for participation in the program in addition to those assigned for disciplinary reasons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Reduced suspension rates for ISS and OSS students mean more days in class for those students and increased learning time. It atso means teachers no longer provide make up or make work lessons for students in ISS or OSS. The chart below indicates that the WORKS program, in conjunction with PBIS training, has significantly decreased the average number of discipline referrals per day per month in the course of one school year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 434px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img height="434" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/52tEcn4XvZb8DXAIk8uD6Ycu2OxPd0vz19wsljRHG9gpawsaLvZUo40j46m2pqQSInHzN19IUzPferPpeb7-QqEDRy72af7PefcU_cLwaWJXAm7ep4bfDrvmkIQ7BCw_PAwqbu2F" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="624" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 351px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img height="351" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/mp1M2krJAlRWv_09XHitiB_l-uiOINeWa1gVbqTPrebbculAcXiEe6ol25SdejxXMShsbPSEPKNIGXGD1lEbe-pay8sDu8yW61MO1iRfoyoxsD2Z7ANSFzLCfQeKdBHjVreg0qkR" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="624" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Similar restorative justice based programs were instituted in Turner Elementary School, Albany Middle School and Dougherty Comprehensive High School in Albany Georgia. These schools are part of the Dougherty County School District. The district student population is over 89% minority and represents 81% economically disadvantaged students and their families. The program details for each school replicate those of the WORKS program at G.W. Carver High School, and the program framework, policies and implementation are similar. The resultant discipline data from each school is listed in the charts below.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 404px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img height="404" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/HSTXvBtdWlaP7c7cWuVMJvQhDmLSpq9ZYWQYFCqsSVLDFkOb0nbSnXZbhBe2agOWKhr9URQw4XpwFKyqw1zVpzRfzWPa7fCnMxRVMCeMp13XQxzMgid_XruaXJc0aurxtr_wNmJ_" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="624" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 399px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img height="399" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Y5l_Xa7Gb-Q2-ANhyErfBinzGu38m4qLBzkhd_lwbGxydcRjGG4LbAPRzgAiMmPSxtIBBcv432tFBngEnE8nPqzIXJzBmdVd3KyFXkDNArfTJi_wLf8WDk6UeeGpI1URLZzgpc74" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="624" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 421px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img height="421" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/WAUXVVTMD9v4P3-slTMgIAjkjkV5gBDFnfJso1L2jMtvocPACH4kYMl-iy0ui5xvsx0komKAUzsH9pSVWhk3rRS_WXBcQh_8hdkVetmPAvT76X1GJpxh3nFW4Sk8bFBqnLv6WIvx" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="624" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The data indicates the WORKS program, implemented in conjunction with a school -wide Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support program, reduces significantly not only the number of disciplinary incidents during the observed segments of the respective school years, but the combination of restorative justice methods and required parental involvement can positively impact the overall school culture and student and parental behaviors. The data also indicates the restorative justice model may provide an efficacious solution to many disciplinary issues in schools as opposed to simply a consequence. As Assistant Principal Lisa Norris noted, “the works program at GW Carver High School has served to reduce the number of discipline referrals, the number of ISS assignments and the days of school missed for OSS assignments. Our students in the program learn that correction or direction by another student, a teacher or an administrator is not meant as a personal attack, and that there are other, more appropriate ways to respond than confrontation. Fewer disciplinary issues and consequences also mean our school climate and academic achievement have improved significantly.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dr. James Arnold</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Dr. Arnold retired after serving 41 years in public schools as a Band Director, Assistant Principal, High School Principal and Superintendent of Schools. He has published numerous articles in a wide variety of journals and educational publications, and currently serves as an Adjunct at Columbus State University and Troy University Phenix City.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">References</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American Psychological Association Zero-Tolerance Task Force, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are Zero Tolerance Policies Effective in the Schools?, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vol. 63, No. 9, 852-862.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Balfanz, R., byrnes, v., and Fox, J., 2018, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sent Home and Put Off Track: The Attendance, Disproportionalities and Consequences of Begin Suspended in the Ninth Grade, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Journal of Applied Research on Children: Informing Policy for Children at Risk, Vol. 5: Iss 2, Article 13.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Borman, G., Hewes, G., Overman, L., & Brown, S. (2003) </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Comprehensive School Reform and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Review of Educational Research, 73, 125.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brookings Educational Research, 2017, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Race and School Suspensions. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brown Center Report Part III.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hattie, John, 2009 </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Corwin Press, US.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jones, E. P., </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Link Between Suspension, Expulsion and Dropout Rates, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">America’s Promise Alliance</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rumberger, R. W., Losen, D. J. 2016, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The High Cost of Harsh Discipline and it’s Disparate Impact, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Civil Rights Project.