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Category Archives: family values

Fixing the Self-Esteem Train Wreck

05 Jul

The self-esteem generation may be fixing the cultural train wreck caused by the average Baby Boomer parent.

But before I talk about how the Self-Esteem Generation—known as the Me, Me, Me people or the Millennials—are going to do this, I want to point out some of the damage the Baby Boomer parents have already heaped on their children.

First, what has led modern soldiers to become twice as susceptible to suicide?

When I was in the U.S. Marines in the 1960s, we lived in communal barracks—we did not have our own TV or our own rooms—and there are stark psychological differences between today’s 20-somethings and the mindsets of veterans of past generations, according to David Rudd, co-founder and scientific director of the National Center for Veteran Studies based at the University of Utah.

Today, “Entitlement has grown in younger generations and society has embraced that, giving in to the entitlement … The military has made decisions in accommodating these kinds of requests for more privacy and more seclusion by isolating (soldiers) even further.” Source: WND Health.com

Second, from The Huffington Post we learn that “They (the Millennials) appear choosy or picky … they want work to have meaning, and they love being heard by supervisors even though they’re young and have no experience. How does one find meaning pushing a broom or working at a fast-food joint?

Their work ethic appears low … but seventy-one percent want coworkers to be like a second family, and work should be fun. What happens if work isn’t fun and there is no other job available?

Fifty percent would rather have no job, than have a job they hate, but who pays the bills if you refuse to work: daddy, mommy, uncle, aunt, grandpa, grandma?

Seventy-six percent believe “my boss could learn a lot from me.”

Sixty-five percent say “I should be mentoring older coworkers when it comes to tech and getting things done.” If you have a low work ethic, how is that going to compute?

Sixty percent agree “if I can’t find a job I like, I will try and figure out a way to create my own job.” Imagine, everyone will be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, and once they are all rich and famous who is going to do the boring jobs that are not fun—robots?

A full 70 percent of Millennials say they need me time at work, almost twice as much as Baby Boomers.

But there may be hope on the horizon because Millennials as (married or unmarried) parents might be raising children that may not join the ranks of the Me, Me, Me Generation, because Resilience is the new buzzword these days (in young parenting circles). It permeates contemporary non-fiction within the genre of parenting books and beyond. Gone are the days of Baby Einstein and trophies just for showing up (a product of the self-esteem movement).

Now the emphasis is on learning through failure and character building. It’s on healing through the tough skin you develop after a fall. Learning through natural resistance and appropriately measured adversity are the new Mozart sonatas for developing children. But learning through trial and error can only happen if we dare to remove the bubblewrap. And hence Millennials will have to allow their children to experience risks and disappointment they never faced. Source: Millennials as Parents – Multigenerational Living May Build a Modern Village by Anne Boysen

And if Millennial parents succeed in fixing the self-esteem train wreck their parents caused, America will owe them a debt of gratitude they are sure to collect.

Discover The Results of Parenting Gone Wrong

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on July 5, 2013 in family values, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 4/4

26 May

By now, members of the Me (parents), or Me Me Me Generation (children of Baby Boomers) who might be reading this series of posts have become angry and may accuse me of being an idiot and even a racist for daring to say too many white parents have raised a generation of narcissists—about 30 million. Of course that leaves 50 million that were not raised by parents obsessed with the self-esteem of his or her child.

Here’s the rub, over a thirty year period, I saw it happening in my classroom. I don’t need the studies that Joel Stein refers to in his Time Magazine piece. I taught about 6,000 students in the public schools from 1975 to 2005. In the 1970s the self-esteem narcissist epidemic was just getting started and in the late 70s and early 80s, many of my students cooperated in the classroom, read the short stories, read the books and actually studied and worked.

Then we come to the 30 million, because if you are perfect, why read, why study, why work? If the teacher isn’t entertaining the students and students feel bored, why pay attention, why cooperate? And narcissists are very loud and sure of themselves—in fact, they are convinced that everyone else is wrong.

It may even be too late to fix what’s broken, because there is an industry that feeds this cult of self-esteem and it may be impossible to stop this terminal illness from killing our culture through narcissism.

But maybe it isn’t too late, because we don’t see this obsessive level of narcissism among most minority parents and children, and it has been predicted that minorities will be the majority by 2043. Maybe America’s minorities—along with the few white parents who aren’t inflating the self-esteem of their children—will save this country by not raising children to grow up and become sociopathic narcissists.

