RSS

Category Archives: student behavior

What makes Education Toxic?

13 Jan

A comment left for a post—NC Teacher: “I quit”—on Diane Ravitche’s blog made a good point, and I posted a reply:

I think you have made a great point or at least inadvertently focused a spotlight on an important issue and why it is there.  Turnover in a school or school district may be a red flag—a strong warning sign— that the school board/administration/students are not the easiest to work with or work for [another word would be dysfunctional ].

This could be extended to an entire state since each state has its own department of education that decides policy in that state as directed by the elected politicians from the governor of a state on down. Due to a need to gain votes, religious and/or political agendas tend to rule in such organizations and the winds may shift at any time.

For example, I friend sent me this about the current situation in the high school in Southern California where he now teaches.

I was a public school teacher from 1975 – 2005 and we worked together before dysfunctional administration at our high school and in our school district drove him to quit and find a job in another district that at the time was a better place to work.

But beware of the grass is greener over there syndrome because a drought will kill the green grass leaving behind sweltering heat and dust.

During my thirty years in the classroom, I worked under nine-different principals. Some were great, some good and some horrible.

The horrible ones drove teachers, counselors and VPs out of the schools where they ruled Nazi style and turnover could reach as high as fifty percent in a few years.

Good principals, who are usually a sign of good administration and a sensible school board, tend to hold on to staff.

I mean, how many people quit jobs—any job—with a boss that knows what he or she is doing; a boss that supports his workers in the best possible ways to make the work environment a place where we want to spend twenty to forty years of our lives?

My friend said of this school year (2012 – 2013):

“112 scheduling changes in the first three weeks (the classes he teaches)

“75% of the administrative team is new; a lot of chaos

“50% of the counselors are new; a lot of chaos

“We lost our department chairs, so there is no communication between the teachers and administration

[This high school, he says] “once had a top-notch academic program; however, we are falling apart at the seams; our test scores have flat-lined and they will continue to flat-line because there are just too many new faces at our school; two of our Vice Principals have never been a VP before; they’re nice people, but we have to wade through their learning curve.”

For another example: at the high school where I taught for the last sixteen of the thirty years I was in the classroom as a teacher, we had one new teacher quit at lunch on his first day on the job with two more classes to teach after lunch. During the lunch break, he walked in the principal’s office, tossed his room keys on the desk and said, “If they won’t show some respect for me and attempt to learn, then I refuse to teach them.”

I know from experience, that district did not do a good job creating a positive, supportive educational environment for its teachers because I worked in that district for thirty years. Instead, it was more of a combative environment that did not offer the support teachers wanted or needed to teach.

It is a fact that teachers teach and students learn. However, that is not always the case. Instead, teachers in a toxic educational environment often struggle to teach while too many students make no effort to learn.

Elected School Boards and the administrators they hire should support an environment where teachers may teach and students will learn, and we can learn from two of the best public educations system in the world: Finland and Singapore.

In Finland, the teachers have a strong union and the teachers make the decisions in a supportive educational environment and it works. Parents start teaching children how to read at age three but the first year of school is at age seven.

In Singapore, merit rules. Students must compete academically to earn where they are tracked and the system is heavily tracked based on performance. There is no self-esteem driven educational environment; there is corporal punishment and students may be publicly beat with a bamboo cane if caught breaking strict-rules built to support a merit based education system.

Why can’t we in the United States learn from Finland and Singapore?

Discover What is the Matter with [American] Parents these Days?

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on January 13, 2013 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, government, literacy, Parenting, politics, Public School, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior, Teaching

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

“Half Nelson” teaches a truth about K-12 education in the US

09 Dec

What causes a dedicated and charismatic teacher to become addicted to crack cocaine—to become burned out and a victim of drugs and/or PTSD?

The answer is not broken schools, teacher unions, or incompetent teachers, but a dysfunctional culture and society demanding through laws and legislation that teachers fix the problem or be accused of failure.

While critics of public education often play the political game by blaming teacher unions and so-called incompetent teachers (even though there are no reputable studies or evidence to prove these alleged claims), few seem to care about what Forbes reported in High Teacher Turnover Rates are a Big Problem for America’s Public Schools.

