MEAN PEOPLE

When I was in California recently I saw an old faded bumper sticker that brought me back to the nineties - it said "Mean People Suck". Gee, what a well thought out and mature statement (not really), but it got me to thinking.

First of all, who uses the word "suck" in a derisive and slang fashion? The answer to that would be immature people without a wide vocabulary. Perhaps these people without a wide vocabulary have some limitations on their ability to think things through thoroughly too. I'm going to help these people think things through a little more thoroughly here. It is apparent that there is a large segment of our society that needs to get educated and to grow up, for the defense of the nation.

I was a MEAN mother many times. I made my kids do their homework, go to bed on time, practice their piano, and often didn't give them everything they wanted. I wanted my children to grow up prepared for the world. I wanted them to have the discipline and education to succeed. I was often a MEAN teacher too. I required that my students did their work, and if they didn't succeed they were in with me at recess doing the redo. You see, I cared about whether they understood their work and were ready for the next lesson. I cared about whether they succeeded and had the education they needed to be successful in the next grade and in life. I taught them to believe in themselves, but I also taught them that they had to have discipline and work hard to succeed. You often hear that the meanest teachers were the best. When people grow up and they look back at their teachers and their parents, they often see that what they thought was mean at the time was really the best thing for them.

Enabling people is not kindness. Rewarding addictions and lack of hard work and discipline is fatal for that person, for our American society, and for our country. If America is to be strong and successful once again we need a population that rewards success. We need schools that get back to the philosophy of  personal responsibility and respect for the teacher, the school, and adults in general. Students who are led to believe that they are on the same playing field as their elders are doomed for failure. Not only will they not learn from their elders because they think they know it all, they also will be in schools that have no discipline because the culture of the school is not demanding respect.

Today, in school, our liberal friends think they are being so "kind". They have programs to "fix" everything. They have the teachers running around doing home visits and social workers for all kinds of family interventions. They have the Bully program, the Buddy program and all the Behavior Initiative programs in every state. They have the Dare program and Sex Education programs and daycare and all the food programs. It finally got so bad "we have to have" the Common Core program because, actually, our schools were completely failing the students. Progressives destroy things and then they always have the "answer" to repair them- and that answer is always more government control. At least they are admitting their failures, though certainly Common Core WILL NOT FIX WHAT IS WRONG. In fact, Common Core is on track to DESTROY 200 years of education in this country.

Terrence Moore points out in his book The Story Killers that the most important thing kids learn in life is to be a good person. All the education in the world won't make you succeed if you are a failure as a person. If you don't know right from wrong and you don't have the integrity and discipline to lead an ordered life, you are doomed for failure. Our schools are not teaching discipline and respect, they are teaching victim hood. The Dare program is telling kids they have a choice, not that it is absolutely wrong to do drugs. The Bully program often has the perpetrator as the victim and the student trying to mind his own business as the villain. Our sex education programs sexualize our children young and teach them tolerance for promiscuity. The Buddy program pairs up our at risk students with teenagers, not always the best influence for a young child, and the parents don't get to do the screening.

In class students are taught their opinions have the same value as the teachers and they have the right to suck on water bottles and leave the class for the bathroom all the time. They are taught that curriculum time is really not all that important, after all, it is interrupted constantly by the school itself.

It is not money that is going to fix our schools. It is not programs that are going to fix our society. The answers are not that hard and they go back to the original Ten Commandments that God gave us. Teach discipline and respect for teachers and the school. Show leadership and demand performance. You can't "fix" every family. Get rid of the hyperbole- as I've said so many times- if parents weren't feeding their kids they would be dead before they made it to school age. When the liberals have a program that requires parent input- voila! parents show up. Parents DO care about their children.

There are enduring truths and America needs to get back to them. Give up the programs and the corruption and lobbyists will go away. Turn "kindness" into a demand for respect, leadership, integrity and hard work. MEAN PEOPLE DO NOT SUCK, THEY OFFER THE LEADERSHIP THAT WILL MAKE OUR SCHOOLS AND OUR SOCIETY SUCCESSFUL ONCE AGAIN.