DRAFT

Ran across a new blog today: Draft at The New York Times. Where has it been hiding? I check out the NYT opinion pages regularly. Why haven't I seen this nifty blog? I must not be paying as much attention as I should. This is definitely one that will be shared with my students.

Dumbing down doesn't help

Two FB posts intersected this past week and caused me to groan loudly. The first was an article describing a list of words the NYC Department of Education thinks should be banned from standardized tests. Okay. Maybe they planned to get rid of every 7 syllable word under the erroneous belief that students would not know what they mean. Nope. Turns out words like divorce, disease, poverty, and dinosaur. And the reasons were unbelievable. They might upset a child who did not believe in dinosaurs or didn't celebrate a particular day, such as a birthday, or may have a sick relative.

The second post was an image of President Obama carrying a book as he boarded a plane. The post asked friends to send it on to at least 20 others, with the clear connotation there was something horribly wrong with the photo. And what was that horror? Our president was carrying a copy of Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. 

 These seem to signal a deep-seated mistrust of words and ideas. How can we be expected to function in a world-wide society if we actively court the level of ignorance that would have our children protected from actual words and our president dumbing down his reading list? I'm afraid that active fear of ideas is part of the reason there is such a schism in American society today.

A third event, only tangentially related, but troubling nevertheless... This semester a student objected to the "liberal crap" I was asking students to read. He took his concerns to his father who then took them to the vice president of instruction. The irony is that the text being used was only an example, and students were asked to examine and challenge the writing, not to accept it. The student chose to drop the class rather than be exposed to such unacceptable ideas.

Derek Sivers' unique perspective

This is the coolest way of interrupting my thinking!

"There are doctors in China," [Sivers] says, "who believe it is their job to keep you healthy. So any month you are healthy, you pay them. Any month you are sick, you don't have to pay them because they failed at their job. They get rich when you are healthy, not sick."

Changes...

For the few of you who ever stumble across my thoughts, it seems appropriate to point out the changes that are happening on this blog. It started out as a space for my classes and for posts about education. Now I find that I'm posting more about the events and ideas I find most disturbing in today's world.

Recently had a student drop a class because of all the "liberal crap" I was teaching. Since when is teaching people how to read and write "crap"? It is dangerous, of course, to those who would prefer not to think or not to have their own ideas challenged, but that's tough. I'm proud to "live conservatively but think liberally".

So, who am I? I am a woman, wife, mother, Latter Day Saint, and an American. I am proud to be each of these things because they combine to inform my personal values. I value fairness and honesty and compassion, and much of what I find most disturbing in the world is because those characteristics are missing.

Worried about women

It's nearly impossible, especially for those of us who came through the battles to make birth control the province of women, to envision the vitriolic turn in the politics of womanhood. The double standard is alive and well and becoming sufficiently powerful to effect a return to oppressive regulation that should not even be a question on political radar. How dare a woman want control over her own life?! How dare a woman think birth control should be insured just as Viagra and other such drugs are for men?!

Cynthia Beard has done an exemplary job of articulating what I feel but have been unable to write. I hope that everyone will read and consider her thoughts carefully.

For goodness sake!

A friend posted this image:

I don't know where it came from, so I have no way of providing "credit" to the one who deserves it. Those who responded to the post were of the general opinion that President Obama is the worst president ever and is literally destroying our nation. One of them went so far as to remark that she and her husband "cried when we saw this the first time." Well, I'm finding that attitude less and less acceptable and felt the need to respond to the image and the posts. Here's what I wrote:

And I cry because this is yet another image attempting to divide our nation. Yes, the Constitution is under attack, but many of those on both sides of the artificial ideological divide in that image have had their hands in the effort to tear it apart. The problems we face today did not spring fully formed from the presidency of Mr. Obama; they were born and have been nurtured over decades.

I vividly recall the Civil Rights conflicts of the 60s. That was a time when most of the nation believed it was wrong to extend Constitutional protections to others for no reason but the color of their skin and fought the president vehemently for insisting on equal rights. Later thoughtfulness prevailed, and we understood the Constitution is supposed to protect all citizens.

I recall the scandals of Nixon and Clinton and the less publicized scandals involving so many of those chosen to lead this nation. We survived all of them. President Obama is a human being and will and has made errors, but so has every other president who has ever held the office. There is no need to extoll President Obama beyond merit, but neither is there a need to vilify him unnecessarily.

Our nation faces so many difficult challenges. We need to work together to find long-term solutions for those problems.

Something is terribly, terribly wrong...

So, the figures are in. It's more profitable for a large company to lobby than to pay its fair share of taxes. A study just out shows that 30 corporations paid more to lobbyists than they paid in taxes. Turns out it was money well spent, though. Not only did 29 of those companies pay no taxes at all, some of them received tax rebates. Maybe they were suffering. After all, the economy had tanked; many citizens were losing their jobs and homes; retirement savings were melting like butter on a hot summer day. Not so. The companies that managed to snag nearly $11 billion in Washington Welfare had a combined profit of about $164 billion (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/12/13/30-major-u-s-companies-spent-more-on-lobbying-than-taxes/).

The federal government spent $107.2 on welfare for family and children in 2011. But that cost is on its way down, thanks to recent cuts that will be phased in over the coming years. That's a lot to spend, but at least those people weren't making tons of money while getting Washington Welfare. Nope. Most of them were having a downright tough time keeping a roof over their heads and body and soul together (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_budget_2012_4.html).

Frankly, I'd rather our taxes go to those who live at or below the poverty line than those who wallow in the 1% and above.