In March 2011, Forbes reported, “NCTAF’s findings are a clear indication that America’s teacher dropout problem is spiraling out of control. Teacher attrition has grown by 50 percent over the past fifteen years. The national teacher turnover rate has risen to 16.8 percent.  In urban schools it is over 20 percent, and, in some schools and districts, the teacher dropout rate is actually higher than the student dropout rate.”

Forbes says, “Teachers cite lack of planning time, workload, and lack of influence over school policy among other reasons for their decision to leave the profession or transfer schools.”

 

And if you think Charter Schools are any better, you may be surprised to discover what The Washington Post reported, “Teacher turnover, which tends to be alarmingly high in lower-income schools and districts, has been identified as a major impediment to improvements in student achievement.”

The Washington Post said, “The authors (of a study) find that the odds of charter teachers exiting are still 33 percent higher than those of regular public school teachers. There is an even larger difference in secondary schools, where charter teachers are almost four times more likely to leave.”

Half Nelson reveals a primary reason so many teachers quit even if they have the so-called job protection of tenure (a report from the public schools of North Caroline says about a third that quit annually have that so-called precious tenure critics complain of).

Why would someone with such an easy, kick-back job with labor union protection quit?

Dan Dunne (played by Ryan Gosling) is a young, urban, middle school, inner-city history teacher taking drugs to make it through the nights and weekends but during the weekdays he is a popular teacher—the kind that  students see as a role model.

I identified with this movie. For thirty years, I taught in public schools surrounded by barrios infested by teen street gangs that had been around for generations. I witnessed drive by shootings from my classroom doorway, riots between gangs, grieved with my students when kids were shot down in the streets never to return to school, and a year didn’t go by that some gang banger that was also a student in one of my classes didn’t threaten me by asking what I would do if a gang jumped me.

Half Nelson brings us closer to that world and reveals another reason why so many teachers quit and never return to the classroom.

If you want to discover the truth about many of America’s schools and why teachers and possibly many students drop out, I suggest you watch this movie that the odds say you haven’t seen.

If the average ticket price of a movie in 2006 was $6.55, and Half Nelson earned $2.7 million in North America, that means less than 500 thousand people saw the film and there are more than 314 million Americans that did not see it.

Maybe most Americans do not want to know the truth, because many parents would have to accept the blame for illiterate and/or failing students. Parenting is a serious job—not a game.

Discover a film with a clear political agenda against teacher unions

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
1 Comment

Posted by on December 9, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, Parenting, politics, Public School, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior, Teaching

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

The High School Environmental Club – one example of the rewarding side of teaching

12 Oct

When I write about the thirty years I taught in the public schools, I often focus on the problem students, the lack of parental support, and political pressures that seem to come from all sides, but there was a positive note to teaching that made up for the long hours and challenges that walked in the classroom each school day.

In the 1990s and into the 21st century, I was co-advisor of the Campus Chess Club and Environmental Club. Chess was easy. Students interested in playing chess came to my classroom at lunch. There were no field trips or fund raisers, and playing chess helped take my mind off my job.

During those years, my last class of the day was journalism so every day ended on a positive note. There is very little that is comparable to a classroom full of motivated, often incredible students.

The Environmental Club was another positive note. Neil, the co-advisor, was the primary organizer although most of the work and organizing was done by students. There were monthly weekend hikes where me, Neil, Marshal (now gone due to complications during his battle to beat leukemia),and sometimes a few other teachers/parents chaperoned students on hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Eventually, district administration stopped giving permission for the hikes due to increased insurance/liability issues.

However, one of the hikes went up Ice House Canyon (starts at 5,500 foot elevation) to the Saddle (7,500 feet) where several trails branched out to Cucamonga Peak (8,858 feet) and the three T’s: Timber Mountain (8,303 feet), Telegraph Peak (8,986 feet) and Thunder Mountain (8,587 feet).  I understand it is possible to hike all three peaks in one day.

The single-track to Icehouse Saddle climbs over 3.6 miles and is an exceptional hike.

I was the advisor/teacher for journalism and many of the students that were in the chess club and the environmental club were also in my journalism class, and we spent a lot of time together sometimes as late as 11:00 PM and as early as 6:00 AM.

