NEWARK
1) I just read this “Dear Abby” column: DEAR ABBY: How can I tactfully tell an elementary school teacher in whose class I assist that she uses poor grammar and words that aren’t words (i.e., I boughten this yesterday, or, Her and me went to the soccer game.)? I am fond of this teacher but feel she’s doing a disservice to her pupils. Other than that she’s a devoted, energetic teacher. It is really difficult to bite my tongue. — TACTFUL IN THE EAST
I want to respond to this myself, but from a different view: this is the best that the school can hire: largely unintelligible (but enthusiastic) people with very few language or math skills who were able to stumble their way through a simplistic education and get licensed as teachers. The best educated women (elementary school teaching is, still, largely dominated by women) go off to careers in higher-paying fields and leaving the barely-literate to be the teachers in the public schools. Those are your kids that they are teaching.
Know this: (a) they can’t be fired, (b) the pay is so bad in the beginning that no one else wants the job, (c) their poor basic skills can never be improved at this point because they do not think that they need improvement in basic skills like language skills since they work as a teacher now, (d) they will have a lasting effect on the education of your children, and (e) your child’s education depends on you and your good skills at home in proper English speaking and use of proper punctuation and contractions. Nobody can replace the parents in educating students.
2) “Health does not always come from medicine. Sometimes it comes from peace of mind, peace in the heart, peace in the soul. It comes from laughter and love.”
3) Weight loss helps your medications work better. Weight loss helps your body work more efficiently. Nothing good comes from being overweight for most people. You know those people who are very overwight but have excellent blood pressure and no sugar in their urine (diabetes)? I have seen the results of those extra pounds: one day they are in perfect health and the next day they are very sick with super-high blood pressure and sugar in their urine! it can happen in one day (yes! The next day! On Monday they are 100% healthy and Tuesday they have severe problems)!
4) I am tired of listening to white people, rich people who were handed their lifestyles by overindulgent parents or spouses, and many types of men who feel the need to announce their victimhood over any other person asking to share in the bounty of equal opportunities. When you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression (it would seem).
5) At the risk of sounding like an old man shaking his cane at the world of young people, I am a witness to a changing of priorities of teens and people in their early 20s that will be profound but not in a positive way: phones and the entertainment that they offer will lead to a disproportionate skewing of knowledge that will favor people over the age of 35. This disproportion will leave younger people at a disadvantage.
When I see people playing games on phones and watching videos but not learning to write or read effectively because books and literature is no longer considered entertainment, it is clear that knowledge is also being cast aside. Quite simply, what we do for entertainment impacts on what we need for life.
Any reading of any subject (if properly written) is, in the end, is reading. It doesn’t matter what it is that you are reading: comic books, porn, comic strips, satire or a work of great literature. It is not reading (and watching videos instead) that doesn’t offer a skill set that can be adjusted to be useful. The watching of TV, movies, videos that offers no skills that can be transferred to a useable jobset so a person can move forward. “Those who do not read are just as illiterate as those who cannot read”
If you can’t write well and you have the knowledge base of the internet what do you do? You cut and paste from people who do know how to write well. Easy-peasy, right? Except for the obvious problem: this is plagarism and there are programs out there to catch this kind of behavior. In better schools, this will mean that work that was plagarized will be rejected and the “author” will have a quick lesson in consequences.
Yes, there is a long path of being turning in faked assignments, skipping reading assignments (because a video is more entertaining), and the general theme of dishonesty before you are asked to do anything meaningful but that day does come and then the people on this path are stuck: remediation to learn skills you should have had or taking an easier path with less demands on basic skills.
Young people who easily slipped into careers where only perseverance and reading skills were necessary (such as law or business) are unable to find a safe haven and those who do have those skills (probably people whose parents could not afford the latest and greatest phone or who had strict rules about when those phones, Netflix, and videos were available to the kids) will succeed. And “old people” who did not have those distractions in their formative years.
6) I have made it through the Christmas season of 2018 and once again watched parents play the role of “gift-giver” to their children. It is great to watch the children be so happy about being given things and many parents feel that this is their favorite thing to do for their kids – possibly recalling a time when they did not have as much to give or who had parents who could not offer the children as much.
I also watched parents fail to do the most important job that a parent has: guiding their children into adulthood by expecting their kids to help around the house or perform chores. The kids learn that when mom or dad (or stepdad or stepmom) asks them to do anything to help around the house that the only thing the kid needs to do is walk away and hide in their room and the work will get done by someone else, usually an adult. No consequences.
These are the same adults who are fascinated by other parents who tell their kids to do something and the kids do it. “How do they get their kids to do anything?”, they wonder?
How? By not being the “popular mom” who lets their kids do anything they want. By not being only the “gift-giver” parent but, instead, acts as a parent who expects assistence around the house.
I know a young woman (24) who calls her dog “sweetie” and her boyfriend “little bitch” who she states “needs to be punished”. Why this young man tolerates this is beyond my understanding – I expect he will walk away someday since this is never going to change. She has told us that this is how she thinks of her boyfriend – he is a “little bitch”
By the way, the reason that “little bitch” “needs to be punished” is because he would not clean up after their untrained dog who was at my house. It was 8 AM and he was still in bed. She wouldn’t clean up after their dog because that was another chore she would not do (actually, she never helped us while she visited, she was “on vacation”, which means that we were required to do everything – like a resort with paid employees would have). In the end, I had to do it because I can’t have dog urine and feces on my floor and no one else would do it unless my wife stepped in the assist me.
The young woman had learned that she never had to do anything and there were no consequences. She is training her little sister (12) to be the same way. Remember, parents don’t teach kids to become adults, their siblings do that. A 12-year old thinks adults don’t understand the “real” world like their “worldly” siblings.
The 24-year old recalls that her aunt once made her mop a floor when she was 13 and was very stingent about how to do it correctly. The reason that she recalls this story so vividly is because it is the only time she had ever been asked to do anything and the memory was still fresh. Regular people clean floors many times and one memory of cleaning a floor doesn’t stick out when you have done this task hundreds of times.
So, you are proud that your child gets good grades and doesn’t smoke or use drugs. Congratulations! Your job as a parent is only half-done.
You must make them less self-indulgent and a part of the family by getting them to help around the house. Don’t accept them walking away or ignoring the request. if you don’t do it, no one will.
One thing for certain, I am am sure that “little bitch” will find another woman who doesn’t call him that and he will be gone.
7) I know that I have spoken often about my distaste for lawyers. There are probably high-end lawyers who work on very complicated contracts and do work that has a profound impact on society and civility. I never see these people. What I do wee are the vile, rude bottom-dwellers who invade the lives of ordinary people like me. Even hiring lawyers is disgusting. You have to have a lawyer to defend you against other lawyers!
Basically you have to look into a cage of growling angry rabid dogs and choose one for yourself to stop the other growling angry rabid dogs that come after you. You are required to pay your growling angry rabid dog when he asks for money that he may or may not have done anything for (he can legally create bills for doing nothing with no proof of actual activity) so that he will continue to defend you against the growling angry rabid dogs. You live in fear of your own lawyer until your case is over.
The worst thing that can happen is that your lawyer finds out that you have any money because their billable hours increaseand they charge you more – and there isnpt anything that you can do about it!
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