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Steinberger, M., Allensworth, E., Johnson, D. 2013, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What Conditions Jeopardize and Support Safety in Urban School: The Influence of Community Characteristics, School Composition and School Organizational Practices on Student and Teacher Reports of Safety in Chicago, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Civil Rights Project, Closing the School Discipline Gap Conference, January 2013.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vavrus, F & Cole, K. (2002) </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I didn’t do nothin”: The Discursive Construction of School Suspension, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Urban Review, 34(2), 87-111.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zehr, Howard, 2014, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Little Book of Restorative Justice, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Good Books, New York, NY.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zurawsky, Chris, 2004, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Closing the Gap: High Achievement for Students of Color, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AERA Research Points, 2(3).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">More information on the WORKS program may be found at </span><a href="https://www.chancesforkids.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://www.chancesforkids.org/</span></a></div>
<br />Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-51106427130069245312019-07-20T09:02:00.003-04:002019-07-20T09:04:35.031-04:00Terms of Enrichment<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It would seem that Congress, almost without anyone noticing, has set themselves up over the last 60 years or so to a point where “politician” has become an acceptable, if not necessarily respected, profession. Up until the 1950’s, serving as a member of Congress was still considered, barring the occasional national emergency or world war, part time employment, and elected citizens not only kept their primary jobs they did not intend to make politics a career. The original intent (you can look it up) was that serving was an obligation to be endured and not a career choice. “What’s wrong with politics as a career?” you might ask. “Shouldn’t we be glad that someone wants the responsibility of helping run our country effectively?” Why, yes, I answer quickly. We should indeed if that were the case. What we see instead is that Congress lives in its own world divorced completely from the realities of the citizens of our country, is neither effective nor responsible and as a group lacking the moral fiber and self discipline to make difficult decisions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I believe there are several reasons for this. First and foremost, Washington DC may be IN America but its inhabitants do not represent the beliefs or feelings of most Americans. Perhaps there is an invisible wall defined by the Beltway that excludes common sense, patriotism and fiscal responsibility from those within. Insulation over an extended period of time from the constituents they are supposed to represent leaves many Congressmen hopelessly out of touch and subject to the opinions, beliefs and policies of party leaders and lobbyists. While their original idea may have been to represent their own geographical area of the country, the myopic effect of constantly being the center of attention surrounded by lobbyists, news media and fellow politicians eventually leads them away from being a representative and into the misguided belief that they are leaders. They are not. They are representatives and nothing more. The longer lawmakers spend in DC the more likely they are to become part of the problem and a member of what has become a permanent governing political class exempt from many of the laws they pass for the citizens they represent. If experience is such a positive thing then why do so many issues go unsolved? Perhaps because their primary purpose is in reelection and the accumulation of power and not service to their state and country. .</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It would seem the longer one serves as a political elite the less interested and less likely they are to attempt to solve any issue for fear of losing votes, for fear of having no issues to campaign upon and especially for fear that the public in general might discover how useless most of them really are. If news reports over the last decade or so are to be believed, the primary purpose of a politician seems to be pointing out the verbal faux pas of those in the opposing party. My belief is that should your primary occupation be playing “gotcha” with politicians from the other party, that behavior reflects far more negatively on you than on those you are discussing. You certainly don’t have to be elected to behave like an eighth grader.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There are several studies that indicate that the longer Congress is in session the less effective they become and the longer and more complex laws become. The complexity of a law is inversely proportional to its effective enforcement, and, even worse, complexity practically guarantees increased costs. They do seem to be rather efficient at spending other peoples’ money, and the profligacy of pork in the budgetary process provides plenty of evidence of waste and financial mismanagement. What is Congressional pork, after all, except monetary bribes for votes from the people back home? If reelection were not a primary concern perhaps it would be easier to cut Congressional spending.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Congress has also, quietly and with little or no fanfare, set up their own retirement system independent of Social Security, exempted themselves from health care choices that were mandated for every other citizen, and extended themselves the benefits of larger staffs, transportation, travel and postal services all at public expense. How many of us still depend upon the postal service as our primary means of communication and commerce? Not many, yet Congress spends about $17 million dollars per year on this privilege for their own use. First class travel expenses also run about $15 million per year. Junkets is an apt description of these vacations posing as “fact finding missions” to other countries.