Good writing skills may not lead to our students becoming the wealthiest, but it will lead to the likelihood of them having freer minds.   A freer mind is a mind that judges and makes thought out decisions for each situation that arises.  A freer mind also can detect bad rhetoric and avoid being persuaded by the self-interested and self-promoting entertainers of today, who attempt to influence their audience with logic-devoid fear inducing propaganda.

            I look at what is going on with the healthcare issue and see the self appointed authoritative voices Astroturf supposed grass-roots movements and convince the very people who need affordable health care, into thinking that it is bad for them by masterfully hammering away with hot button words.   These self-only-interested entertainers mis-use and reinforce the misunderstanding of any words and any ideas that they choose. 

            I am of the opinion that good writing skills are some of the most powerful tools in enabling and building critical thinking in our children.  Today, many years after my composition training, I see how every essay that I’ve personally written has shaped my ideas and helped me to sharpen my thinking skills. 

            Writing is one of the hardest things for many to do, since it requires the writer to sharply hone in on what he or she is thinking in order that his or her thoughts are put on paper clearly for the reader, and that is an uncomfortable and unnatural thing for most to do.  Fuzzy thinking cannot exist simultaneously with clarity of expression of thoughts and ideas.

            The process of learning how to gain good writing skills offers students an opportunity to become even smarter.  Janet Emig the author of an essay ”Writing As a Mode Of Learning” claims that, “If the most efficacious learning occurs when learning is reinforced, then writing through its inherent reinforcing cycle involving hand, eye, and brain marks a uniquely powerful multirepresentational mode for learning.”  This reminds me of what a master educator had once told me.  She explained that a person who learns something seven different ways has almost no chance of forgetting that which they learned.  Who is to say how many more modes of learning is actually taking place while they are seeing, doing and reinforcing.  I think the scientists of Brain Plasticity would agree with Janet Emig’s theory.

             Going back to my argument that our children need to develop their critical minds…  The alternative will avail our children to a life that is not “fair and balanced.”  Without critical thinking citizens, we cannot hope to have a truly healthy society.  Today the fear mongers are powerful and are very good at manipulating the innocent minds of good-hearted folks.  We must be sure to guide our children/students to become a generation that is optimally educated, powerful critical thinkers who will not be pushed around by the loud and obnoxious soul-less voices.

A few years back, a gynecologist told me that I am OCD and that I should go see someone.  

            Recently, I watched a man receiving a vaccination.  It was northing out of the ordinary as far as these things go… so why did it bother me?  Scenes such as these have always bothered me and put doubts in my mind as to the training that goes into protecting the public from the transmission of diseases by the medical community.

            The nurse practitioner was wearing white gloves as “normal”.   

            She rolled up his sleeves, wiped a small area on the upper side of his arm with a piece of cotton that she had just dabbed with alcohol.  She gave the man the shot and wiped his blood off with her gloved finger, and then she placed a band-aid on the area.  After he left her station, she proceeded to the next person.  She followed the same exact steps that she had performed with the previous man exactly, one after another.

            What about the blood!  I thought.

            The blood that her gloved finger had wiped just went over the needle hole spot of the current patient.   Is this safe?

            The glove was never changed…

            I realize I am ignorant about the consequence of that action.  Perhaps the alcohol dabbed before giving the shot takes care of any disease that the previous person may have.  Can they be sure?  Perhaps I am just being OCD as that gynecologist once informed me.

            Let me tell you about that and you can decide for yourself. 

            The gynecologist walked in to the office where I was sitting waiting uncomfortably.  She opened the drawer, pulled out a fresh set of gloves and put them on her hands.  She then looked over at where I was sitting, shaking her head disappointedly, ripped some paper that was dangling below me, saying something under her breath like “too long” or something to that extent, I wasn’t clear.  I just got the feeling that she was disappointed with the person who set up the room before I came in.  She opened the trash can, which was a bit over filled, with those freshly gloved hands, squished the papers into the trash can, closed the lid and pulled the sliding table full of tools and came forward to work on me. 

