New Year’s Resolutions

The beginning of a new calendar year is here. 

In the great passage of time it is really a meaningless blip on the universe’s radar. To many humans it is a time of again trying to start over from an arbitrary marker on the path to self-improvement. Most New Year’s Resolutions fade away rapidly into oblivion and disappear mercifully. Others go out in a blaze of short lived embarrassment. 

Why resolutions fail

Resolutions fail largely because of their name. A “resolution” is a “formal intention of resolve”. Who are we kidding here? Most people can’t do anything formal, and most human intentions are mired in the miasma of self-servitude. To be “resolute” implies a stiffness, and conjures images of matronly, freeze dried nuns patrolling classroom aisles with rulers poised to thwack indolent fingers. 

Resolute is a resignation to failure. One is resolved, or given over to the Dark Side of failure before one has even started. It is being condemned to sinking before the ship is launched, a Titanic size hole already gashed into the vessel’s hull with no lifeboats or shout outs on board. No Scotty to beam one up :-(

Black is failure, white is success in the world of self-imposed resolutions. We judge ourselves by comparing our inevitable weaknesses to an unachievable standard with the white bar set so high it cannot be reached. In reality the world is grey, a million shades of gray, but none are pure white. The one white soul was born December 25 and His work is in progress. 

Grey is Okay

Instead of resigning oneself to predisposed failure, one should expect at least 365 shades of grey. Latitude for actions attempted daily is a human quality that is normal and inescapable. We need to go easy on ourselves for being what we are- human and flawed. Just as it is in the makeup of a fish to swim or a plant to seek light, humans are going to miss achieving perfection in the human world. But just as inevitably as the fish keeps swimming, and the plant keeps growing upward, humans keep trying even though they will not reach a state of achieved perfection. The trick is to realize where in the grey in okay.

Expectations

So instead of making resolutions we know we will fail to achieve, for 2014 let’s all create expectations we have a good chance of reaching. Excluded are autonomic functions like breathing and making our heart beat. New Year’s Expectations are small steps along a longer path. Included in achieving each expectation are pats on the back and forgiveness for backsliding. Every day can’t be better than every previous one. Shit happens. We get sick, circumstances descend on us that are out of our control, like a pipe bursts or the car battery dies or we trip over the dog and sprain a wrist.

But we can learn to recognize that we have done something positive we hoped to do that day, or that just appeared unbidden. Like writing a chapter in the novel we are working on, or paying bills that were due today without forgetting. Like looking out the window, seeing the older neighbor struggling to shovel the walk and putting on our coat and helping because it is the right thing to do. 

Deciding to take a positive action is a huge expectation achieved. Some days we may actually take the step and pat ourselves gently on the back because we did it. Some days we may not take the action we want to because we are human. Then we take the action of forgiving ourselves for being human, and that is achieving the expectation from a different perspective. Some days we end up in the light grey, some days in the darker gray, but grey is okay.

Tomorrow is another opportunity to expect a great grey day. And the more we look forward to expecting to achieve something realistic on a gray day the more we are okay. And that is an expectation that is more white than grey. And okay.

A problem with the traditional Christmas Story

How really wise were the Wise Men? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be wandering around in the Middle East carrying fancy looking containers full of gold, frankincense and myrrh. That’s a problem waiting to happen, no matter how big and well-armed your retinue is. The goodies would be better spent feeding the camels and lackeys.

Lackey: Oh Wise Ones, lunch will be delayed a bit. We have to send somebody into that town over there for some olive oil, parsley, and thyme. Due to the haboob last week, we lost a couple traveling days hunkering down in those caves, and supplies are short. Can I have an advance on next week’s food budget? Here’s your box of gold, oh Kings from Afar.

WM 1: Sure, Lackey, but don’t spend it all in one place. We still need to pay someone to do the laundry. Hunkering down in a cave with camels

for two days put a strain on the wardrobe. 

WM 2: Plus we need to find an inn pretty soon. The tents are full of drifting sand. They need a thorough cleaning up and some repair. We really can’t use them as is.

Lackey: All the inns here are full. There is a census going on and people from near and far have come back to their ancestral home town. It’s like a huge family reunion. 

WM 3: And what was I hearing all last night? It sounded like singing. Was there a concert we missed?

Lackey: No, Oh Exalted Magi. It was Angels from On High.

WM 3: I’ve never heard of them. Are they a group from around here?

Lackey: I don’t believe their home base is in this area. They rarely make a local appearance. 

WM 2: Well, they sounded great, and the lighting effect from that star hovering overhead set off their gossamer wings to the best advantage. 