The hikes through Ice House Canyon to the Saddle are fondly remembered because my journalism students started a tradition of water gun fights near the end of that day-long hike, and I was often the target: journalism students versus Lloyd. My small squirt gun was not up to the task of dealing with several students ganging up on me each with a squirt gun.

To level the playing field, I bought a squirt-pump machinegun with a gallon water tank, and it had a range of maybe 20 yards and it fit in my backpack so no one knew about my secret weapon.

The hike I think of most was the one where we went up to the saddle a few days after a weeklong blizzard that blanketed the San Gabriel Mountains in snow. We arrived early on a Saturday morning with several teachers and cars loaded with students to discover the trail was covered in virgin snow—no one had been up the trail since the blizzard and in some spots where the trail had snow melt running over it, the water had frozen into black ice.

Fortunate for us there was a Forest Ranger ready to hike up to a campground beyond the Ice House Canyon Saddle because several campers had weathered the storm there.  The only way to reach that campground was on the trails you will see in the embedded video I found on YouTube. That means the campers carried all their gear and food up that trail to the campground higher than the Saddle.

Discover What is the Matter with Parents these Days?

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 12, 2012 in American Public Schools, family values, Journalism, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Are we a Nation Eating and Drinking its Way to Idiocy – Part 2/2

18 Sep

To understand what too much sugar and not enough sleep might mean for a student’s ability to learn, I turned to the ehow.com: “According to a study published in the Food Nutrition Bulletin, children suffering from poor prenatal nutrition also showed reduced cognitive and motor skills, starting at about 6 months of age. The gap was noticeable at 12 months and began to widen as the children aged. This group of children eventually included an increased number of dropouts.”

Then the CDC reports: “Teenagers and young adults consume more sugar drinks than other age groups.

1. Non-Hispanic black children and adolescents consume more sugar drinks in relation to their overall diet than their Mexican-American counterparts. The high school dropout rate for blacks in 2010 was 8%. The percentages of black adults lacking basic literacy was 24%.

2. Mexican-American adults consume more than non-Hispanic white adults. The high school dropout rate for Hispanics/Latinos was 15.1%.  The percentages of adults lacking basic literacy was 44%.

3. For non-Hispanic Whites the high school dropout rate was 5.1%, and the percentage of adults lacking basic literacy was 7%.

4. Low-income persons consume more sugar drinks in relation to their overall diet than those with higher income.

5. The worse years of sugar consumption were ages 12 to 19.

6. Among boys aged 2–19, 70% consume sugar drinks on any given day

Conclusion: If we compare literacy levels and dropout rates to sugar consumption, we find a link. Yet, who is blamed for illiteracy and the dropout rate?

ANSWER: The public schools, teachers and the teacher unions.  The parents are seldom if ever blamed and the sugar industry keeps denying the science.

It is obvious that until most children eat a healthy diet and sleep at last nine hours a night, how can any honest, moral person accuse the schools and teachers of failing at their job?

Until America solves this problem so its children eat and drink healthy foods and fluids (think water), teachers cannot be held accountable for children learning. Of course, diet is not the only factor but it is a crucial factor. Sleep plays a factor. Watching too much TV is another link. In addition, being raised by a parent that does not or cannot read also has a big impact.

Meanwhile, too many parents, the media and politicians keep making schools and teachers the scapegoats by preaching the wrong conclusions.

Feeding children and teens processed sugar is child abuse and should be a crime punishable by life in prison with no parole.

Source of dropout rates: National Center for Education Statistics

Source of literacy rates: Education Nation.com

Discover how to Avoid the Mainstream Parent Trap or return A Nation Eating and Drinking its Way to Idiocy – Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 18, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Literate and College Bound – Choose Wisely

13 Sep

There is a lot of good information on the Internet about future, good paying jobs. For example, “The Best Paying Jobs of the Future: Knowing which jobs will be in high demand and pay the most is a good place to start.”

The jobs listed were: Biomedical Engineers, Diagnostic Medical Sonographers, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, Physical Therapists, Dental Hygienists, Audiologists, Medical Scientists (Except Epidemiologists), Veterinarians, Occupational Therapists, and Optometrists.