            A little concerned about seeing where her gloves had just been (outside the trashcan, inside the trashcan, having touched the papers that the people before me had sat on, etc.  See I am OCD), I asked her if she wouldn’t mind changing those gloves before working on me.  After all this was a gynecological appointment.  She was a little put off, but changed her gloves, picked up the old gloves with her new gloved hands and then opened the trash can again, and pushed the gloves down again (the trash can was still full), closed the lid and came toward me. 

            I was aghast and did not want to be examined with those gloves… I politely asked if I could leave (blaming myself for being a clean freak) to which the doctor yelled, “you have OCD and should get some help!”  I walked out of that office feeling ashamed for noticing too many details, offending the good doctor and went to my car where my husband was waiting and told him what just took place, fully ready to hear him get irritated with me for being such a clean freak… (I admit it, I am)… but to my surprise he thought that the doctor was completely inappropriate and was glad that I left the office without getting examined by her.   That doctor’s office billed me over two hundred dollars for that visit, which I argued against and after a few years of going back and forth with them finally have it cleared.

            I have often noticed this kind of cross contaminating in dentist offices as well… if I go into what I notice you will certainly think that I am OCD.  But still being a self-proclaiming clean freak, I notice.  Of course I also notice the sandwich makers in delis using the same gloves to make sandwiches, take cash, ring things up (and sometimes take the trash out, sweep the floor), and then go back to making the sandwiches.  Even if they take the gloves off, they grab the gloves with dirty hands, the outside of which will touch our sandwiches.  The solution would be washing their hands before putting on the gloves or just washing their hands after handling the cash and cash registers.

            Perhaps I am OCD, or perhaps, the medical community is not thinking in detail of what these actions mean?  Step by step of how diseases can be spread.  If they were careful enough to not cross contaminate or take more mindful care of each patient, my friend would not have gotten a sponge left in him after a hip replacement surgery which then lead to his heart attack, or my sister-in-law would not have gotten staff infection during her birth, which prevented her from being able to nurse her son.

            Perhaps they need someone with OCD to look over their procedures.

            I am sure that medical community is not intentionally being careless about some of these things.  But I just wonder… could they implement a more thought out training so the patients are protected the way, I am sure they want them to be?  Can we trust that the current practice is safe enough for our kids?

            In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, an author of,  A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, argued that girls should be educated to strengthen their body, heart and mind.  During her time females were being taught to focus on learning how to be physically attractive to men so that they may be cared for by the men.

Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart.  Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent.  Infact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

-Mary Wollstonecraft

            Over two hundred years later, Mattel appears to completely lack a good sense and a sense of responsibility toward how some of their best customers are being powerfully mis-educated by them.  You can read about it at:

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/10/13/barbies-fat-ankles-latest-flap-racial-body-image-controversies

 

I am interested in your thoughts.  Please leave me a comment.

           Yes, it was dangerous for six year old Zachary Christie to take a camping knife to school, but as one MSNBC correspondant said, the people in charge could have used this incident as an opportunity for an open conversation about this very topic.  Instead, the people in charge decided to sacrifice the little boy to make their point.

            If they were so worried, they could have talked with Zachary’s parents.  But to put a little six year old in a reform school with kids who can actually teach him to be something that he would have never become on his own is beyond logic.  It is STUPID!!

            Where the hell is the heart?  Wait… for that matter, where the hell is the head?  What is wrong with these people?  They cannot really be thinking that this experience is healthy for the six year old.  What kind of a lesson are they teaching their students with this?  Have they thought about the future of this child?  What would two months in a reform school do to this six year old?

            This is not a behavior of a civilized culture.  The people in charge of this school lack wisdom, intellgence and heart.  Trusting her own instincts as Thomas Eddison’s mother hand done once, Zachary’s mother is homeschooling her son for now.

            Thomas Eddison’s mother ran into a very foolish teacher who was determined to stick to her obviously limited level of curiosity about human nature and her inability to see children with a clear understanding.  This teacher tried to convince her that there was something very wrong with young Thomas.  His mother pulled Thomas Edison out of the clutches of a foolish and ignorant teacher/school and homeschooled him … the rest is history.