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Add to all of this the fact that Congress is spending our country into oblivion and you can begin to understand at least part of their lack of popularity (less than 20% approval for the last 10 years). The budgetary process in Washington seems to most citizens to be nonexistent, and based solely on arguments between the two parties on whether or not to continue raising the current budgetary limits rather than reigning in spending to manageable levels consistent with the amount of money available to spend. It’s apparently difficult for people that see themselves as the country’s leaders to say “we can’t afford that because we don’t have the money” or, even more germane, “that function is not one the Federal government should be undertaking.” When they begin discussing, on rare occasions, “how do we pay for this” then the answer almost invariably becomes “why, more taxes of course.” Budgets should not work that way. Our budgets at home don’t. The answer is not in raising taxes or printing more money but in cutting programs and expenditures that we cannot afford, no longer need or should not have been a Federal program to begin with. Did you know $1.7 billion of our taxes pay for maintenance and upkeep for over 770,000 unused buildings nationwide each year? Can anyone tell me why we still need to fund the Rural Electric Association? How about $6.34 million for artwork at a California Veteran’s Affairs Center? A Federal Department of Education? The Federal Register, available online, is printed every day and given to members of Congress at a cost of over $1 million each year. Responsible representatives should know that sometimes, for the good of the family or the good of the country, you have to say NO.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Which brings me to another problem. Congress’ primary purposes seem to be centered on reelection rather than what’s good for the country. The issue of reelection is presented to constituents as the importance of keeping “experience” and “leadership” when in fact it is neither. Loyalty of those whose primary purpose is reelection will quickly go to those that provide the money necessary for the process rather than those that cast the actual votes, and party loyalty becomes far more important than loyalty to “the people” primarily because of the sums involved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It would seem to me that Congress has in fact become a financially lucrative (if rather shady) career that it was never intended to be, and that politicians are far too afraid of saying no and taking the chance of offending voters or contributors than in actually doing what they think best for the country without consideration of who might be offended. The lack of moral fiber, character and leadership are astounding.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have several suggestions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First - there is no reason politicians cannot telecommute and work from home at least part of the time. Mama always said that if you find yourself in a toxic environment the first thing you should do is remove yourself from it. Don’t tell me that technology can’t make that happen. If I can press a button on my computer and simultaneously order and pay for anything from anywhere and have it arrive at my home three days later I believe technology has progressed to the point where politicians can study, communicate and vote from afar. This will allow more time among the people they are supposed to represent and less time within the Washington Beltway. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second - every Senator and Representative should be a part of Social Security and whatever health care they approve for everyone else. Separate health care and separate pension systems, both funded by tax money, are lipstick on a pig. Congress should never be exempt from laws they pass for every other citizen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Third - if we cannot put enough public pressure on Congress to impose the same term limits on themselves they did for the office of President there must be a grassroots movement to impose those limits by never voting for the same candidate more than twice. It:s that simple and does not need Congressional action. When a politician has served two terms, discover for yourself how easy it is to just say no.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fourth - serving in Congress should return to being a part time position. The end of the “professional politician” would immediately make representatives more accountable to the people they serve. Good businessmen are almost never found in politics. If they were there they would never allow some of the idiocy we see in Washington DC to occur. Imagine your business - whatever it is - sending a significant part of its profits to a competing business in another country as “foreign aid.”. Imagine allowing your business under any circumstances to lose track of 6 billion dollars or so because of “improper control of contracting procedures” and nobody is held accountable. A lot of the financial insanity would end quickly if accountability were inherent and not avoided.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fifth - Each member of Congress should be given a budget for staff, travel, mailing and all expenses. Anything they spend over that amount will be personally funded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The purpose of our elected representatives has become confused and misguided to the point that self aggrandizement, personal enrichment and the accumulation of power have replaced representation of the people that elected them. Harry Truman had it right. </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I'll show you a crook.” I don’t care that they make $174K per year, but I do care that most of them seem to leave office far wealthier than when they were first elected. Perhaps being part time would let the honest ones serve more effectively if for no other reason than by limiting the time the crooks have in office. Wouldn’t it be nice for adults to be serving our country again, and to have statesmen rather than politicians? You can make that happen. All you have to do is make “career” and “politician” mutually exclusive terms.</span></div>