Of course, this means the young person must be a lifelong learner and literate and that means about twenty-four percent of adult Americans may be locked out of these jobs, because they were poor students, for whatever reason (usually due to environment, lifestyle and parents–not teachers), and are doomed to face a higher risk of unemployment and/or low pay.

Whose fault was that?

A. teachers that are responsible to teach

B. students are responsible to learn by doing the class
and homework and reading daily seven days a week

C. Parents are responsible to make sure his or her student reads daily at home,
studies and does the homework.

For example, when I was still teaching (1975 – 2005), I assigned a half hour of reading (or longer) a night, because if young people do not read outside of school, the odds of achieving an adequate level of literacy are small. For that daily half hour, my students could read anything they wanted: books, magazines, newspapers, but the students had to keep a log and summarize how much time they read and what it was about.  About five percent of my students bothered to do this.

Some never brought the textbook, paper or a pencil and/or pen to class—these students often felt that just showing up and warming a seat was enough to earn a passing grade so he or she could graduate. I don’t know how they thought the teachers were going to get those skills and knowledge in their brains—maybe with a toilet plunger placed over the nose, eyes and mouth?

However, an old friend of mine believes college is a waste of time and feels that if an adult cannot read, it was a teacher’s fault. I do not agree. Instead, I believe it is all about the choices young people make such as avoiding reading and studying while in school as a child and teen. No matter how great a teacher is, he or she cannot force students to learn.

The equation is simple: teachers teach + students learn + parents support both = education and literacy.

This is a bit off topic, but I attended a meeting once where we learned that sixty-percent of college freshman (all high school graduates) did not read and write at the level needed to start college and had to take remedial English/writing classes (this university had five levels of what is known as bone-head English) before being allowed to take real college classes. This may explain why half of students that start college drop out before earning a degree.  It gets frustrating when you cannot understand what you are reading and professors keep writing FAIL grades on essays/papers.

Over the last few years, this old friend and I have argued about this topic often via e-mail. For proof that I am right about making choices, I refer you to these two articles from Kiplinger (click on the links for details).

WORST College Majors for Your Career: Anthropology, Fine Arts, Film and Photography, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Graphic Design, Studio Arts, Liberal Arts, Drama and Theater Arts, Sociology, and English (my BA was in journalism but I ended up teaching English and reading for thirty years).

BEST College Majors for Your Career: Medical Assisting Services, Managing Information Systems, Construction Services, Medical Technologies, Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Treatment Therapy Professions, Transportation Sciences and Technology, Nursing, and Pharmacy and Pharmacology.


Why doesn’t anyone ever tell us how many people fail when chasing frivolous dead-end dreams?

In conclusion, if you learned how to be a life-long learner and you are literate because you did the reading and work your teachers assigned K – 12, then you may be in college or a college graduate with a BA in one of those WORST college majors. If so, you may remember that your parents, friends and some teachers/school counselors encouraged you to follow your dreams and do what you wanted to do—this usually means having fun and chasing after a dream. When chasing dreams, a few succeed but many do not.

If your dreams did not materialize, are you still having fun? I want to know.

Discover The results of parenting gone wrong

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 13, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, Parenting, student behavior

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

To SPANK a child – that is the question

09 Jul

Sarah B. Weir, a Yahoo blogger, posted, “Spanking Linked to Mental Illness, Says Study.”

Weir reported, “Researchers examined data from more than 34,000 adults and found that being spanked significantly increased the risk of developing mental health issues as adults.”

However, a post at The Daily Beast written by Po Bronson reveals another side to this issue that people such as Sarah B. Weir may not want you to discover. It turns out that there has been very little research on children that were never spanked, because children who’ve never been spanked aren’t easy to find.

Bronson mentions a study that is still underway called Portraits of American Life. It involves interviews of 2,600 people and their adolescent children every three years for the next 20 years. Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe (see video) working with the first wave of data on teens found that almost a quarter of these teens report they were never spanked.

Dr. Gunnoe’s summary will upset many that are dead set against spanking. The good doctor reported that kids who were never spanked are not any better off in the long term. In addition, Gunnoe discovered those who’d been spanked just when they were young—ages 2 to 6—were doing a little better as teenagers than those who’d never been spanked.