What has the price of inflated self-esteem been so far? To find out, I suggest you read Joel Stein’s piece in Time Magazine—the May 20, 2013 issue.

– a few facts for thought –

In 1950, the U.S. suicide rate for ages 15 – 24 was 4.5 per 100,000. These suicides were from members of the Greatest Generation born 1901 – 1945.

In 2005, the suicide rate for ages 15 – 24—all white members of the Millennial generation—was 10.7 per 100,000 (an increase of 238% compared to 1950), but for nonwhites of the same Millennial generation, that number was 7.4 and for Blacks 6.7 per 100,000.

However, for Baby Boomers, the U.S. suicide rate decreased in 2003 compared to 1950. In 1950, suicide for ages 45 -54 was 20.9 per 100,000 compared to 15.9 in 2003—the Baby Boom generation.

Note: suicide rates increase dramatically after age 45 but have improved significantly since 1950. In 1950, the suicide rate age 65 years and older was 30 per 100,000. In 2003, the suicide rate for the same age group dropped to 14.6 per 100,000. Source: Suicide.org

The Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers were not raised by self-esteem obsessed parents. Therefore, has the cult of self-esteem practiced mostly among white middle-class parents of the Baby Boom generation caused the increase in suicides to more than double for white Americans born to the Millennial generation or is that just a coincidence?

Return to The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 3 or start with Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 26, 2013 in family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 3/4

25 May

Just because 80 million were born into the Millennial generation, that doesn’t mean they were all raised by parents obsessed with self-esteem.

For example, the Millennials “are the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort of youth in the nation’s history. Among those ages 13 to 29: 18.5% are Hispanic; 14.2% are Black; 4.3% are Asian; 3.2% are mixed race or other; and 58.8%—a record low—are White.”  Source: The Society Pages.org

Then there are the immigrants. In 2010, there were 40 million in the US, and most immigrant parents raise children differently—than the average White American born parent—often practicing different forms of authoritarian parenting styles found in other countries. Source: Center for Immigration Studies

In addition, research has found that authoritarian parenting is more common among African Americans than among European Americans (Hill & Bush, 2001). … Furthermore, research shows that the authoritarian parenting style is widely accepted by both middle-class African American parents, and their children (Smetana, 2000). Source: Adolescent Health-Risk Behaviors: The Effect of Perceived Parenting Style and Race

Moreover, “efforts to boost the self-esteem of pupils have not been shown to improve academic performance and may sometimes by counterproductive.” The findings of this study did not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes. Source: Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?

“Teens whose parents exercise more control over their teens’ activities are less likely to engage in delinquent behaviors (Jacobson & Crockett, 2000; Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984), smoke, use alcohol or other drugs (Brown, Mounts, Lamborn, & Steinberg, 1993; Shakib et al., 2003), and engage in sexually risky behavior (Hogan & Kitagawa, 1985;Jacobson & Crockett, 2000; Newcomer & Udry, 1987).

“Latino youth are no exception to these patterns. … Drawing on previous work, we hypothesize that Mexican-origin youth with parents who exercise firm control (authoritative and authoritarian) will have fewer behavior problems and that teens with supportive parents (authoritative and permissive) will have better emotional well-being. …

“There is much concern that as the duration of exposure to U.S. society and level of acculturation rise, children exhibit increasingly poor outcomes, similar to those of children from the majority (white) culture. …

“Behavioral outcomes and depression were worse for third generation teens from permissive families than for first-and second-generation teens from similar families. Generational patterns in behavioral outcomes were similar for teens of disengaged parents, whereas third generation teens of authoritarian parents had fewer behavioral problems than either first-or second-generation teens of similar parents.” Source: Parenting Styles Across Immigrant Generations

It is obvious from the cited studies in this post that most of the parents that belong to the cult of self-esteem are white.

Continued on May 26 in The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 4 or return to Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 25, 2013 in family values, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 2/4

24 May

In 2002, The No Child Left Behind Act was voted into law by Congress and signed by President G. W. Bush. I think this law was a result of pressure from Baby Boomer parents that belonged to the cult of self-esteem, because this law only holds the schools and teachers accountable for education—not the students. If you read the provisions of this act, you will discover that students have no responsibility to learn—none. The responsibility for students to learn is all on the backs of the teachers and the schools.

