[Mb-civic] Violent America, schools !

[Barbara Siomos]

To Me Y-O-U-R opinion is always welcome Dublin Jack..... Now how
peaceful can it be with 12 children? <laugh><laugh>

peace,
barbara
>From: "Jack Sullivan" <jack at visit.ie> 
>To: "Harold Sifton" <harry.sifton at sympatico.ca>,
><mb-civic at islandlists.com> 
>Subject: Re: [Mb-civic] Violent America, schools !
Friends:
 
I seldom have time to respond to debates in our civic site; and I
enjoy the free wheeling, but as a father of 12 children who moved away
from America to live in Europe (Ireland), I have something to say about
Harold's referred article about violence in schools and the quality of
life available in the USA for families. 
 
The article describes a child's stick drawing as an alleged felony!
Story garnered from a TV news programme - only an example of something
that has little to do with school.
 
The Bush election strategy - successfully embraced by his
minders - sought to not so much to correct the aimless drift in
American society, as to capitalise it. 
 
The paradigm of the generous impulse... nurtured by a noble history
of the Democratic Party since the Great Depression among working
American families...  was expansive for the imagination of the
working poor, even the middle class, the immigrant or marginalized
ethnic. But that historic political party misspent its
prosperity and its social cohesiveness particularly for average
families. How did it happen that schools - particularly urban schools -
were left in the ha'penny place?
 
Except as nostalgia and fond memory supports a
person's identity and loyalty to the past, the Democrats have lost
the social plot. Worse the Republicans hear the voice of lost sheep
that missing fundamentals have cast eschew. So by inattention,
and in the name of God, they caught our noble party on the back
foot. 
 
The Democrats offered opportunity to urban minorities and addressed
the need for investment capital in non-traditional areas of human need
and interest, but did so with centralised government structures that
have run amuck, and bargain tired politicos in office longer than their
service justifies. 
 
THE IDEA of encouraging allegiance among diverse kinds of people in a
caring America became an inspirational formula for Democrats to win
elections, but it is now bankruptcy is the message they deliver to
families that feel the need to understand what they live for. Desperate
lives are too abundant. 
 
American Liberalism that won elections for the Democrats asking widely
diverse people to symbolically embrace  'e pluribus unum', a mythic
philosophy that increasing trashed categories of traditional
notions about God, about evil - even about what children ought to
have to protect their innocence. It awkwardly took turns giving
something to everyone so to stitch together edgy borders where people
found emotional safety in mutually exclusive enclaves. So Blacks and
Gays and Women equally were joined at the hip with only a vague ideology
of aspiration. "Do no harm! Give something to every whine." Note: the
Vietnamese! They just went to school with all the support of their
extended family.
 
Societal ennui is especially affecting children in urban public
schools. 
 
Curiosity fed by innocence  about science, languages and history has
been replaced by the predominant appetite for violence and sexual
images- ever available - as a loss leader to capture media
audiences. Enough Kerry could have shouted in the name of children -
instead he suggested an implication about Cheney's daughter. Who could
elect such a policy maker?
 
Ironically, in a society where God was inscribed on money, but
forbidden in schools, we wonder why kids are acting out. 
 
Moral authority needs an absolute that according to Plato is "One, True
and Beautiful". America's public schools replaced God with something
less capable of protecting them - never mind nurturing them. By
politicising the schools with central authority, political policy,
parents lost interest and get away without sweat equity in the most
fundamental institutional extension of the family. 
 
Noticeably, church supported schools avoid this trap and keep front and
center the cohesive value system of their religious ethos. This attracts
parents who are willing to give sweat equity and hard cash...to nurture
their child's spirit, while protecting their innocence well into the
teen years. There is a danger when such an educational system is so
divided based on fundamentals and the meaning of "One, True and
Beautiful". 
 
In Ireland all schools of all religious persuasions: Jewish, Catholic,
Protestant and Muslim hire qualified teachers exclusively and directly
paid for by the State, but who instruct the children in the values of
the Faith based patron of the individual school. Thus, a Catholic
teacher, a professional, can be hired to teach Muslim children in a
Muslim school, the same standard curriculum as in all schools, but
God as taught -as the Mullah decides - or the Bishop decides - or
the Rabbi decides -or even for those who do not want God - as Educate
Together decides! 
 
I think that our civic membership group might consider if the
Democrats needed a pruning of social excess - with an imagination of
course.
 
It is one thing to nourish respect for diversity and the principle of
'E Pluribus Unum' from a moral high ground, it is quite another to
ensconce that no one's God can be mentioned or acknowledged - except the
silent and politically correct god of  no name. 
 
 
Just a thought about schools, commonweal and America's lost
soul (fostered by) ignored by the champions of the Democratic Party. 
 
We need a better paradigm that probably needs to find a place for a
Supreme Being at the top table. 
 
I will go back to my quiet lifestyle now and promise to keep still for
another year...as Ireland continues to wrestle with tens of thousands of
new immigrants for the first time in its modern history ...the schools
struggling to honour the new comers with various religious approaches
while washing off some of the hostile graffiti, that suggests to
Africans. "No Niggers"!
 
God Bless. 
 
Dublinjack