WM 1: Well, let’s go into town and see what’s up.  (They set off to town.)

A while later:

WM 2: This place is packed. At least we managed to get provisions. After lunch, we better head into the next town down the road. The innkeeper said there’s a Hilton Garden there. The oasis is pretty big, and they have great facilities for the camels. 

WM 1: I’m glad we stopped at the stable to find out that information. Best of all we found that couple with the baby boy. He’s a very special lad. I predict He’ll do great things.

WM 3: He did have a way about him, even for a newborn. Giving Mom and Dad the rest of the gold 

we brought into town today should help them out with baby expenses. And applying some frankincense 

and myrrh 

mixed up with a little olive oil is great for curing diaper rash. It makes an effective poultice, too, in case He gets asthma or a cold. 

Lackey: If your Eminences are ready, we can depart forthwith. I suggest we return home by a different route. 


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More information about sounds and the human body than you want to know

I couldn’t sleep the other night, so I went downstairs to read for a bit. Reading in bed wasn’t helping my eyes close, so I thought a change of setting would work. My tummy was upset so I popped open a 7 Up and snuggled under my cozy blanket on the couch with book in hand. I rarely drink soda, and if I do, 7 Up is the go-to choice. The effervescent bubbles quickly send tummy problems upward with unladylike belches that rattle the walls.

I took a sip and held it in my mouth for a second before swallowing. Suddenly I heard the toilet flushing. Who else was here? Was one of the cats practicing a new skill? I swallowed and cocked an ear, only to hear nothing. Weird, but maybe I was imagining something in my half-conscious state. I took a second swig and heard the toilet again. Hmmm… 

After a couple more mouthfuls, I came to the conclusion that when 7 Up is gently swirled in the mouth, it sounds like toilet water

gurgling into the mysterious dark depths of the underworld. I probably won’t pass this advertising revelation on to the 7 Up parent company, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Inc., but I was soon tummy-happy and headed back to bed.

Many sound loving Americans are quite patriotic. Every kid knows how to make annoying squeaking sounds on school hallway floors with their sneakers. One enterprising and talented young man I once taught combined this creative talent with his obvious love of country. He rushed into my classroom one day.

“Ms. M- you gotta come here, quick,” he burst out.

Thinking there was an emergency; I grabbed my keys and class list and headed after him. 

He stood in the hall, foot poised, “Listen!” he commanded.

In a series of stutter steps, toe swirls, twists, heel wiggles, full circle turns, and stomps, the young man rendered a squealing, squeaking and hauntingly accurate performance of “The Star Spangled Banner.” 

Amidst the gathering crowd he finished and bowed to applause. He spent several hours afterward cleaning scuff marks off the linoleum.

In perhaps one of the more unusual public displays of patriotism, I recall a scene from a short entry at an underground film festival. Today this would have generated a million hits on Youtube, but back in the ancient times of audio-visual capture, primitive displays of performance art had different means of gaining an audience.

In the clip, the cinematographer was strolling down a beach amid buxom beauties and muscled jocks asking them if they had any particular talent he could record. After endless moons, flashes and wiggle/jiggle scenes, he centered on one average young man who said he had a talent the producer probably had never seen before. 

Up to the challenge, producer gave him the go ahead.

The kid dropped his bathing suit, lay on his back with knees tight to chest, and aimed his naked posterior at the camera.

 He then performed the flatulent version of “The Star Spangled Banner”, rendered with realistic close ups by the creative camera operator. Corporate material? I bet he owns a multi squillion dollar business today.

Why are American students so dumb?

This post is from an article I wrote for Examiner.com. I cover education and other toics, listed below. Please share it with friends, Facebook, etc. Thanks.

American students do not place in the top 10  compared to the rest of the world. American kids rank about 23^rd in math, 14^th in reading, and 17^th in science, according to 2010 statistics. Why are American kids such lousy students? A New York Times Editorial (and this writer) suggest the reasons below.

The top performing students now come primarily from Asia, Scandinavia, and Europe. In general, these countries took a cold, hard look at education after the devastation of World War II. Their infrastructure, industry, earning potential, and land had been largely destroyed by the war, and a few wise individuals foresaw the path needed for a future century. 

While the American government helped returning GI’s buy houses, get some education, get jobs, and support families in the short run, they failed to ensure that, in the long run, the baby boomers’ children and grandchildren would be educated to compete in a future world. US education focused on sorting and selecting sheep and goats through the SAT process, an outmoded dinosaur still used in today’s nontraditional higher education world.  