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Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-34692720104861589932019-06-29T04:54:00.001-04:002019-06-29T04:54:04.261-04:00Put Me In Coach<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Mama said that every guy that plays Little League, whether he ends his baseball career at that level or not, considers himself an authority on all things baseball from that moment on regardless of whether he was an All Star player or the perennial bench warmer. She further noted that the ability level and accomplishments he remembers are seldom consistent with the remembrances of others that saw him play. The older you get, the better you were. I’m pretty sure she was basing her observations on my baseball experiences, but that’s purely speculative on my part.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> We have been watching our grandsons play baseball for many years now, from T Ball and the amoeba defense to high school and every level in between. We have accumulated an enormous amount of equipment that must accompany us to their games. We have a tent to provide shade, a cooler to keep drinks cold, a designated bag for peanuts, pretzels and snacks, frozen plastic thingies that replace the messy ice we used to use, small, personal battery powered fans, hats, sunscreen, rather expensive chairs that rock and recline and have cup holders in the arms, and a lightweight red wagon to preclude numerous trips from the car to the ball field with all our paraphernalia. We are prepared, but preparation does not preclude discomfort.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> There are few places on earth where temperatures, wind, rain, sun and the elements combine to produce the extremes found at our local ball fields. I am undecided as to whether the fields are built purposefully in areas subject to these conditions or if the area becomes a climatic anomaly after the park is built. Shade is nonexistent (hence the tent), and no matter how you dress for the current weather, it will be inappropriate at some time during your stay and almost always for the majority of that time. In late winter and early spring the afternoons will begin in a delightfully comfortable way, but degenerate quickly into gale force winds coming off a nearby glacier carrying a deadly combination of rain, sleet, hail and snow once the sun disappears at 4pm. In summer, the heat will invariably hover at or near 125 degrees until the afternoon thunderstorm appears with strong winds, rain, hail, and multiple tornadoes. The game will never be cancelled, but will be postponed for 30 minutes each time lightning is seen in the area, regardless of the inning or score. Your team, for example, might be ahead or behind by 15 runs in the 7th and final inning, but the umpires are unwilling to accept a concession on the part of the losing teams’ coach (or parents) if lightning flashes no matter how late in the game or hopeless the situation.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Most games are 6 or 7 innings and last a minimum of 31/2 hours, not counting delays, and it may be that the climatic abnormality zone coexists with a corresponding temporal anomaly similar to that near the blue event horizon of a black hole where seconds last for hours, and hours go on for years. In black holes, the enormous strength of the force of gravity has the ability to affect not only light waves but time itself. I’ve felt it happen at little league games. More than once. Frequently in fact.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> The equipment for players is outrageously expensive, and the grandparent code of conduct requires that we buy most of it. We took out a 2nd mortgage on our house to buy a bat for each of our grandsons because they are different ages and need different sized bats, cashed in a 401K to buy gloves and batting gloves for them both, found cleats on sale for a little less than my Mom and Dad paid for their first house, and started 2nd jobs to help pay for practice and game uniforms, travel expenses, team pictures and assorted (but required) accoutrements. I almost cried when I discovered that bats could not be used in perpetuity, and different leagues and different ages require different sizes, weights and compositions that umpires check religiously before each game. That means bats are used for one season and rarely more, and the trade-in value for last years’ bat is nonexistent. We have quite a collection that I keep for burglars or in case the HOF calls us later..</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> We endure all of that, because baseball is important to our grandsons. They love practice, they love the camaraderie with their teammates, they love the uniforms, they love the equipment and they especially love the games. We accept the sacrifices, and believe their participation in athletics is an important part of their development as citizens and as people both socially and physically. We can live with the last minute notice of practices, the distance from our house to their house to practice to their house and back to ours that takes more time than the actual practice itself and the exorbitant costs for equipment associated with the game. What’s hard to accept is when your kid doesn’t start, or, perhaps worse, play.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> My initial grandparent reaction when that first occurred was to yell at the Coach, question his integrity, his family history, his baseball knowledge, coaching skills and intelligence (all in one run-on sentence), but I held back and kept my opinions to myself. I quickly found myself otherwise occupied in desperately trying to restrain Nana from organizing other parents into an old west posse with ropes and torches breaking into the dugout to tar and feather one or all of the coaches and posting the whole scene on Facebook as a warning to others that might have the temerity to think her offspring might be seen as anything less than the reincarnation of Mickey Mantle. The struggle, by the way, was real. After calming Nana -somewhat - with a reminder that grandchildren would probably not be allowed to visit her in jail, my third inclination was to march over to the dugout with a stern “I’m holding myself back” look on my face, grab the grandson by the hand and tell him - loudly - “we’re leaving this crap and going somewhere that your obvious athletic talents will be appreciated.” There may or may not have been a disdainful sniff at the end of the sentence aimed in the coaches’ to punctuate my displeasure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> We tried to imagine all the reasons the stupid Coach might not be playing our grandson. Did he miss a practice? Does he really think the other kid is a better player? Does he really think HIS kid is a better player? Is he saving our kid for a key point in the game? Does he know so little about athletic ability that he cannot recognize an obvious talent? Is he really that stupid? Does he have a deathwish?