Merriam-Webster says confidence means “faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way,” and I think the best way to build confidence is to learn how to be successful through failure and hard work.

The same dictionary says self-esteem means the same as self-conceit. Synonyms for self-esteem are ego, pridefulness, self-regard, self-respect, and the antonyms—the opposite meaning—are humbleness, humility and modesty.

The Attraction Forums.com says, “To better understand confidence let’s first clear up some really common misconceptions between confidence and self-esteem. The two are related but are not the same. Confidence is how effective a person feels in a given situation or dealing with a specific task. Self-esteem is how much a person likes themselves and how worthy they feel of receiving good things in life. A person can feel good about themselves (high self-esteem) while not feeling positive about their skill-set in a certain area (confidence).”

And students and adults with a high sense of inflated self-esteem hate to fail.

Today, there are about 80 million Millennials (ages 13 – 32)—also known as Generation Y, mostly the children of the Baby Boomers—in the U.S, but how many are at a high risk of being a member of the ME ME ME Generation that the Time Magazine piece talks about?

Continued on May 5, 2013 in The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 3 or return to Part 1

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 24, 2013 in family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 1/4

23 May

I read Joel Stein’s The ME ME ME Generation: Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents published in the May 20 issue of Time Magazine. My first reaction was to agree with what he wrote 100%.  Then I thought about it for several days and decided there was a major flaw in Stein’s piece.

When I finished reading the piece, this phrase was glued in my head: “In the U.S. Millennials are the children of the baby boomers, who are also known as the Me Generation, who then produced the Me Me Me Generation.”

There is some truth to Stein’s statement but it is also misleading. I taught in the public schools for thirty years starting with fifth grade in 1975-76; then graduated to 7th and 8th grade 1979-89, and in 1989 I transferred to the high school where I taught until August 2005 when I retired. During those years, I worked with at least 6,000 students and had contact with hundreds of parents.

There are five generations:

1.        The Greatest Generation (1901-1945) – my parents were born early in this generation and I was born near the end in 1945.

2.        Baby Boomers (1946 – 1964)

3.        Generation X (1965 – 1985)

4.        Generation Y (1978 – 1994) – The Millennials

5.        Generation Z (1995 – 2007) — I never taught this generation. Source: List of Generations Chart

When I first started teaching, I worked with students from Generation X until 1992 when the Millennials first walked into my classroom.

It didn’t take long to witness a difference in attitude and behavior among the Millennials compared to Generation X, but not all of the Millennials were members of the so-called ME ME ME Generation. There were always great students who were not narcissists or sociopaths, but through the years there were fewer of them and more students with parents that were very concerned about their child’s self-esteem—there was a lot of pressure to give out higher grades and make the work easier.

For example, in 1979 when I first started teaching 7th and 8th graders at Giano Intermediate, at least half of my students earned A’s and B’s. Few failed.

After I reached the high school, the failure rate climbed to 30% and about 20% earned A’s and B’s. By the time I left teaching in 2005, the failure rate among the Millennials had climbed to as high as 50% in some classes and about 5% of the students earned A’s and B’s—that was in my English classes.

In one class—journalism—that I taught for seven years starting in the early 1990s, the students produced the high-school newspaper, and ninety-nine percent of those students earned A’s or B’s, and it was rare that a student in that class earned anything less. In that class, there were few narcissists with self-esteem obsessed parents.

The parent cult of self-esteem became a serious movement in the 1960s and spread over the years like a virus until it reached toxic numbers—a malignant cancer, but not every Baby Boomer parent was a member of this cult so we have to be careful about stereotyping all Millennials as narcissists.

Continued on May 24, 2013 in The Price of Inflating Self-esteem: Part 2

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 23, 2013 in family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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What parenting method works best?

11 May
  1. The self-esteem boosting, follow your dreams and be happy all the time parenting method that many white parents in America practice.
  2. The practice known as tiger parenting as seen in Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and/or Anchee Min’s The Cooked Seed—both memoirs.

Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor of Yahoo! Shine reported on May 9 about “a recently released decade-long study of 444 Chinese-American families shows that the effect tiger parents have on their kids is almost exactly the opposite,” and that a controlling Chinese-style parent does not drive his or her child to success.