Furthermore, John Weyenberg, writing for Ezine @rticles.com, says, “I believe that spanking children is a viable and sometimes necessary form of discipline. I do not believe in abusing children. I do not equate spanking with abuse. Spanking a child under the wrong conditions and too often can turn into a pattern of abuse. But spanking a child as a very last resort under the following conditions can prove to be beneficial and not harmful.”

I agree with Weyenberg and also suggest that angry parents should never spank a child. If a parent is calm, the odds are he or she will not lose control turning spanking into physical abuse. I spanked my son when he was a child, but I used a paddle and wrote the rules on the paddle that spelled out what earned a spanking such as lying about his homework, because he lied about his homework often. No matter how upset I was, those rules spelled out the exact punishment when all else failed. As a rule, he was also spanked with another adult watching as a witness.

In addition, many studies into the effects of spanking have proven to be highly unreliable because they are largely based on the researcher’s interpretation of children’s behavior. Study bias is a common phenomenon among behavioral studies in which the researchers have a committed position and are required to judge behavior. Source: Religious Tolerance.org

For this reason, Robert Larzelere and his colleagues wanted to see if the link between spanking and antisocial behavior was caused by the children themselves—some kids are more trouble, and they provoke more disciplinary action. The results of the Larzelere study, “In addition to a link between antisocial behavior and spanking, the researchers also found links between  antisocial behavior and ‘grounding,’ or punishing kids by taking away their privileges to go out, and antisocial behavior and psychotherapy.”

Then Arthur Whaley discovered that in countries where corporal punishment was commonplace, the link between physical discipline with increased child aggression and anxiety was weaker. Source: Parenting Science.com

This indicates that spanking children may not be harmful where the issue isn’t a controversial hot-button topic that creates an environment where children grow up feeling sorry for themselves because other children and parents send signals that spanking is wrong and abusive when in fact, it often is not.

Studies show that “early emotional experience knits long-lasting patterns into the very fabric of the brain’s neural networks leading to moodiness, irritability, clinical depression, increased negative thinking, negative perceptions of events, etc.” Source: Forgiving Parents: Breaking the Chain of Anger, Resentment and Pain

Does this mean that the loud and vocal anti-spanking lobby is responsible for planting the concept in children that are spanked that they are being abused leading to mental illness as adults? Hmm, if you are a parent that spanks, you may be able to sue that nosey next-door neighbor or teacher that criticizes your parenting methods that may include spanking. Think about it—it is called programming a response.

Discover Too Happy! To Perfect! Too Fragile!

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
2 Comments

Posted by on July 9, 2012 in child abuse, family values, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Slavery is ALIVE and your Child may be at Risk – Part 3/3

04 Jul

Jada Pinkett Smith launched Don’t Sell Bodies.org because Willow Smith (her daughter at age 11) educated her mother about slavery today. It was only then that she decided to become involved and educate the world about the horrible modern-day crime of slavery.

Don’t Sell Bodies.org says, “83% OF CONFIRMED TRAFFICKING CASES IN THE UNITED STATES ARE AMERICAN BORN CITIZENS …

“It’s hard to believe, but more humans are being used as slaves than ever before. …

“Between 700,000 and 4 million women and children will be trafficked this year, with the majority being forced to work in the sex trade. In America, there are an estimated 40,000 men, women and children enslaved at this very moment. If everyone who cares takes action, we can end slavery once and for all. It is time.”


Jada talks to CNN about how she was inspired by her daughter to take action.

Jada Pinkett Smith joined Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in the fight against human trafficking, after her 11-year-old daughter Willow Smith decided, “These girls need me.”

“She did her own research and realized that there were young girls her age in this country being trafficked for sex,” Pinkett Smith told USA Today. “She was like, ‘Mommy – you don’t know what’s happening!’ I was like, ‘Hold up, pause right there!’ And, she was like, ‘I’ve got to give my voice to this. These young girls out there need me.'”

Jada and her band Wicked Evolution also recorded the song “Nada Se Compara” and produced a music video directed by Salma Hayek. In the video, a teenage girl is seduced by an attractive boy, who sells her to a sex trafficker.


