LWolf
LWolf's JournalBut...But...
any candidate who actually stands for something, who actually stands a line and fights to move it for us, who actually represents us...that candidate can't WIN!!!!
We can't WIN unless we support someone who doesn't represent us! We MUST get behind the nothing-candidate, or we'll LOSE. Don't you get it?
WE CAN ONLY WIN IF WE LOSE.
Well, that opens a great can of worms.
Our constitution, and our courts' interpretation of, for good reason, has historically leaned liberally toward protecting rights even when that means that some people who are guilty of various things get away with it. This is a good thing for a host of reasons, and might make an interesting thread all by itself for someone who has the time to sit with it.
No rights are more sacred, really, than parental rights. There has to be an abundance of evidence, and legal hoops jumped through, to interfere with parental rights. It's a bi-partisan thing. It also highlights the dark side of "choice" that Democrats don't like to air: women who have proved over and over again that they are unfit to be parents, who have had children taken away from them repeatedly, still have the right to produce more, and keep every succeeding child until that child has been damaged enough to meet the burden of proof...again.
What does this have to do with school shootings? How about this: schools, and society, can't force parents to get their kids mental health services when needed, or for that matter, to get family counseling themselves.
A concrete, current example happening IN MY CLASSROOM this year:
A middle school student with a long history of mental health issues and referrals to DHS has been spending his time, instead of working on any academic task in any of his classrooms, drawing page after page of graphic illustrations of him with a gun. Shooting. Others and himself. When approached by others who try to talk to him, he mimes shooting.
We've been having regular meetings since the very first day of school. Every official agency has been contacted. His parent has been contacted. His parent's response? The school is going too far, trying to interfere with his 2nd amendment rights, and taking the boy's "foolishness" too seriously. The parent COULD lock up all the guns so the kid can't get to them, but then, how is he supposed to protect the kid? That's what the guns are for, and he's not going to remove access to the numerous guns in the home. This man is more concerned with perceived threats to his guns than he is with his son's mental state.
In our numerous meetings and contacts, we have set up free counseling for this student with a local therapist. Dad refuses. His first excuse? He doesn't have the money or time to drive the kid to town to see a therapist. When we offered to provide the transportation, he says their family schedule is too busy to make time.
The meetings continue. It's not like we're not doing anything. But at this point, there is no way to force the parent to address the issue. If or when this boy explodes, it will somehow be "the school's fault;" he'll have been bullied, or have been an outcast, or...
He hasn't been bullied. He is somewhat of an outcast among his peers, because they are afraid of him. Partly because he is violent himself, and likes to throw punches and kicks, and partly because they have seen his "artwork."
Of course, we could also point to our for-profit health care system which limits access to care, including mental health care, for many...but until we can ensure that our children are raised in safe, socially/emotionally healthy environments and are allowed to get care when they need it, it won't really matter. After all, we have a community standing by to offer MY student whatever support he needs, and we're not allowed to deliver that support.
And there are many other things we could do before taking that drastic step of intruding on parental rights. We could make every school a small, safe community with plenty of staffing to ensure that kids can't fall through cracks. We could put health services, including mental health services, ON campuses and ensure that all students, and their families when necessary, have full access to whatever care is needed. We could focus our education system on growing the whole child, instead of making schools too-large, too-anonymous, too-over-crowded crucibles of high-stakes testing stress.
As a matter of fact, we could see the bigger picture and do that for our society, focusing our time, talents, energy, and resources on closing class gaps, on making sure that there are abundant, many-layered safety nets and supports for all people. Of course, that would interfere with the neoliberal agenda, and we can't have that.
How misleading.
1. Schools can't "eliminate" Halloween.
2. Schools are not obligated to celebrate holidays; that's not their function.
3. Public schools are there to serve the needs of all students, whether they are allowed to celebrate various commercial or religious holidays or not, and make no mistake,
4. Halloween is a commercial holiday.
5. This article is about inclusiveness, which IS an obligation of public education.
6. "Harvest festivals" are not commercial holidays, are not, and don't have to be, linked to Halloween, and are often celebrated at schools as an inclusive seasonal festival that can integrate all subjects learned.
7. One of the things that SHOULD be taught in health class is how deadly sugar is. THAT's a Halloween related lesson that would certainly fit a "current event."