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Nana and I sit under the tent fuming and trying to decide the best course of action, the ones that might most effectively express our displeasure with the Coach’s decision to the greatest degree, when we notice our grandson - the one that we believe has been treated so shabbily - is standing in the dugout cheering his team. He yells “great play!” when the shortstop fields a grounder and throws out the runner. He screams “what a pitch!” when the pitcher throws a called 3rd strike to an opposing batter. He yells “nice catch, buddy!” when an outfielder catches a fly ball. When his team is batting he doesn’t sit on the bench and hang his head and scowl (as only a teenager can) to show his disgust with the Coach and with the team and with his lot in life. He is encouraging the kids that strike out, congratulating - loudly - the kids that get a hit or steal a base or get a walk to get on base. He is, in other words, being a great team player. He understands that the Coach is volunteering his time, is missing time with his own family to hold practice for all the other kids even after a full day at work, and giving up his Saturdays to spend time with other peoples’ children. He’s often buying bottled water and Gatoraide and snacks with his own money for his players, and doing his best to see that everybody gets to play even while he’s trying to maneuver skill levels and still have a chance to win the game. Does he make mistakes? Why sure he does, but he’s out there giving it his best win or lose, and most importantly giving his TIME to kids. Imagining nefarious purposes and intent behind his decisions as to who plays when begins to look rather foolish when we see the example our kid is setting.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Nana and I looked at each other sheepishly, sat down and quickly shut up. Our grandson reminded us of what we told him we expected from him from the beginning - be a great teammate first and a great individual player second - and things will work out the way they’re supposed to. Maybe - Mr. or Mrs. Parent or Grandparent - if you’re not happy with your Coach’s decisions you could put yourself on the volunteer coaching list for next year. They probably have room.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Something else Mama said came to mind just about then; “Son, everybody has a purpose in life. Sometimes that purpose is to serve as a bad example.” I’m just glad our grandson showed us what good sportsmanship means before we became the bad example Mama warned us about. Way to go, kid. Way to go.</span></div>
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Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-87508255055038307842018-04-03T13:57:00.001-04:002018-04-03T13:57:33.777-04:00Going Pro<b style="font-weight: normal;"><div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-48f79c28-8c9b-e98d-788e-ea54613e25a9" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Going Pro</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I’ve given it a lot of thought lately, and I have made the decision to go pro. For a lot of kids around age 21 or so that means entering the draft for a professional sport, but I used my college eligibility a couple of years ago and, despite the fact that my backyard football, church league basketball and Little League baseball careers made a pretty interesting highlight reel in my own mind, I never received any scholarship offers for any sport beside saxophone. That one worked out pretty well, and the $50 a semester led me to a career in music and weekend rock and roll gigs that continue even now. No, I won’t be going pro in any professional athletic arena, but have decided that far too many people now seem to be anti something or other, and it seems to be a gigantic waste of time to spend your life always being against something rather than standing for something else.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Let me give you an example. Rather than be anti-gun, I’m going to be pro-gun safety. It’s pretty easy to be anti-gun if you’re 17 and don’t own any weapons, but simply being anti-anything usually means repeated attempts to make sure that everyone has to follow your beliefs whether they want to or not. Being a pro means that I can have my beliefs and not attempt to impose them on anyone. I can share them if asked, I can write about them, I have the option to present them to appreciative audiences, but I don’t have to do so for personal validation and don’t necessarily need an audience to support my views. I can simply follow my own beliefs and be confident in my own acquired experience and knowledge and make sure that should I choose to handle a gun of any type I do so in a safe, responsible manner. I can follow current laws and restrictions and gun safety rules and not endanger anyone else; unless of course they don’t follow current laws and attempt to break into my house. In that case, the rules change.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Following the same mode of thinking, I’ve decided to be pro-Christian. That doesn’t mean I am anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish or anti-other religions, just that Jesus set a pretty high bar when he said “love thy neighbor,” and that effectively leaves out being anti anyone. I may not approve of your life choices, but I won’t seek to impose mine on you, and expect you to do the same for me. If you, for example, are pro-any other religion or lifestyle I respect your choice as long as there is no effort on your part to kill me or my family because we don’t believe the same way you do. Should that happen, see paragraph two above. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> As a lifelong educator, I am also pro-knowledge, pro-education and pro-learning, which are all part and parcel of the same thing except that learning, ideally, should not end when school does. My mother once told me “Son, it’s not a sin to be ignorant, but it sure is a sin to remain that way.” What she meant was that we all enter the world ignorant of many things, but as life continues and we successfully navigate the trials and errors of childhood and growing up we each have a responsibility to continue to learn from our mistakes and our experiences and, where possible, from others. She even had a saying for those that didn’t learn those lessons, and it fits right into my pro-education belief system. I once had an argument with a neighborhood kid that surreptitiously appropriated two of the essential items of my 11 year old life - my genuine army surplus helmet and matching canteen belt. We had an altercation over possession, and I returned home with my gear and told my mother. Seeing I had regained my missing items, she noted my scrapes and bruises, and rather than scold me for fighting asked what I had learned. “Not to let people steal something that’s mine” I said. “Not only that, but that everybody has a purpose in life” she said, “and sometimes their only purpose seems to be to serve as a bad example.” A life lesson indeed. Besides wrestling with my brother, that was the only physical fight in which I was a participant.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I choose to be pro-reading. A very smart person once told me it didn’t matter what I read as long as I did, so I do. Constantly. Every day.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I do not choose to be anti-politician, but rather to be pro-common sense. Politics and pro-common sense positions are often mutually exclusive. We as a nation seem to have forgotten that politicians serving our republic were never intended or envisioned as having political service as a life choice. “Diapers and politicians” observed Twain, “should be changed often, and for the same reason.” He was correct. It seems that every profession has a retirement age except politics. I admit to having difficulty understanding how politicians can justify passing any laws that apply to everyone else but exempt themselves. Are they not citizens too? I am decidedly pro-retirement, and recommend that as a life goal for everyone. Especially politicians.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> My decision to be pro-common sense usually precludes any inclination to be politically correct. The former has guidelines and requires thought before speaking or acting; the latter has no such guidelines and often raises its head in abject defiance of the former. On a related note, another choice is that of attempting to be pro-grammar rather than anti-profanity. My dad was a world-class profanacist, and could blister paint at 25 feet. He used profanity as part of everyday language, and as a result my brothers and I became, at early ages, fluent in depth and variety. We also learned, with the help of Ivory soap, the importance of discretion in choosing an appropriate audience before implementing our imitative attempts. I won’t tell anyone that I do not use profanity today, but I will say that I am discriminating in my audience and in context, and that most of my forays into that realm at present are nonverbal...thanks in large part to early memories of the taste of Ivory. I am unabashedly pro-discretion.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Pro-life is also a favorite of mine, but I don’t limit my pro-ness to babies. It does not necessarily extend to those that, through their own convoluted anti tendencies, wantonly end the lives of others. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Pro-giving is another of my choices. The only caveat I insist upon is that I decide how much and to whom except for taxes. There I prefer, for the sake of my own mental health, to believe that my taxes go to provide new tubas for the Marine Band. It may not actually be true but it heartens me to think so. I am decidedly pro-band.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Does anti-bullying mean that we treat bullies the same way they treat their victims? Probably so. I would rather be pro-do unto others than anti-bullying. The Golden Rule is a great example of being pro.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Pro-history means that I recognize that history has indeed occurred and contains many valuable and interesting and sometimes horrifying events that we can learn from. Personally, I enjoy learning about them so I can avoid the same mistakes. Removing monuments or plaques or records of events from public places does not in fact mean those events never happened. It usually means that someone else is too small a person to admit that our predecessors made mistakes - teachable moments - while making history. Ignoring history is like ignoring a traffic ticket; sooner or later events will catch up to you, and most always in an anti sort of way.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I have noticed that a lot of anti’s need an audience for their views. They often seem genuinely offended if opposing views are mentioned or presented, and become visibly upset if their anti views are questioned. I learned many years ago that anger is not a prime motivational source for effective teaching, and only serves to raise my blood pressure, inhibit clear thought and reasoning and, through the fugue of anti-ness, cloud my judgement. Most people respond to anger with anger of their own, and the general result is an impasse that seldom leads to any solution beyond the imposition of power. As a teacher, I discovered early on that responding to student misbehavior as a personal affront was counterproductive, and seldom led to a positive resolution of any type. What usually happens with anger is an uncontrolled escalation that eventually requires an authoritative solution seldom conducive to learning from either party. People, especially students, don’t learn effectively from anger so it probably should not be a part of your teaching methodology. Ever.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Which brings me to television….I don’t watch news on TV. There’s very little pro-ness on TV. That doesn’t mean I don’t keep current, it means I choose to read what I want to learn about, and my reading does not include videos of any kind (with the possible exception of TED talks, selected concerts and funny kid and animal videos.) What passes for debate on television is usually two or more people that begin talking and quickly end up shouting at each other. That’s not debate, its simultaneous bullying. There doesn’t seem to be any attempt at real debate and the one that shouts the longest or controls the length of the shouting contest declares himself the winner and uses the “quotable moments” to further his own views later. Most TV, especially TV news, is a big smelly bouquet of anti, and I’d rather watch Diners, Drive Ins and Dives or the History channel. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Being a pro also extends to my personal interactions with people. I am pro-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sotto voce</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. There are daily occurrences and incidents in everyone’s life that offer an opportunity to descend into an anti frame of mind. Anger is an anti frame of mind, and is most often used as a thinly veiled, childish attempt to control others’ thoughts, actions and responses. Yelling and raised voices are part of that. I may not agree with what you did or said or how you reacted to a given situation, but true pro-ness precludes an angry response in return. Refusing to allow someone else’s anger to control your personal emotions, thinking and responses is the beginning of pro-ness, and allowing them an opportunity to “be mad” without responding in kind precludes a descent into angry (anti) responses that seldom end well for either. It’s not an easy skill to develop, but Mom taught me about that one too, so I’ve had practice and a positive example. “You can get glad in the same britches you got mad in” was her response, and it took me a while to understand what she meant and to learn from how she responded to me and to others. I won’t tell you she never got mad, but I will tell you it never lasted long and she never allowed anger to turn her anti-anything.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Going pro is not easy, but it can be done. Be a pro. Your life will be better in more ways than you can count. How do I know that? Because Momma said so, that’s why. Get pro in the same britches you got anti in.</span></div>
<br /><br /><br /></b><br />Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5032311213634227870.post-1662361206619074072018-03-26T16:45:00.000-04:002018-03-26T16:46:27.592-04:00Taylor-Made Learning<br />
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"><br />
The debate in education over whether or not standardized test scores accurately
measure what testing advocates say they measure continues. One question often
heard by testing advocates is “if we don’t use tests what CAN we use to measure
our schools?” After reading Peter Smagorinsky’s article in the AJC Get Schooled
blog “What if schools focusing on improving relationships rather than test
scores?” I wondered if the example he gave of the unnamed Superintendent in
North Georgia might be an isolated case. It is not.</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;">Taylor-Made Learning</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Gordon
County is in the northwest corner of Georgia, and the city of Calhoun, the
county seat, is along the banks of the Oostanaula River where it joins Oothcalooga
Creek. Until 1835, Calhoun was part of the Cherokee Nation, and the area
retains many Native American names as part of its geography. Highway 41
passes through the center of town and I-75 on the eastern edge, leading to
Chattanooga 40 miles north and Atlanta 68 miles south. The county has
grown from a population of a little over 44,000 people in the 2000 census to
over 55,000 in 2010. Calhoun’s population in 2010 was recorded as a
little over 16,000 people, and has seen rapid growth in population and commerce
over the past decade. Calhoun City Schools serve a student population of
around 4,000, including 54% white, 35% Hispanic, 6% black and 5% multiracial,
Asian or Native American. The free/reduced lunch percentages have
increased gradually to their current level of 62%, and non-resident students
that live outside the district account for 23% of the student totals. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Dr.
Michele Taylor has served Calhoun City Schools as Superintendent for the past
10 years. She graduated from Calhoun City Schools in 1986, and after
graduation from Shorter College with a degree in Early Childhood Education
began her career in the Calhoun City system as a classroom teacher. Michele
served successive roles in the system as a media specialist, Principal and
Assistant Superintendent. Community service and involvement play a key
role in her success as an educational leader, and she is past president of the
Calhoun- Gordon Council for a Literate Community, former member of the Gordon
County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, United Way Allocations Panel,
formerly a member of Big Brothers/Big Sisters Board, Gordon Calhoun Arts
Council, Past President of Kiwanis, Chair of the Leadership Calhoun/Gordon
County Steering Committee, Past President Executive Board of the Georgia School
Superintendents’ Association and a member of the Calhoun Rotary Club. She is
also the Governor's appointee of the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission. It
would be safe to say that Dr. Taylor models the community involvement behaviors
she expects to see in others.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Michele
notes that stakeholder involvement is not just a phrase used in her schools,
and that 100% parent attendance at parent/teacher conferences is not only
expected but achieved year after year. “If our parents can’t come to us, we go
to them. Our rich educational tradition is a result of a commitment to
excellence and a community spirit that rests on the pulse of our city’s
existence. What we have would not be possible without the involvement and
support of the entire community. Our people are what makes us special. We
also recognize that we have a high percentage of economically disadvantaged
families, and that education cannot be a high priority until basic needs are
met. We have focused efforts to provide wrap around services, additional
counseling and social worker support for our families.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> When
asked about developing leaders, Dr. Taylor said “we believe in growing our own
administrators. We invest time to develop talent and build capacity throughout
the system. Mentoring and holding all accountable for the highest expectations
have been key in maintaining strong leadership teams. PAGE leadership
development programs and our RESA Principals’ Academy have provided a wonderful
level of support. We also have job embedded mentoring and learning
programs that allow teachers to develop leadership skills over time without
leaving the classroom. Our low teacher turnover rates attest to our success in
building relationships at every level. We provide mentoring and support for
every teacher and also for our students. Our positive school cultures
provide an attractive place for teachers and students to work and learn.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Calhoun
City Schools also believes in developing student leadership. “Advocacy and
citizenship are important for students and for teachers” said Dr. Taylor.