Jada’s music video of human sex-trafficking/slavery

Anti-Slavery International was founded in 1839, as the world’s first and international human rights organization. They reported in mid-2003 that today, “Millions of men, women and children around the world are forced to lead lives as slaves. Although this exploitation is often not called slavery, the conditions are the same. People are sold like objects, forced to work for little or no pay and are at the mercy of their ’employers’…Women from Eastern Europe are bonded into prostitution, children are trafficked between West African countries and men are forced to work as slaves on Brazilian agricultural estates. Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people of all ages, sex and race.” …

In fact, “In India, Nepal and Pakistan, millions of men, women and children are used as forced and bonded labor in these countries. Most are dalit or from a low caste, or are from indigenous or minority groups. Laws against the caste system and against bonded labor exist but are not enforced.” Source: Religious Tolerance.org

In addition, National Geographic says, “There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.”

Return to Slavery is ALIVE – Part 2 or start with Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on July 4, 2012 in child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Slavery is ALIVE and your Child may be at Risk – Part 2/3

03 Jul

Dan Rather, writing for the Huffington Post, said, “The girls, sometimes as young as 12, often 13-16, are lured by a ‘front man’ in his mid-to-late teens. He becomes her ‘boyfriend,’ taking her to dinner, buying her nice things, sometimes meeting her parents. The girl eventually moves in with him. Then he says they need money to continue being together. First, she’s enticed to sleep with his friends to pay the rent. Soon she’s turning tricks for what police say is an endless supply of older men willing to pay top money for sex with very young girls. … There is, and has been for a long time, a national ‘War on Drugs.'”

However, Rather says, “There isn’t one (a war) on child prostitution and what amounts to a slave trade. Only feeble efforts at best.”

That causes me to question how many of our political leaders and wealthy Americans take advantage of this form of slavery in the United States.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center reports, “An estimated 12 – 27 million people are caught in one or another form of slavery. Between 600,000 and 800,000 are trafficked internationally, with as many as 17,500 people trafficked into the United States. Nearly three out of every four victims are women. Half of modern-day slaves are children.”

In fact, KUHF.fm (88.7) reported, “Houston has a huge commercial sex industry and there’s some quotes that say that there’s more SOBs, which is sexually-oriented businesses, in Houston per square mile than there are in Las Vegas. … According to the Department of Justice, Houston is one of the most intense human trafficking regions in the country, with one out of five trafficked persons passing through this city.”

What does this say about the GOP (Republican Party)?  Texas has been a Republican stronghold since the mid-1970s.

This horrible crime is not new—it is as old as civilization as we know it. However, America’s hot button political issues focus on abortion, illegal immigration, the Iraq War, pay as you go budgeting, tax cuts and supply side economics, teachers’ unions and public education, the value (or lack of value) of college education, and universal healthcare while ignoring slavery. It seems that no one with a high-profile public image has stepped up to focus on this issue that is all but ignored—until now, and she has been both criticized and praised publicly for doing it.

My next question—Why would anyone criticize Jada Pinkett Smith, the mother of Willow Smith and wife of Will Smith, for producing a video about modern human trafficking and/or slavery unless the critic benefits from that slave trade?

Continued on July 4, 2012 in Slavery is ALIVE – Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on July 3, 2012 in child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Slavery is ALIVE and your Child may be at Risk – Part 1/3

02 Jul

Africans are not the only slaves in history. We mostly hear only about the African slave trade but slavery is much older than that. In fact, slavery existed in Africa among Africans long before African slaves were sent to the Americas.

For example, In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana (750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population were enslaved.

Slavery is as old as civilization. History World.net says, “Slavery enters human history with civilization. Hunter-gatherers and primitive farmers have no use for a slave. … War is the main source of supply, and wars are frequent and brutal in early civilizations. When a town falls to a hostile army, it is normal to take into slavery those inhabitants who will make useful workers and to kill the rest.”

Although the West boasts of the benefits of democracy, there were slaves in the Greek and Roman republics thousands of years before the establishment of European colonies in the Americas.

If you study American history, you know that from 1861 – 1865, the United States fought its bloodiest war—a war to end slavery. At least 618,000 Americans died in that Civil War. Some experts claim 700,000 died. The cost of the war was more than $11 billion. In today’s dollars, that equals almost $155 billion.

