Wednesday, August 28, 2002
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Wednesday, August 28, 2002 |
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Support your local teacher By BILLY MURPHY I was so close. I was literally inches away from the knife. Though suffering from a fever, I was barely half a foot from the door when my mother stopped me. "Where do you think you're going?!," she asked, halting my steps to the bus stop. Ah, the knife, you're probably wondering about the knife. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades (Did he just say that!?) and I didn't make it. My mom kept me home from school and thus I finished one day away from perfect attendance my fourth grade year. And the teacher only gave knives to the boys who had perfect attendance. That's right, you heard it correct. When I was in the fourth grade, if you had perfect attendance for the year, the teacher gave you a knife (the girls got something different). Ya think times have changed a little? What do you think would happen to a teacher today, doing the same thing? Jail time? Lethal injection? A year's stay at the Politically Correct Institute of Reconditioning and Lobotomization? How could things have changed so much, so quickly? Children can't even say the word knife in school today. Two things have changed: Respect and responsibility. And I'm not talking about the kids. I'm talking about parents and every single one of us is to blame in one way or another. We no longer respect the institution of teaching and we aren't doing enough to make our kids responsible to do the same. What I am saying is nothing but a cliché but just because something is a cliché doesn't mean it's not true. Good intentions have paved a four-lane highway to where we find ourselves today. Our concern and overconcern as parents have impeded the system of teaching our kids. Our intervention and over-intervention have clogged the process better than any Peachtree City road work plan. What is the answer? We need to go back to simpler times and just trust the system by supporting our teachers. The most ironic thing is, the system is better now than any time in history, yet we still complain more, meddle more and second-guess more. It's just plain egotism. We as parents think we are smarter, know more and know best. Teachers after all are just our servants, right? Our taxes pay their salary so they really work for us, right? Like the lawn man, or pizza delivery guy? I think parents of today are taking too many swims in "Lake Me." I didn't get a knife. When I cried, my mom didn't haul me off to the school and tell the teacher that I should get one because I had an excused absence and it would have been irresponsible for me to go to school sick anyway, and thus her "Knife Program" had a weakness and I shouldn't be penalized for it. My mom just told me to dry it up. She didn't buy me a knife either. I learned a lesson. Life is not fair. Some would say that is a negative lesson. I say quite the opposite. I think as parents we should all just dry it up. Let teachers do their jobs, support them, treat them like the educated, dedicated people they are, and don't even think to say, "Yeah, but my situation is different." That is the first lie egotism tells us. Most parents need a 12-step program for an addiction much worse than alcohol or drugs. People today are just addicted to their opinions. We think what we think is THE truth, THE best, THE only way. Support your local teacher, make your kids respect the system. I'll finish with a quote from one of the great frontiersman to travel the universe, William Shatner, who said, "Get a life."
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