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Sometimes It Just Gets to You

4/29/2023

I learn from the paper about the atrocities going on in the world: the war in Ukraine, the fighting in Sudan, the attacks on democracy everywhere. I think how horrible it all is and am grateful that my life so far has escaped such carnage. And then I get on with that life in a way that shows how insulated I am from those terrors.

I learn from the paper about the ever-increasing use of guns to bring death and mayhem to children at schools, employees at work, families at home, and individuals everywhere. I’m disgusted at the prevailing attitude of our Republican supermajority who argues with logic that defies fact that the easier we make access to guns, the safer we will be. I am grateful that gun violence so far has not been a major part of my life. And then I get on with that life.

I learn from the paper about the attacks our governor and legislators are making on our right to vote, our educational system, our ability to control our own health, and so many other areas. I am grateful that I am no longer teaching and that I seem to be unaffected in any direct way by all these other actions. I detest them, but somehow, I’m able to put them aside and get on with my life.

I learn about the deaths of former colleagues and friends and am sorry and upset. I’m grateful that I’m still around, and after a while I am able to move past these deaths and get on with my life.

Sometimes I feel there must be something wrong with me, that I’m too insensitive to the ills of the world. That may be true, but I think that’s common and perhaps that is how we survive the tragedies bordering our lives.

The other morning I was walking my dog, Hugo, on a path adjoining a fairway on a nearby golf course. I looked up and saw a large black dog loping across the fairway from one side to the other. I scanned for its owner and saw no one.

I worried about moving forward in my walk, fearing for the safety of Hugo.

And the thought crossed my mind that the large dog looked a little like and moved a little like a bear.

Nonsense, I thought, and moved ahead.

A day or so later I was receiving personal training and my trainer asked if I’d heard about the bear in the neighborhood, in fact, on the golf course. Shocked I said, “I think I’ve seen it.” She showed me a video that had been circulating and it could have been taken by me. There must have been someone on the course at the same time I was and near where I was who captured exactly what I had seen.

We discussed how neat this was. She had heard that authorities had been contacted and were working on capturing the animal and returning it to a safer place.

The next morning we learned the bear had been killed. It had happened in the early dark hours. A car had hit it as it was playing on the road. A witness said the driver couldn’t have helped it. The bear was a juvenile, one or two years old.

For some reason, I couldn’t put its death out of my mind. I’d wake up at night and think about it.

This is arguably a much lesser tragedy than the ones detailed earlier. Is it worse because the others have become so common they are easier to set aside? If a bear was killed in this way every day, would I no longer be moved by it?

I don’t know.

I know I still think about it, but I couldn’t tell you when the latest mass shooting was. I thought, maybe it’s because the bear is so innocent, we humans have eaten away its habitat, and it paid the ultimate price for our selfishness.

But so have all those suffering from guns and tyrants and sick humans. And any rational argument would rate those much worse tragedies.

Whatever, the story of that poor bear still gets to me.

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Gotcha

4/19/2023

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When I was a kid, I knew about “woke.” I’d say things like, “I woke up about seven.”

At a much later period in my life, I “woke” in another way. I became aware that all life was not as comfortable as my own and I came to realize that Blacks and women did not have the same benefits as this comfortable white male did. More recently I have observed the increasing discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community.

I now am “woke” in the sense despised by Florida’s Governor DeSantis and the current Republican party that has eliminated independent thought. “Woke” is now officially a bad thing.

But it wasn’t always that way. In the 1960s we seemed to have developed a national conscience and made significant advances in righting past wrongs. Much forward movement has continued past that time.

However, it’s dangerous to threaten the powerful, and that is what “wokeness” did. Many of it’s manifestations hurt the powerful white establishment. In the interests of diversity there was an effect on hiring and college admissions. Some whites who were turned down sued, and the Republicans began to recognize a potential winner. Nixon was one of the first, with his southern strategy, which wound up turning the prejudiced southern Democratic states into prejudiced southern Republican states.

Now, in Florida, there is a war against “wokeness.” It takes many forms from book banning to Disney bashing.

There is a bill working its way through the Florida legislature, heading to the desk of our anti-woke governor, that will encourage college students to record classes without the instructor’s permission. Furthermore, if there is the slightest concern on the recording that there is an “unacceptable” message involving diversity or critical race theory or anything that goes against a conservative viewpoint, the bill encourages the student to report the instructor.