The British Empire abolished slavery in 1833, and the British government paid about £20 million in compensation to the slave-owners that lost their “property”. In pounds, that £20 million would be about £1.5 billion today using the retail price index ($2,340,728,996.00 USD).

That sacrifice made by the United States (1865) and the British Empire (1833) in lives and money was made in vain because today in the 21st century slavery is far worse than it was then.

CNN reported, “The modern-day slavery expert explained to CNN that the current $90 rate for a human slave is actually at an historic low. Two hundred years ago, a slave cost about $40,000 in today’s money. The reason for this price slide: a massive boom in the world’s population, especially in developing countries, has increased the supply of ‘slaveable’ people.”

In 2010, Dan Rather, writing for the Huffington Post, said, “Over 300,000 U.S. Children Fall Prey to Sex Trafficking. … Child prostitution has become a national problem in this country.”

Continued on July 3, 2012 in Slavery is ALIVE – Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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

 
3 Comments

Posted by on July 2, 2012 in child abuse, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, student behavior

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Good and Bad of America’s Continuing Cultural Revolution – Part 7/7

10 Jun

I found two easy solutions that may help eliminate or reduce some of the bad habits of America’s Cultural Revolution that have plagued the United States since the 1960s—poor diet and damage caused by the self-esteem movement.

The first solution comes from the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Costco Connection.

In Being Bob Harper, The Costco Connection asked, “Is how you eat today different from when you were growing up?”

Harper’s answer was yes. He said, “I had to reprogram how I ate and what I ate from how I used to eat.”

In addition, Harper said, “People don’t like change. People get nervous when they have to actually look at themselves…” However, “we have a lot of bad habits that simply have to be broken.”

Harper’s advice is to drink lots of water at each meal. He describes a real breakfast as oatmeal (I suggest steel cut oats), eggs (one a day and not fried) or plain Greek yogurt, doctored up with berries and nuts, apples and berries every day along with other fibrous fruits…

In fact, WebMD lists foods that Boost Your Mood and Energy Level. For example: apples, avoid sweets while eating whole grain and whole-wheat bread; cashews, almonds and hazelnuts; Brazil nuts, salmon, leafy greens, fiber, water, and fresh produce.

Traverse Bay Farms also says, “Bananas are one of the world’s finest foods for supplying fuel energy.”

Harper says, “If I had to place it on a priority list, nutrition would be number one and exercise would be number two.”

The second solution that may help reverse the damage caused by the false self-esteem parenting method comes from a book I read years ago, which I used to guide me through changes in my lifestyle to rid myself of a few habits I did not want.

What To Say When You Talk to Your Self by Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D. was released in hardcover in 1986. Parents and want-to-be parents are urged to follow the advice in this self-help book and change those bad habits that might lead to raising children with an inflated, false sense of self-esteem so they do not grow up to be narcissists eating a poor diet and valuing fun over merit.

In fact, Helmstetter’s advice may help people change an unhealthy lifestyle so exercise and healthy food become a daily routine—a healthy habit.

The book’s description on Amazon says, “You don’t have to be crazy to talk to yourself! We all talk to ourselves all of the time, usually without realizing it. And most of what we tell ourselves is negative, counterproductive and damaging, preventing us from enjoying a fulfilled and successful life. Shad Helmstetter’s simple but profound techniques, based on an understanding of the processes of the human brain, have enabled thousands of people to get back in control of their lives (it worked for me). By learning how to talk to yourself in new ways, you will notice a dramatic improvement in all areas of your life. You will feel better and accomplish more. It will help you achieve more at work and at home, lose weight, overcome fears, stop smoking and become more confident. And it works. Helmstetter is a bestselling author of many personal growth books, and the leading authority in the field of Self-Talk.”

“What to Say When You Talk to Your Self” also comes as an audio version. If you buy a copy, listen to it a few times before you start improving your life and the future adult life of your child or children.

Return to The Good and Bad of America’s Continuing Cultural Revolution – Part 6 or start with Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “E-mail Subscription” link in the top-right column, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 10, 2012 in child abuse, family values, Parenting, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts
Newer posts →