Tag Archives: ignorance

Labour of Love

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, Community, Education, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

February 7, 2020- 

With a sneer, the self-styled “chief paraprofessional” took issue with my enunciating the first ‘r’ in “February”.  “It’s Feb-YOO-ery.  Learn to speak AMERICAN English”.  With that, all pretense, that the particular school was operating about the welfare of children, went out the window. I left not long afterward.

Many work environments, throughout the world, have taken to minimizing their stated mission, in favour of preserving some sort of falsehood-based alternate agenda, centered on the ego gratification of a certain few.  Ignorance is, then,  more than bliss.  It becomes the soft ground, on which pseudo-institutions are built, and on which they thrive.

There is a strong team of professionals, struggling to save, and rebuild, a school in which I was honoured to have spent time, not too long ago.  What they face is a three-generational climate of self-loathing and learned helplessness.  That some of these professionals have been there for nearly five years, speaks to the strength of the human heart; to the indomitable essence of the human spirit.

I have been an educator for 44 years.  While there are people whom I will admit to having failed, the vast majority have been helped, by the teams of which I was an active part.  The key has always been to love the child, to not give up-ever, to build the patience needed to counter the worst of defeatism.  As I go about northern Arizona, in this, my last calendar year of being a full-time educator, that mindset has not diminished.

Even after retiring, my battle, with ignorance and antipathy towards children and youth, will remain my cornerstone.

Primacy

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Posted by on in children, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 23, 2019-

I have watched the aftermath of this past weekend’s dustup, involving White, Red and Black activists, talking at, and over, each other- with only a smidgen of understanding, and that coming solely from the Native American elders, who thought drumming and singing a prayer would defuse tension.

The whites started out marching on behalf of banning abortion.  The blacks were mainly stating their beliefs about their being descended from the 12 Tribes of Israel.  The Native Americans were in a sanctioned march for Peace on Earth. The whites and blacks began berating one another, and it is academic as to who started what.  There have been all manner of comments, on all sides and from the sidelines, suggesting that, once again, no one was listening to the others- except the silent, grinning Nick Sandmann who, depending on who was watching, was either standing still out of respect to Nathan Phillips or was grinning in contempt of “an other”.

In reality, it IS disrespectful in Native American culture, to speak to someone who is chanting, praying or dancing in a spiritual manner.  Nick would know this, as, likewise, no  Catholic churchgoer engages a priest in conversation, when the prelate is saying Mass or giving a sermon.

It is also reality for some to stand, often with arms folded, grinning while their eyes flash hatred, as I have often seen when disparate groups of people confront one another.

I saw no hatred in the eyes of Nick Sandmann.  I saw a boy who didn’t want to speak, for whatever reason.  I saw his face momentarily turn serious, and what was going through his mind, at that moment, is known only to him.

Commentators have interpreted the behaviours of various people in the situation, according to what they, the commentators, have witnessed in the past.  I could do the same thing, and note that when I was a teen, my schoolmates and I poked fun at one another, sometimes to the point of invoking anger and tears.  We had one another’s backs when real adversaries attacked us.  Thus, the solidarity, the other day, when the whites, the reds and the  blacks felt threatened by one another.

Gradually, as will likely happen with the Covington kids, many of my contemporaries and I expanded our social circles, to include people of various groups.  Primacy of one group over another does not hold water.  Nick Sandmann, and those of his friends who join in, will start learning this WHEN they sit down with Nathan Phillips, and hear his story.  I hope they listen with both ears-and I hope Mr. Phillips remembers what it was like to be male and sixteen.  In answer to his question: “THIS is our future?”, I can only say:  Yes, sir, and it is also our past.  Intemperance and ignorance give way to open-mindedness and awareness, when the latter are brought to bear, in a loving way.  We are, in the end, one human race.

Crash Course or Coarse Crash?

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Posted by on in Community, Education, Inspiration, Social

September 8, 2016, Prescott-  I have been contributing heavily to the classroom’s instructional day- basically running the Social Studies lesson, in a pinch.  Next week, I will be in training for two days, so hopefully the others will not run out of their own ideas.

Random thoughts- Has anyone read Jerzy Kosinski’s “Being There”?  It is a tale of a novice running for President, and being elected.  Sound familiar? My preferred candidate asked a news analyst, “What’s Aleppo?”  I am disappointed.  I knew what Aleppo was, and where it was, when I was 11.  This candidate needs a crash course in geography.  We must not be content to “all go into the garden.”

The people who thought that another candidate would be the poster child for the resurgence of ignorance, are finding out that he senses an actual chance of winning the Presidency, and is thus refining his efforts.  Whether this will work for him is anyone’s guess.  Many feel that a leopard does not change its spots.

I am opposed to people acting out of ignorance. When I have so lapsed, the reaction has been swift and brutal.  Take the time to enlighten yourself, before, as Abraham Lincoln once said, “opening your mouth, and removing all doubt” ,(about being thought a fool).