8. As a teacher who has, in years gone by, had to spend all day in a classroom with 30+ over-sugared, costumed, over-stimulated children trying to focus on the actual learning that was SUPPOSED to be happening until the afternoon "celebration," I was thrilled when I moved to a state/district/school that had the PTA hold an after-school through evening festival, removing Halloween from my professional day, and leaving it up to parents whether or not their child would attend without missing actual school days.
9. As a teacher who, before the move, planned an actual seasonal festival for my class INSTEAD of the Halloween party etc. when I had students who couldn't participate, I remember being inundated by other teachers who dumped their kids who couldn't "do" Halloween on me, overwhelming my space and resources.
10. I also remember how much fun my students had with their harvest festival throughout the day; all while still learning, without excluding any students who had the right to a public education on that day.
That's a hard one,
considering that I've read thousands upon thousands of books. I've never thought of any title as being "life changing," but that the reading of so many broad, diverse things has.
And I think that anything "life changing" would probably be highly personal, and might not be for anyone else.
The earliest "life changing" book I can remember was when my 4th grade teacher read My Side of the Mountain to us. I bought it from our book order when it came around, and have had a copy of it for almost 5 decades now.
It was life-changing because it was the first time I recognized myself. It resonated like a tibetan singing bowl in my soul. I wanted to BE Sam Gribley. I wanted to leave behind my life and live in a tree, alone and uninterrupted by human interaction. While I loved the book, I was horrified when his family found him in the end, moved to the mountain, and started to "civilize" it, making him move back into a house.
It was the first clue to who I was, and who I am: a Lone Wolf, an introvert, who craves solitude like air.
Another? The Bible. I picked it up when I was 16 to read because I was tired of being made to feel inferior by new people in my life because I hadn't been raised "Christian." I read it straight through, beginning to end, twice. I compared it to what I heard being said in the church I was pressured to attend, by the pastor and the attendees. I noted the contradictions in the Bible itself, and between what it said and what was being taught in the church, and how the church members lived their lives. Then I left it behind. I still have a copy on the shelf somewhere, along with my Boomer Bible and other similarly blasphemous versions.
Those 2 Bible readings added greatly to my background knowledge in understanding and negotiating western culture, traditions, idioms, etc.. It also sparked a life-long interest in comparative religion, a study in which I've amateurishly dabbled.
There are plenty more, but not for this post. The time spent sorting through memories of books read is well worth it, though, and will probably continue as I move on with the day. 
Nader and Rand?
I threw a shoe at my tv last night. Why? Because some local fucking Republican was airing a campaign ad about how Republicans will make sure that we help people "the American Way" by "pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps." Ridiculously transparent propaganda. As one of the outliers in that false myth, I know that people don't dig their way out of poverty with bootstraps.
I fucking hate political propaganda that encourages people to, en masse, adopt false memes. And, of course, EVERY campaign season, we are fucking BURIED by them, from both sides.
Nader is a false boogie-man pulled out every fucking campaign season to attack the left, blame them for the 2000 selection, and try to bully/scare people into voting for fucking neo-liberal corporate dems. Every political campaign needs an "enemy" to promote the "lesser evil" meme, because, god knows, there are very, very few candidates worthy of supporting on their own merits in these days of corporate ownership of the whole process. So faithful partisans always have to have an enemy to bash, and devote so much of their time and energy into doing so.
I, for one, think that time and energy would be better spent cleaning our own house, so to speak, but then, I AM a lone wolf when it comes to politics.
One of those enemies I've read more and more vitriol against the last couple of years has been "libertarians." Rand Paul, while a Republican, seems to be a favorite example of a "libertarian." To see him linked with Nader in an OP for a double whammy of "evil" is not surprising. Just discouraging. As for the point? Nader suggesting a marriage of the left and right? Not going to happen, but it's not a surprising suggestion. After all, those of us on the fringe of mainstream corporate politics are always looking for ways to break up the corporate status quo.
For the record, I do not now, never have, and probably never will, hate Ralph Nader, blame him for the 2000 selection, or make my voting decisions based on what he says or does. I've also never voted for him.
For the record, I don't give a fuck about Rand Paul. While I don't like him, I also don't plan to spend any energy giving him time and attention in any kind of forum.
I care about issues, and about what the Democratic Party is doing with them. That's ALL I care about, and that's what drives my voting decisions.
I'm never going to vote for a Republican. Never. Efforts to convince me that they are "bad" are a waste of time. I already know that. Efforts to marginalize the left, or to bully them into line? With this far-left Democrat, those efforts are not only an utter failure, but tend to have unintended consequences...the more I see, the less I respect or listen to those voices.
