This is sensitive material for mature audiences only. If you do not have any strong opinions for a better political, economic, social-economic, or general improvement in "mass ethics"; then do not read any further. I recommend one of the pages to the left to read instead.
If you are bold enough to continue, keep in mind this is what I wanted to write on the petition sponsered by the Care 2 Action Network (also on the left) for "making high-quality, voluntary pre-kindergarten available to all American children":
You've been warned! Reading any further is at your own discretion and therefore if you have a problem with it, please remember I kinda, well, "told you so"! :)
Ignorance has cost us the lives of some of our most precious resources.
Children are our #1 resource; the only renewable 'energy' we have, and yet, their future is more unstable than my great-grandparent's future was back when they all huddled in one school house room, if they were lucky enough to have a local school!
At present, many cities’ kids are not even safe to GO to school. Some are killed just for BEING at school. While pre-K for all children will help every young mind get the right start towards what is important and vital for them to have a better future than the one looking at our current graduates, it is only the beginning solution to our problems.
Take the following: for example, if $1 from EVERY convoluted government- funded program would allow all children to have pre-K; literally leaving "no child left behind", then the advanced material started earlier because it is repeated over and over for the "NCLB Act" might literally happen, without an “Act” to prevent children from being “left behind” in school academics.
Consider then, what another $2 ought to allow: better pay for teachers, for instance. After all, these are the people that serve as "other parents" of our children during the school week days, yet they have no authority as “parental figures” and now thanks to “NCLB Act”, no TIME because of ridiculous bureaucratic paperwork in order for them to provide any kid the one-on-one attention, encouragement, or discipline needed to teach them at such a young age!
Then, JUST IMAGINE what $3 from such a mass of programs could create for cities like Chicago, with gang issues, that could have something like early-aged after school programs for just their age group - programs sponsored by schools, parents, and their communities that could help these young children to learn to bond with people instead of fighting the very authority that wishes they could protect them, but must instead wait until they visibly SEE a “real problem” on school premises before being able to refer these children to the over-burdened social worker system already dealing with the grown version of the younger problems that, we as parents, can identify by the time our children start their second semester of their Kindergarten year!!!
Then, just MAYBE, $4 would allow youth to stay in a safe and secure environment; while they learn, bond, and grow under authority that is PAID ENOUGH, so that only the best of people are wanting to teach and help raise our country’s children; caring extra for the ones that need early intervention. Is it possible then, that parents would allow the schools to pull these children as early as Kindergarten; to teach them about bonding, friendship, how to ask for their needs to be met in a non-threatening, honest way through an anti-bully and/or friendship “program” - so that they learn how to feel good about themselves way before the allure of a gang crosses their mind!
Let’s face the hard facts: the generation(s) ahead of these hypothetical kids, graduates today, were not allowed any MORAL direction in school because anything that resembled respect, discipline, ethics, or teaching of our oldest world historical book that suggests a "higher power" or conscience or any such lessons were banned from our schools YEARS ago!!!
Then, just MAYBE, THESE hypothetical pre-K, cared for, and encouraged children, as adults would have a divorce rate that would go down. Maybe then, their kids would not have to turn away from their young peer group they barely learned to bond with early on because somewhere in their early lives they were watched after patiently, shown love, encouragement, and individual attention...get where I am going with this???
These national problems will take a while to fix, time could measure into generations – but the earlier the start, the earlier we will all begin to see that, for instance, that “John’s behavior” reported to Mom and/or Dad in pre-K would allow these kids the chance to have “identified early intervention” before “John” needs to turn to a gang for moral support; and would instead get the extra help and encouragement, etc. etc. that he needs to thrive.
If our society is ditching their children where they can “make ends” (as mentioned by one parent on the petition comments section), then let’s come up with an “end” for parents that is realistic, so that our children’s children will never have to be asked at school orientation when handed their yearly dress-code and conduct handbook to: ‘not bring weapons to school property’, ‘pass through metal detectors to check for devices deemed unsafe in an educational setting”, etc., as part of their Elementary School Orientation!
Didn’t the 70’s teach us anything? Are we so all ignorant that we have forgotten the demons that bring about these problems? If we are not there for our children, our family, our friends, or our neighbors; before you know it; we will all be without any morals, fighting one another in the street for some ‘thing’ worth less than the trouble we all went to obtain said thing.
If our country is moving in this direction with a G-force so strong the world is about to shift on it’s axis (or maybe that is what global warming was “really” started by!), then do alert me so that I may need to leave my boxes in the attic and never fully move in anywhere in case we need to make a quick get-away?!
Oh, I hate the soap-box! But, I had to let these feelings out! Honestly, they began before I sat in front of the computer; manifested in my despair to my immune system’s lack of response to every-day “germs” after trying to treat a rash obtained from a ‘clean’ pair of the ‘patient’ goggles I used at the dentist during a cleaning and an enamel repair. It snowballed from there as you can see.
I feel better; however, I fear I have created a monster in the process! Well, I guess I will either a) have NO friends left after this post or b) will be accused of more bizarre behavior and be tolerated by even fewer people. I’m not sure why it is we are not more honest about the things that we see as our greatest fears in raising kids in today’s society. While I am all for the positive thinking, mantras, and most importantly of all, setting the example I want to see from my child (which takes admission on my part of my wrong-examples or help from friends that are willing to be honest with me of their view-points, because family of this type does not exist for us); I also wish that the society where the one child/children in the community left without a Dad or decent parents were “taken in” for lack of a better word, by a neighbor or classmate’s family/Dad and therefore didn’t get “lost” – is just a thing of the past. If I can’t even count on my own immediate-extended family to be there when I need them, then really, I am only doing as well as the latest information I can get my hands on!
More than anything, I need my body to produce a consistent amount of immunity, so I can have the years that I really want to have with my husband and my son. There is so much left to say and so much left to do. Maybe now should be the time I ask for mass, prayer list prayers, for a turn in my failing health. My family that I have, no matter how small, really needs ME. If I cannot give them the Mother figure they need here, Joey and Gene will lose out in the long run if I should rapidly decline while we are here anytime in the current. This fear I have is generated by very real, daily struggles that I could not begin to explain, so I am making a plea for prayers. I need all you can request and ask for. I need my body to get in a more “acceptable, consistent quality” that Joey and Gene can count on – at the times they need me the most during each day. That’s all I’ll ask for that. The other, is to pray I live long enough to share how my story could very well be anyone’s story – and how I got out of the dysfunction and began to travel down my own road; slinging a blade to every grass too tall for me to walk over, stopping to build bridges where water was too steep for me to wade through, until finally, I made it out of the woods and can clearly see what I still wish many others I used to walk beside or even behind could see.
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