“Promoting a sense of ownership in the decision-making process is done by
supporting School Governance Teams and school and district leadership teams. We
have student and teacher mentoring programs and an advisement program for
students. My cabinet level leadership and I meet with teachers and staff
at each school several times a year in ‘Fireside Chats’ with an open agenda to
talk and share. Principals also follow this example several times throughout
the school year to get to know the staff and students better and to promote
stronger relationships.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Dr.
Taylor also remarked “we have moved away from intensive test prep and testing
rallies, but we still lose 20-30 days of instruction each year to mandated
testing windows. Because of that the pace of instruction is significantly
increased, and we might not cover everything we would like to cover over the
course of a school year, but what we do cover we try to make sure students know
it well before moving on. We use data to drive instruction, but more often
than not use student data and not testing data in engaging our community as
part of our Community Based Accountability System. We believe what we do should
be driven by the needs of children and not necessarily testing data.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Continuous
improvement efforts are geared toward far more than just a test score. “Success
is more than a test score,” said Dr. Taylor, “and the measurement of success
cannot be summed up so simply. Calhoun City was recently named Charter System
of the Year, in 2016 our graduation rate was fourth highest in Georgia (97.8% -
up from 67% in 2003), our students have won 21 GHSA state championships over
the last decade, we were awarded AP Honor School status and have numerous
awards on the stage for arts and music. The judgements from end of year test
scores are asked to represent the entire school system in terms of quality, but
have surprisingly limited amounts of interpretive data that never include
school quality or measure how we serve our community. Judgements of quality
must be made, but must be made on evidence capable of rendering that judgement.
Every day is an opportunity to make a difference in the life of our
students. We are preparing them for life, and we need our community to
help us get it right.” She also noted that “time and money currently
spent on an inordinate amount of testing that provides limited information
could be spent on experiences that enhance learning. The administration of
testing, the loss of instructional time, pulling staff from other areas to
cover small group testing are all costs - direct and indirect - to the
district.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Student
engagement and involvement are key to Calhoun City’s success. “Engaged students
are attentive, persistent and committed. When engaged in learning, students
value and find meaning in the work and learn to their full potential. I learned
this in the 8th grade from my social studies teacher Mrs. Sherry Campbell” said
Dr. Taylor. “Her classroom had rituals and routines, and she believed in us
more than we believed in ourselves. We knew we had to listen and prepare
and be able to share with others what we had learned. Her lessons were relevant
and engaging before engagement was a goal. After I graduated from college I
began to see the time and effort and planning that went into her lessons. To
this day I can visualize the lesson she presented on the Alamo. She was
and is an inspiration.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> In
September 2017 CCS hosted a luncheon in the new STEM Works Engineering Learning
Lab and Online Learning Academy on the Calhoun College and Career Academy
Campus at Calhoun High School. Business partners, community leaders,
parents and partners in education gathered to get a first look at the new
learning facility. “We believe” Dr. Taylor told the group “community based
accountability systems created by local stakeholders provide the most
meaningful accountability there is. Our quest to develop such a system to
measure quality in all areas of education begins today. Our system will
continue to encourage and promote student learning at profound levels as
opposed to simply learning what is needed to pass standardized tests. Our
mission to inspire all students to become lifelong learners in the pursuit of
excellence will be measured by many indicators of success as identified by our
community and not a testing company.” She also told the audience “standardized
testing does not provide the data that policymakers and others think it does.
Testing constructs are designed to find an average that does not exist in the
real world of children and learning, and multiple studies confirm that only one
third of testing results can be attributed to school influence. We want
our entire community to be a part of creating the evaluation system that
measures the things our community thinks are important and not what a single
test says.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt;"> Calhoun
Mayor James Palmer and the City Council shared “Some basic qualities of true
leadership are intelligence, honesty, vision, work ethic and charisma.
Dr. Taylor has those and more. Everyone on the City Council has been in
meetings, work sessions, committees and other business activities where Dr.
Taylor was present. People respect her ideas, her work ethic and her
grasp of the issues. She never projects negatives. When one leaves her meetings
it’s with a positive frame of mind. We know the question, issue or challenge
will be solved, if by no other means than her will to make it work. Dr. Taylor
is leading us into the 21st century. Without a doubt the projects,
advancements, standards of achievement and community support for our school
system will be viewed in hindsight as an historical benchmark when Dr. Taylor’s
tenure is complete.” For the students, parents and community of Calhoun, may
that day be long in coming.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Dr. James Arnoldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05572792009065166132noreply@blogger.com3