The conclusion was that “Tiger parenting doesn’t produce superior outcomes in kids.”

I disagree, and here’s why:

Studying 444 Chinese-American families does not provide enough information.

Instead, the study should expand in its scope and include all Asian Americans in addition to Pacific Islanders, because these cultures encourage stricter parenting methods and place a higher value on education compared to the wishy-washy style of the average White American parent who talks to his/her child less than five minutes a day and allows the child to divide his/her daily time watching about 10 hours of TV, listing to music, hanging out with friends, playing video games, spending time on sites such as Facebook, sending text messages, etc.

The results:

  • Suicide Rates by Race/Ethnicity, 1990-2010 (all ages):

In twenty years, the suicide rates of Asian/Pacific Islanders never cracked 7% and even improved from 6.63% in 1990 to 6.24% by 2010.

For American Whites, the suicide rate was 13.3% in 1990 and climbed to 14.13% by 2010—more than twice the suicide rate of Asian/Pacific Islanders.

Source: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

  • Unemployment rate by race for March 2013 (all ages):

The White American unemployment was 6.9%.

The Asian-American was 5% (the lowest employment rate among all racial groups)

Source: United States Department of Labor

  • Divorce rate by race:

Whites had the highest divorce rate in America at 27%.  African American’s were a distant second at 22% and Hispanics at 20%.

The Asian-American divorce rate was 8%—less than a third of the White divorce rate.

Source: Assisted Divorce.com

  • Drug use by race (all ages):

“Of the major racial/ethnic groups, the rate of drug use is highest among the American Indian/Native American population (10.6%) and those reporting mixed race (11.2%), followed by African Americans (7.7%), Hispanics (6.8%), and whites at (6.6%).

The lowest rates were found among the Asian population at 3.2%—less than half that of whites.

Source: pbs.org

  • Money Income of Households—Percent Distribution by Income Level, Race, in Constant (2009) Dollars: 1990 to 2009:

1990 White = $49,686 (Medium income in dollars)
2009 white = $51,861

1990 Asian = $61,170
2009 Asian = $65,469

Source: US Census, Table 690

  • STD Health Equity – Rates by Race or Ethnicity:

In 2011, Whites had 1.7 times the reported gonorrhea rates of Asian/Pacific Islanders

In 2011, Whites had 1.4 times the reported chlamydia rates of Asians/Pacific Islanders

In 2011, whites had 1.4 times the reported syphilis rates of Asian/Pacific Islanders

Source:  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  • Life Expectancy by Race:

The average life expectancy of an Asian-America in the United States is 84.56 years, but for White Americans it is only 78.74 years.

Source: World Life Expectancy.com

  • Birth Rates (Live Births) per 1,000 Females Aged 15–19 Years, by Race … 2000–2011:

White = 22 per 1,000

Asian/Pacific Islander = 10 per 1,000—less than half that of white females aged 15-19.

Source: cdc.gov

  • Education:

50 percent of Asian Americans in comparison to 31 percent of the total U.S. population had earned at least a bachelor’s degree, and about 48 percent of Asian Americans were employed in management, professional and related occupations, compared with 40 percent of the white population

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

In Conclusion: “Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are more satisfied than the general public with their lives, finances and the direction of the country, and they place more value than other Americans on marriage, parenthood, hard work and career success, according to a comprehensive nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center.”

In addition, the Pew Research Center says, “Their living arrangements align with these values. They are more likely than all American adults to be married (59% vs. 51%); their newborns are less likely than all U.S. newborns to have an unmarried mother (16% vs. 41%); and their children are more likely than all U.S. children to be raised in a household with two married parents (80% vs. 63%).”

The average White parent is obsessed with his/her child’s self-esteem and happiness, while the average Asian-American parent practices a parenting philosophy known as tiger parenting that most whites detest.

Considering the information in this post, what parenting method has the best long-term results for a longer, healthier better quality of life? Please leave a comment with your answer.

Discover The Truth about American Education

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition].

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on May 11, 2013 in family values, Lloyd Lofthouse, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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The perfect parent; the perfect teacher = no such thing

24 Apr

PHD in Parenting.com says, “The perfect parent is a myth. That person does not exist. We all make choices as parents, some free choices and some forced choices. Sometimes we are able to do what is best for our children and sometimes we are not.”