I'm looking for candidates to vote FOR, and that has to be based on their positions and records on issues...not on their opponents.
But that's just me.
That's a coincidence.
I was just thinking about this topic this morning, as I got ready to leave the house.
It started as I reached for a bra, mentally groaning, stretching my chronically aching, inflamed back and tight shoulders, and wishing again that I'd grown up flat chested instead of a triple D, regardless of how thin, or not, the rest of me might be. I remembered the knowledge, from about age 11, that I'd never have trouble attracting male attention, and that other girls were envious. I remembered learning, over the years, what a double-edged sword that was, and that I couldn't ever expect males to be interested in me as a person rather than an object. I remembered the years learning to hide, to blend in, to be unnoticeable and unmemorable so that kind of attention would be directed elsewhere. I thought about the relief it was to become "too old" to attract sexual attention.
I remembered being raised by a wonderful mom who was attracted to, and addicted to attracting, "bad" boys, and how truly BAD they were, and having to negotiate the environment with them in it. I remembered growing up always feeling inadequate, because my tomboy self was never "pretty" nor "girlie" enough for her. I thought about how, still, when I'm 53, she still constantly comments on what I look like, what I'm wearing, my weight, etc., etc., etc., and how, still, in her mid-70s, she is still overly (to me) obsessed with what SHE looks like.
I thought about the way she was raised, the lack of love and total lack of confidence and esteem she grew up with, that she learned to value herself when boys and then men valued her for something...something that was never her otherwise intelligent intellect or her heart and soul. I forgave her, and by extension, all of my sisters across the planet who feel that they need a man to validate them, because I understand. I understand where it comes from, I understand what it feels like, and I understand that I'm unusual in being able to break that pattern in my own life. I'm thankful that I had 2 sons and no daughters to pass that conditioning on to; that my sons grew up expecting the women around them to be whole people, and that, as adults, they treat women that way.
We're all in different places on the continuum. It's all interconnected, and social/cultural/gender evolution is a complex process.
While it's been a very long time since the 70s,
I think I remember a bit about my experience with weed and with the people I enjoyed it with.
I don't think it distracted us from enjoyment of nature or the arts; the opposite, in fact. Unambitious? Maybe, if "ambition" is about making your mark or place in an aggressive, competitive, capitalistic society. I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, though. It could be our culture would be a lot healthier if we dialed way down on those characteristics.
Brooks may be right about laws molding culture. I think we just have profoundly different visions for the culture we'd like to see.
What laws might I enact to "mold" the culture I'd like to see? To start with:
1. A carbon tax or deduction. Produce zero biological children? A great big deduction. One child? A moderate deduction. Two kids? No deduction, no tax. More than two biological kids? A carbon tax for every child over two, increasing with each addition.
2. A socialized national health CARE program, guaranteeing physical and mental health care, vision, dental, hospice, home care, prescriptions, and alternative care to every person, free at point of service.
3. A truly 100% public, 100% FREE at point of service education, pre-school through trade school or university, at any point in life, for every person. No privatization, no high-stakes testing, the public education system designed and managed by actual EDUCATORS.
4. Expanded social security, starting earlier and paying more.
5. Guaranteed clean, safe shelter and minimal income to every person, regardless of circumstance.
6. A restorative justice system, offering re-training and rehabilitation to all offenders, and long-term or permanent incarceration only for those who pose a danger to others. All those incarcerated, long or short term, treated with dignity and humanity, and guaranteed safety, healthy food, and whatever other services they need to learn to function well with others. Corporate criminals required to use their assets to restore the lives of those they damaged.
7. Energy production and distribution all public, not-for-profit.
8. Free, fully-funded and developed, easy and convenient public transportation systems everywhere.
9. A guaranteed LIVING wage.
10. Labor unions required for all jobs; strict, and strictly enforced, labor regulations.
11. Strict, and strictly enforced, environmental regulations.
12. The end of "free" trade; a trade system based on strict labor and environmental standards.
That's a start.
I have to call bullshit.
Yes, various conditions can be over-diagnosed and mistreated.
But Oppositional Defiant Disorder is REAL.
I know. My grandson was diagnosed, once we got him away from his very troubled mother and got him the physical and mental health treatment he needed.
We're not talking about people who question authority, who think independently, who resist conformity. I do all of those things myself; hence my screen name on DU and the consistent attacks here for not being a good enough Democrat. So does my son, his father, who is even more so than I. Neither of us, though, is ODD.