In particular, they are to look for, among other things, instances where they feel uncomfortable about the topic of discussion.

How terrible for a college level student to feel “uncomfortable” about a topic. No way would we want him to examine his feelings and even defend them. Of course, our governor would say such discussions had no place in higher education any way since the only important subjects are STEM related. He’s a lawyer, by the way.

Do I really think students would go through this reporting process?

Absolutely!

Many are narrow in their thinking, a situation they will maintain if they are never challenged to think beyond their current state. It is common for their position to reflect the indoctrination provided by parents. How else to explain the many youngsters angered by the presence of Blacks or gays? They wouldn’t hesitate to create a “gotcha.”

I once taught in a cohort for honors students. There were three instructors teaching the three required classes of Calculus, English, and Humanities. We each held our regular class sections, and, in addition, we all got together weekly for general discussions. I had one student who, in one of these discussions, claimed that the earth was formed 15,000 years ago, a claim arising from his religious beliefs imposed on him by his parents.

I suggested, in the gentlest possible terms, that there was indisputable scientific evidence otherwise, hoped he would consider that evidence, and recognize his religious believes would survive the truth.

He was a good kid. I don’t think he would have reported me if the new standard existed back then. But if it was today and he did report, I’d be in a heap of trouble.

I can’t help but wonder if the current bill is just the beginning, and more and more of our citizens will be asked to report to the government about other citizens with unacceptable views.

Like in Nazi Germany, Russia past and present, and so many other countries.

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Vouchers—An Invitation to Chicanery

4/5/2023

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I am the product of an excellent public school system. In the 1940s the schools in my hometown of East Orange, New Jersey were recognized throughout the country for their excellence. So I was lucky. I’m sure many other systems were academically poor. Of course, it helped to be white. I fear Blacks were marginalized, even in my recognized system.

But good or bad, public education was all that was available.

That’s not strictly true. There were Catholic schools and, as I learned when I entered college and became acquainted with some students from rich families, there were exclusive private prep schools. The Catholic schools cost plenty, and the prep schools were very expensive.

I remember many Catholic families felt cheated because they had to pay for their kids’ educations on top of the taxes they also had to pay to support the public school system. But there was always the understanding that the private approach was a choice and a recognition that the choice had a financial penalty.

That recognition extended through the desegregation days of public schools when those who could afford it pulled their lily-white kids from schools that, gasp, had Black children and teachers.

It wasn’t until the 21st century that the notion that public tax dollars going to non public schools was a “good” idea.

Thus the voucher system was born in Florida where certain kids could leave public school to attend other ones and have the cost largely covered by the state. Using money that no longer enters the public school coffers.

Every year the Florida legislature finds a way to expand this system to more and more students. This year they said vouchers would be available to any student who normally would attend a public school, including those rich kids who are already in private schools and who now will be able to get much of their fees covered with public money.

There are many valid arguments against vouchers, and they have been expressed since the system was initiated. You see, these schools don’t have to have their students take standard exams, or offer state approved curricula, or accept disabled or gay students or students with gay parents, or teach evolution or any other science of which they disapprove.

But there’s even worse.

We’re talking big bucks here, possibly involving billions of dollars. And what happens when the money becomes large? People want it. And not always the most honest of people.

It is easy to imagine the more nefarious drooling over all that money and working out ways to latch onto some of it. After all, all they have to do is find an empty room or two, fill it with a few chairs, and announce they’re open for the education of the young. Maybe they’ll create a glossy brochure and impress gullible parents with the promise of a first class education for their kids.

These parents may very well be on the low end of the economic ladder without a good understanding of what excellence in education means. They just know they are being promised that and it is exactly what they want for their kids.

And it’s free for them.

Then the low lifes can rake in the essentially unlimited money for which they have to do almost nothing.

You say no one would be that mean? To cheat our kids that way? They already are. They already do. Some schools receiving voucher money have shut down in the middle of the year, leaving families to scurry to find a solution. Others have run-down facilities, or have failed to pay utilities, of have provided an educationally suspect curriculum, or have employed unqualified teachers.

Think how many more people will abuse the system when lured by the massive amount of money that now will be potentially available. Those with no interest in education, but with a large interest in cashing in on the public largesse.

And who is looking out to protect the kids from the damage performed on them.

Certainly not our legislative leaders who drool over this attack on education.

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Sometimes It Just Gets to You

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Vouchers—An Invitation to Chicanery

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