If parents cannot be perfect all of the time or even some of the time, then why does the United States expect perfection from its public school teachers?

Probably because films like the Blackboard Jungle, Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, The Miracle Worker, and The Great Debaters—for example—may have created an unrealistic expectation that every teacher should be perfect.

There are about 3.2 million public school teachers in the US. Many of them are parents too. They work in almost 100,000 public schools—more than 67 thousand elementary schools; more than 24 thousand secondary schools, and about 6 thousand combined schools in addition to 1,296 other types of public schools.

Those 3.2 million teachers work with more than 55 million students in13,809 different school districts spread out among 50 states and territories.

Expecting 3.2 million public school teachers to be perfect while working with 55 million imperfect children coming from imperfect homes and imperfect parents is an imperfect expectation.

Does every soldier that goes to war earn a Medal of Honor?

Have you ever worked in a large company where every employee was perfect every day, every moment—even the bosses?

Yet many Americans seem to expect teachers to be extraordinary.

In an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, Ellie Herman said, “Yes, we need to get rid of bad teachers.  But we can’t demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.”

I recommend you click on the above link and read what Ellie had to say about the students she taught. I taught for thirty years and could have said about the same thing.

Discover The Self-Esteem Train Wreck

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition].

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on April 24, 2013 in American Public Schools, family values, Parenting, Public School, Teaching

 

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The Uphill Battle for Many of America’s Teachers

19 Apr

You cannot educate a child who is not healthy and you cannot keep a child healthy who is not educated,” says Dr. Jocelyn Elders, the former U.S. Surgeon General. Source: Nemours.org

To have a better understanding of what Dr. Elders is talking about and what this means for America’s teachers, keep reading.

Nearly 16 million children in the United States—22% of all children—live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level ($23,021 a year for a family of four). Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 45% of children live in low-income families. … And poverty can impede children’s ability to learn and contribute to social, emotional, and behavioral problems. Source: The National Center for Children in Poverty

Poverty isn’t the only challenge many of America’s teachers face daily—lifestyle choices, poor parenting and even paint fumes get in the way of education.

Yes, you heard right—paint fumes!

The March 21, 2013, issue of The New York Review of Books says lead house paint is “still on the walls of some 30 million American homes today,” and “studies have found that even infinitesimally low levels—down to one or two micrograms per deciliter—can reduce a child’s IQ and impair her self-control and ability to organize thoughts.”

“Black children, the survey found, were six times more likely to have elevated lead than white.” Source: Lead Poisoning: The Ignored Scandal by Helen Epstein

If paint fumes weren’t enough of a challenge, Live Strong.com says, “It is almost certain that if you eat a diet comprised of primarily fast food, you won’t be functioning at your optimum capacity—physically or mentally. Fast food consumption can cause an array of mental effects, ranging from depression to hyperactivity. It’s not just one ingredient at fault, either. Fast food meals contain a toxic mixture of unhealthy fats, preservatives, coloring and refined carbohydrates that can create imbalances in your brain.”

In addition, soda consumption (liquid sugar) is linked to violence in teens. Wellness Resources.com reported, “These chemicals also cause brain inflammation. High levels of sweeteners cause fluctuating blood sugar levels and that will disrupt brain function as well. Thus, there are several clear mechanisms by which soda drinks can cause irritated and impaired brain function, leading to increased risk for the use of violence as a problem solving strategy.”

In fact, Forbes.com says, “Overeating, poor memory formation, learning disorders, depression—all have been linked in recent research to the over-consumption of sugar.” … “Research indicates that a diet high in added sugar reduces the production of a brain chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Without BDNF, our brains can’t form new memories and we can’t learn (or remember) much of anything.”

For a better understanding of the challenge America’s teachers face, I recommend watching Winter’s Bone and/or reading J. K Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. This film and novel offer snapshots into the world of poverty for those who have never been there.

In the film Winter’s Bone (2010), Jennifer Lawrence plays 17 year-old Ree Dolly who keeps her family together in a dirt-poor rural area of the Ozark Mountains. And in J. K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy (2012), we meet Krystal Weedon who was raised in poverty by a heroin-addicted mother and often acts as sole caregiver to younger brother Robbie.

For thirty years I had an up-close and personal open-door to this world, because I taught students that were often like Ree Dolly or Krystal Weedon in schools surrounded by graffiti scarred barrios, street gangs and drive by shootings.