 If you’d like to help Zachary please visit:  http://helpzachary.com/

 

Zachary Christie made this film when he was five years old.

Perhaps we can apply this knowledge and aid our students to be their best.

 

 

What do you think about this?    

Will you please leave a comment?

While enjoying a cup of coffee in one of my favorite cafés, I witnessed a family dynamic that ended up saddening me.

            A brother and a sister walked up to a table right across from me.  The girl appeared to be about nine or ten and the boy looked a few years older.  The smiles and the warmth in their interactions were very heartwarming.  I was mostly intriged by the very intentional and thoughtful behavior of the brother.  He handed his sister a cup of water and placed his unusually large back pack(about 2/3^rd of his height) behind the chair then carfully cliped it so that it would not fall off.  I was impressed with his seemingly very mindful and mature behavior as he walked away and came back with four more cups of water and carfully placed them on the table for four more people who are going to arrive next. 

            When his mother walked in with a woman who looked to be a family friend, I was excited to see their intreactions with one another.  The friend set down next to the boy who was sitting on a chair where he had cliped his back pack on.

             The first thing his mother told him to do was to move to another seat.  She must have wanted to sit next to her friend.  She pointed to the chair across from her friend.  He protested by saying that his drink was already in front of the seat where he was sitting and that he had already drank some out of it.  She told him that she is ok with his germs and again told him to move.  She impatiently pointed with her index finger.    He moved.

            I hated seeing the sadness come over his previous smile filled face.  I wished I would have seen some tenderness in his mother’s expression.  I wished that she would have prevented the sadness in his heart by expressing what she wanted in a more kind and affectionate manner.  Instead she just gave him an order that he had to comply with.  I continued to watch.  What if she had thanked or given him some positive feed back for being so nice to get everyone water (even if she had told him to do it ahead of time) and made him feel appreciated, which she did not do.

            When he got himself to forget the event and began studying the display case and asked if he can go and buy something to eat, she harshly answered, “I want the change back!”  It wasn’t so much that she asked for her change but it was the tone of her voice which was filled with distrust, that would have easily told him that he was not trust worthy with money.  He may steal from her.

            When I was a child I was a trouble maker.  I got into way too many fights in school.  If someone made me angry, I hit them.  It wasn’t until when I became an adult that I realized why I was hitting in school.  I also realized that I was actually kind of a good kid at home and even at school.  I fought physically because I was regularly receiving beatings at home from both my mother and father.  I lived in constant fear. 

            I never received an acknowledgment that I used to get up early mornings to make apple juice for my mother for her health with antiquated tools.  It was very tidious and physically tiring.  I also did almost all the housework(cooking, dishes, most of the shopping, laundry by hand and the cleaning of the house).  Burns on my hands were a reguar part of my childhood.

            My positive attributes not being acknowledged as a child lead to my inability to recognize my own self worth.  No matter how hard I worked, I found it challengeing to see if I’ve done well enough.

            I had been refusing to ask my son to do any thing around the house (due to my own childhood) when he was little.  When he was nine years old, he volunteered to help me put the dishes away. I was immensely thankful for his doing it for me and I let him know not only how thankful I was but how much difference he was making in my life.  He has never said no to helping me since that day.

            Children, like the rest of us enjoy causing happiness for others.  When those good things that they do go unnoticed, they usually stop doing them.  They may also grow up with a lack of self esteem or self appreciation.  And a lack of self appreciation causes many things like attracting less than healthy mates, less than good career choices and, less than what they want in life in most everything. 

            As I was watching the dynamic between that mother and son, I wanted so much to grab that mother and say, “hey look at your son, do you see how good he is, what a sweet person he is?  Notice it and tell him, so that he does not lose that goodness.  Give him praise, give him love and give him a chance to show you that he is honest.  Don’t cause him to become dishonest by treating him like he’s untrustworthy.  Humanbeings are not born theives or liers.  Those who become theives are taught to be that.”