ODD is an extreme. It has several causes. In my grandson's case, neglect, abuse, lack of supervision, inconsistent and harsh discipline through the age of 4...definitely.
The person with ODD has control issues, and takes those issues beyond the edge of extreme. Even at the age of 3 or 4. They will do ANYTHING to "win," including endangering and hurting themselves and others. They don't respond to the ways most kids learn civility or how to make appropriate choices. Adults in their family have to be trained to go outside their own experiences to make any progress at all.
They don't need medication, unless it's addressing a related condition. They do need intensive therapy and training in self-management and choice making, and their families need training in how to interact with them to help move things in positive directions, rather than feeding the problem.
This blog was written by an anonymous person referencing an article written by someone only identified as "Andrew," with no last name, no qualifications given for the statements made. When "Andrew" has had to put a 4 yo into a restraining hold to keep him from extreme violence to himself and others around him; when he's stood under a very tall tree, terrified that the 4 yo will fall after he scrambled up faster than adults could reach him, afraid to climb after him for fear he would throw himself onto the rocks below, hoping that if he fell he could be caught, and knowing that no "coaxing" in the world would get him down; when he's had to chase a 4 yo over a fence and into miles of public forest that he could be lost in for way too long, with that 4 yo looking back at him with a feral grin because he was "winning;" when he's had to find a way to get a 4 yo to eat when he's made up his mind not to...for 2 days...when he's had a 4 yo unlatch his seatbelt and launch his arms around the driver's neck on the highway, only to take off across that highway in the midst of traffic when the car was pulled over for safety...
When he's had to give up his job so that he can show up at school at any given moment to remove his child; when his entire adult life is given to therapy, counseling, a special school for children with these kinds of problems, and all trips into the public arena are determined by whether or not the child is in a good enough place that day to do so safely...when it takes 8 years of all of that therapy and retraining to get to a point that the child can interact, privately and publicly, with civility and reasonable behavior, but STILL has control issues which he struggles to manage every day...
When he wants to give his full name and his qualifications to speak authoritatively about mental illness...
then "Andrew" can make pronouncements about whether or not ODD is real. Until then, I'll stick with my grandson's team of doctors and other acknowledged authorities whose credentials can be checked.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/oppositional-defiant-disorder/DS00630
http://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Resource_Centers/Oppositional_Defiant_Disorder_Resource_Center/FAQ.aspx
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/qf/behaviorprob_qt/ODD.pdf
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/mental_health_disorders/oppositional_defiant_disorder_90,P02573/
Interestingly enough, when an ODD student enters our school, I'm the one called to assist the assigned teacher, or, if the child is in my grade level, he or she will be placed in my class. Why? Because there are specific strategies for working with these kids, and I've already been trained.
"Women are life support systems for pussy."
Yes. It's a shocking statement. Where did I hear it? From my ex-husband, who passed it on as a "joke" he and "the boys" heard at the local pub. This was about 20 years ago.
Just last week, I had a conversation with my class of 8th graders about how to express disagreement or anger without put-downs. It was partly in response to a major temper-tantrum thrown by a student who didn't like what someone had to say about her choice in boyfriends (too young,) and partly because we were preparing for a classroom debate, and discussing rules of order.
We talked about how, in modern politics, put-downs are the norm. About how adults on both sides of the party lines generally discuss politics by calling names and putting the other side down, rather than by presenting facts and logic about issues. They all agreed that "that's what my dad/mom/etc. does." I told them that one "persuasive" propaganda technique is to push emotional buttons, because when emotion is engaged, logic and reason flee. That, when trying to convince masses of people with differing povs to vote a certain way, it's the norm in politics to paint the "other" as "enemy" using emotional buttons. That they couldn't do this in a classroom debate; that they needed to recognize it when they see it, but that we'd be using facts, logic, and rules of order.
In other words, the adolescents in my classroom would have to be more mature than the average adult debating politics.
What does that have to do with the thread title? This:
Women come with background experience. When we have been treated as sexual objects valued primarily for our sexual attractiveness or services enough times, by enough males, we tend to perceive looks, stares, leers, and comments as predatory. This IS reality.
It might be that background culture and experience play a big part in our perception of male attention. My mother, in her 70s, was raised in a time when a woman's place was to serve men, be subservient, and take care of herself. Her value was in her attractiveness and her service. If a man looked and made comments, she was complimented, because she knew she was doing what a woman was supposed to. She knew her place.