Education “experts” pushed inquiring minds into preselected career pathways by gender (guys had the brains for engineering, corporate control, and “good old boy” industry that would allow politics and wealth to play nice together), while girls were only smart enough to become teachers, nurses and librarians, and of course, stay home and have babies. Now, over 70 years and two generations later, American education is waking up to the fact that females have brains and pushing STEM education.

No lessons were apparently learned from thousands of years ofhistory, when men were away at war applying their own sorting and selecting process, and women were back home running successful for-profit corporations composed of fiefdoms, plantations, cities, kingdoms, and countries, while also raising families. 

What are other countries doing?

Teacher training

Forward thinking counyeies took steps to ensure their citizens’ future security in the modern world with cutting edge knowledge and skills.  The US had no direct continental land or industry destruction through WW II bombings (Pearl Harbor the exception), and perhaps false pride or lack of imagination took the place of nationalism, stubborn resistance, and underdog scrappiness other countries employed to rebuild better than before. 

Eliminating the favoritism of wealth bias is one big step Finland takes. Finns first began to consider creating comprehensive schools that would provide a quality, high-level education for poor and wealthy alike. These schools stand out in several ways, providing daily hot meals; health and dental services; psychological counseling; and an array of services for families and children in need. None of the services are means tested. Moreover, all high school students must take one of the most rigorous required curriculums in the world, including physics, chemistry, biology, philosophy, music and at least two foreign languages.

But the most important effort has been in the training of teachers. In 1979 the country decided to move preparation out of teachers’ colleges and into the universities, where it became more rigorous. By professionalizing the teacher corps and raising its value in society, the Finns have made teaching the country’s most popular occupation for the young. These programs recruit from the top quarter of the graduating high school class, demonstrating that such training has a prestige lacking in the United States.

In the US, low entry standards for teacher training programs ensure dumbing down of education by placing teachers in classrooms who have been held to standards so low, one could step over the bar, not reach for it. I have scored teacher candidate essays for many years and can attest to lack of skills in GUM (grammar, usage, and mechanics) that should have been drilled into elementary students’ minds. Teachers can’t write, so they can’t teach kids to write. Admissionrequirements for teaching programs at the State University of New York were raised in September, but only a handful of other states have taken similar steps.

Funding equity

Canadian education differs strikingly from American programs in funding methods. American school districts rely far too heavily on property taxes, which means districts in wealthy areas bring in more money than those in poor ones. State tax money to make up the gap usually falls far short of the need in districts where poverty and other challenges are greatest.

Three of Canada’s largest and best-performing provinces — Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario — have each addressed the inequity issue by moving to province-level funding formulas. As a recent report by the Center for American Progress notes, these formulas allow the provinces to determine how much money each district will receive, based on each district’s size and needs. The systems even out the tax base and help ensure that resources are distributed equitably, not clustered in wealthy districts. It is working, while American school districts trap urban kids in “concentrated student poverty.”

Eliminating elitism

China’s educational system was largely destroyed during Mao Zedong’s “cultural revolution,” which devalued intellectual pursuits and demonized academics. Since his 1976 death the country has been rebuilding its education system at lightning speed. The flagship site is Shanghai, where its students were first in the world in math, science and literacy on last year’s international exams.

One of its strengths is that the city has mainly moved away from an elitist system in which greater resources and elite instructors were given to favored schools, and toward a more egalitarian, neighborhood attendance system in which students of diverse backgrounds and abilities are educated under the same roof. The city has focused on bringing the once-shunned children of migrant workers into the school system. In the words of the O.E.C.D, Shanghai has embraced the notion that migrant children are also “our children” — meaning that city’s future depends in part on them and that they, too, should be included in the educational process. Funding was also redistributed to equate need to product.

Do I believe American education is hopeless? No, but it needs some realistic fixing. APPR is  a joke, tenure should be eliminated, and teachers need equitable pay and benefits comparable to industry education and promotion standards. 

Politics has no place in the future of children. Nepotism in education placement is abominable. Jobs should be given on what one knows, not who one knows. The Common Core isn't common and its purveyors haven't set foot in classrooms to know what is realistic teaching. 

Parents need to go back to being parents, not excuses for caregivers. A child's overall upbringing is the parents' responsibility, not a school's. Teachers have enough to do. They shouldn't be counselors, sex educators, moral arbiters, and have to do their job with no ability to discipline brats whose parents have abdicated their roles as responsible adults.

Follow all the news about Green Living, American Made, Pets, Education, and Child Health by subscribing to my Examiner.com articles. Click on the "Subscribe" button, or here: http://www.examiner.com/user-bmader.