Even lack of adequate sleep causes learning problems. Children need about 10-12 hours a sleep while teens need at least nine hours per night. But many American children and teens only sleep five-six hours a night.

A recent study reveals that inadequate sleep can result in lower math and literacy scores. Research also shows that getting a good night’s sleep may be the single most powerful predictor of a child’s academic performance in school. Source: ABC News

What do you think happens in a classroom when a child or teen lives in poverty, has a poor diet, drinks too many sodas and does not get enough sleep? Do we blame teachers for that too?

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition].

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on April 19, 2013 in family values, Parenting, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Image

Mapping Dropouts Around the World

11 Apr

Mapping-Dropouts-Around-the-World-800

This info-graphic is Courtesy of Online Colleges.net

Discover more about about this topic in Not Broken

 
2 Comments

Posted by on April 11, 2013 in Education, family values, literacy, Parenting

 

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A literacy-based Racist Conservative Religious/Political Agenda

18 Feb

My parents were both high school dropouts, but I grew up seeing them read books almost every day and that was probably the most important reason I did not grow up illiterate or functionally illiterate.

Millions of children in America are not that fortunate and never see his or her parents read anything. This image of the most important role model in a child’s life ends up being the foundation that leads to illiteracy.

On February 14, 2013, Valentine’s Day, President Obama said, “Let’s make it a national priority to give every child access to a high-quality early education.”

This message was also included in his second State of the Union address.

But conservatives have made it clear that they are against public supported, high-quality early education. Instead, conservatives want to give taxpayer money to private or church-based preschools and leave it up to parents to decide to send his or her children. Source: Mike the Mad Biologist

Mike the Mad Biologist quoted the Heritage Foundation, a far-right conservative think tank that is also part of the Koch Foundation Associate Program. To learn more about the political/religious agenda of the billionaire Koch brothers, click Discovering the four Koch brothers.

Then President Obama also said, “Fewer than 3 in 10 four-year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program.”

Because of those facts, the United States must take it one step further and make it mandatory for children that are not learning literacy skills at home before age four to start a high-quality early education literacy program in the public schools.

To do that, all children must be tested starting at age three and six months by having them read out loud to a properly credentialed educator-teacher to demonstrate that the child is learning to read simple, basic one-syllable words in simple sentence in addition to demonstrating understanding. Then every twelve months before starting kindergarten, those children must be tested again to see that he or she is improving. It would be easy. Every public school in America would receive the mandate and funding to support this simple test.

Children that fail the test would be enrolled in the type of program President Obama is talking about.

Obama said that these young children must be in a safe learning environment with high quality teachers that are held accountable.  Private and religious schools are not held as accountable the same as the public schools. Private and religious schools have no oversight—no one watching what is going on in that classroom.

In addition, if illiterate parents wanted to make sure his or her children grew up literate and a lover of reading, there are already many nonprofit organizations offering free programs to combat illiteracy. For example: Reach Out And Read; Literacy for Incarcerated Teens (LIT); First Book; Reading Tree; United Through Reading; Literacy Inc.; Building with Books; Books for the Barrios; Dollar General Literacy Foundation, and in the United States, community, public libraries offer free literacy programs (source: Public library efforts to promote literacy).

There are an estimated 121,169 libraries of all kinds in the United States today.

These facts say if we leave it up to most illiterate parents of illiterate children to enroll those children in a voluntary literacy program before age four, it will not happen—not in the United States.

In Finland, the parents do this at home.  In Finland, most parents start teaching their own children how to read by age three. That does not happen to millions of young children in the United States.

The reason I think the conservative religious/political agenda regarding a high-quality early (public) education program in America is racist is because of the following numbers.

In 2003, about seven percent of white adults were reading below basic (this means they were functionally illiterate or illiterate), compared to 24% of Blacks, 44% of Hispanics, and 14% of Asian/Pacific Islanders.  Source: National Center for Education Statistics

If we are going to break the cycle of the high ratio of race-based illiteracy in America, we must make it mandatory for children that are not learning literacy skills at home to be in a supervised public education, literacy programs before age four so the public in the United States knows that every child is safe from a possibly biased, conservative political and/or religious agenda.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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Posted by on February 18, 2013 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, Parenting, politics, Public School, Reading

 

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