Of course, she also excused physical abuse, which I witnessed and experienced my entire life growing up with her. I was smart. Smarter than many of the boys, who didn't like that. They did like that I was physically precocious. I didn't have boyfriends as a teen, because they didn't want me to open my mouth, except in one circumstance. I was a tomboy. I didn't decorate myself to attract them. I didn't have to. Slender, long legs, narrow waist, trim hips, and over-sized breasts were enough, no matter what I did or didn't wear. This worried my mother, who was constantly trying to dress me up and make me "pretty." To this day, she carefully says nothing about my appearance unless I wear something she likes, or do something with my hair she likes, and then she lights up and gushes about how "pretty" I look. I've been somewhat of a disappointment, having spent most of my adult life successfully grooming myself to be unnoticeable one way or the other. It's a conditioned response to the behaviors some men have been defending here at DU.
I've been married twice. In both instances, my husbands liked my physical appearance, but not my brains. Which is why I gave up trying to be married or in a relationship after the second marriage ended. I couldn't find men who liked me for myself. Unless they were gay. When I wasn't offering "eye candy," I was invisible, which I found preferable.
I watch my female students being groomed by their mothers to be the flower attracting the bees; I watch my girls obsessing over fashion and hair and makeup and I worry about them. I worry whether or not they will find boys that like THEM. I see that they do; while there are still predators, and teenage boys still gawk, I see most of my boys treating my girls like people rather than "life support systems for pussy." I see that we have slowly evolved. I see hope for the future.
I'm a grandmother. I learned the art of camouflage and have used it well, and now I'm past the age men are interested in leering at. It's been a long time since I had to worry about men evaluating me for sexual potential. I haven't forgotten, though, and when I read all of the "debate" about how men think it's okay to stare at and make comments to and about women they've never met, and how about "militant feminists" are the problem, the politically correct surface layer is cracked, exposing the corruption of a group that supposedly supports social justice.
Men, I have no problem with those of you who like to look at women. It's how you go about it that is at issue.
I'm off to run last minute errands; I'll be back in a few hours to see what DUers have to say about my input.
Agree.
It's been well-established, since long before the current deform models, that the biggest predictor of standardized test scores is parent SES.
Brain research informs us about the critical birth-4 year period when neural connections are formed that are crucial to later academic learning...long before children get to kindergarten, ensuring that students enter public education already ahead or behind, and, in terms of brain development, tend to continue the way they began. Those starting behind CAN grow more connections, although not at the pre-K rate, and they do; of course, so does everyone else, so they don't "catch up."
Our society is based on capitalistic values: competition, haves and have-nots, the "bootstrap" myth. Our society is not interested in closing economic gaps and equalizing the playing field. Our economy and our society depends on keeping a large pool of cheap labor and cannon fodder. Getting to blame teachers and the education system for "failure" is just a bonus for privatizers who want access to all of the public money spent on the system.
If the U.S. truly, honestly, wanted to improve the education of all, we'd start by eradicating poverty, and making sure that every person in the U.S. had fundamental rights to clean, healthy, safe, shelter with light, heat, etc.; appropriate clothing; abundant healthy food; easily accessible, high-quality health care, including mental, dental, and vision, free at point of service, funded 100% by taxes; clean, safe neighborhoods and communities, with parks, libraries, etc., etc., etc., close to all; a guaranteed minimal income for all, a job for all who wanted it, and a living wage.
That right there would increase learning without changing ANYTHING at schools. If we then wanted to provide every person with equal access to a world-class education, we would:
1. Fully fund every aspect of public education, including daily PE, health, counselors, art teachers, music programs, etc., etc., etc..
2. Reduce all class sizes to the optimal 15 that research tells is best.
3. Make pre-school universal and free.
4. Invest in comprehensive parent education programs: at school, on tv, at obstetrician's offices, as public service announcements on tv, radio, internet and bill-boards, etc., etc., etc.; blanket the culture with the information about how to raise children birth - kindergarten, and how to support students once they started school. Things like keeping them away from electronic toys, tv, etc. for several years; direct conversation and interaction with adults; developmentally appropriate play/exploration opportunities; singing, rhyming, poetry, storybooks, cooking, building, climbing, and all of the things that develop strong language skills and strong brains. Things like a dedicated reading and homework time, when there are no electronic distractions going on. Things like parents modeling reading and language and learning as family values by engaging in them themselves. Things like regular extended family conversations.
5. Make college, university, and/or trade school universally available and free.
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