Do you remember the society you were in while attending school? Does that society really mirror society and the working world of our daily life once away from school? Of course not. Away from the school, working in the real world, living in the community, we must give and take, tolerate, behave with decorum, and be good citizens, caring and sharing with each other at a level not actually taught in school. You can no longer be coddled as a child and get away with Juvenile court. Now you will be held accountable and punished.

Our schools contain many small groups of students, each of which holds other groups in disdain or even with antipathy. Thus, the jocks push around the geeks with the tolerance of the school administration who understand that the jocks, after all represent the school in the public realm and need to be protected and given special priveleges. What's the geek gonna do? Give a few million dollars to their college alma mater? Doesn't help the local high school but the jock will be back teaching and coaching and will be a part of the community. The geek will be gone to silicon valley and never seen again (at least not locally and who can blame them).

Then there are the nerds. These students don't have a prayer. They are the target of jocks, populars, and even the geeks who at last have someone in a lower class than they are. Two of these nerds, fed up with how they were treated delivered their message at Columbine High School in a woefully misguided manner. And there is the problem. Who was guiding them?

Does the school administration support classes on tolerance? Does the school help the jocks and geeks get together and understand just how much dedication and focus it takes to be a good jock or how much dedication and focus it takes to be a good geek? And, just how similar the efforts are and how much the two could support each other and interact to the benefit of all? Where are the classes on group interaction and how to understand the other guy and not tease, bully, and create the harm that too often results in retribution and destroyed lives.

Each person in the school system needs to be taught that they have an intrinsic value and they can manifest that value in many ways. The jocks need to learn the greater value of their lives is not in their athletic ability but in their ability to make their society, culture, and people's lives better. The academic can help the athlete to have a better grasp on the manner of growing in thought and cognitive values and the athlete can certainly show the academic how to improve their physical abilities and health. The popular can open the doors to some of the late bloomers and learn tolerance. You can add so much more to this list.

Who is to blame for students gone bad? The general tenor of our society has reached a level that we now teach our children a level of arrogance that is impossible to believe. If a child steps from a curb into the street, all traffic must stop. When a child gets from a school bus, all traffic must stop. As they cross the street on the way to and from school, the general public stands out of the way in respectful and silent awe at the wonderful child regal in their surroundings. If the child is to be punished, you must not touch their privledged persons. YOU must determine carefully the character of any punishment and deliver that punishment to the offending teacher, parent, or other grownup who obviously has not done their job well or the child would not have a problem. Nothing is ever the childs fault.

When Susie Toothpaste Smile and Wilson Wonderful get this down pat, anyone who is not at their level will get a direct and destructive message to that effect. When Johnny Jock and Freddy football get additional pampering and praise they do not also get guidence and counsel about how important are other members of society. They get to elbow George Geek and Charley Computer out of their way with impunity. And if you think Norman Nerd is going to be invited to join in an athletic training program and actually given any assistance, you are out of your mind. the Coach has only so much time and can't deal with those who require extra work. No matter that these are exactly the children who need the help. Forget that, we can win the games with Freddy Football, not with Willy Weak.

So the tares fall by the wayside and the school administration supports this discrimination. Willy Weak, Norman Nerd, and George Geek get pushed around and as far as they can see, the school officials support this. And they are right.

Where does the fallout from this arrogance end? This sort of training follows us all our lives unless we make an active effort to end the disease implanted in us throughout our early training. The consequences can end in death and include our loved ones. An example of this is of the woman who turned left on the green arrow in spite of the fact that a pickup truck was obviously not going to stop. The training of this woman was such that she need not wait for the pickup truck since she had the right of way and the truck was breaking the law. Thus, two of her children died. Oh yes, witness at the scene all said they saw it and knew an accident was about to happen. One lady on a cell phone even had time to say to the person she was talking to "uh oh, there's going to be an accident."

Who is to blame for the accident? The truck driver obviously. Also the mother of the two unfortunate children. Also, you and I. We all need to teach and stand by that teaching at such a level that tolerance and understanding is brought forth, not arrogance and demanding. Legislation, no not all the legislation in the world will save those children, nor would it have. Knowledge, teaching, and a new way of seeing things would have. I know that I look and wait to see that all the cars have stopped, not just that the light is now green. Just because I have the right of way won't keep me alive nor my loved ones.

I want to have a bumper sticker that says:
"legislate don't educate"
so that people will think and realize just how far afield we are. We are dumping so much money into legislation and not teaching anyone about how to behave, have tolerance, have patience and get along with each other. Our world is a battle. Each person needs to compete with each other. I need to hold a position higher, stronger, better, over, ahead of, etc., than anyone else so I can feel good about myself. You need to grab more money than everyone else and then You'll be happy. What foolishness. The mechanic is as important as the banker. The street cleaner is likely more important than the chemist and we need to acknowledge just how much people are of value to each other instead of fighting to gain control over each other and devaluing our humanity.

Our public schools are just about the worst thing you can do to a child. We are not raising children who are competing with children in other societies. We are raising children who fight and compete unfairly and improperly and expect to have things given to them whether or not they are earned. Our children are falling behind more and more. We can't continue to make them look good by simply lowering the curve to make the tests look good even though the students are scoring lower and lower.

We don't foster a work ethic. We don't teach tolerance. We don't support cooperation. Our society encourages the schools to babysit the children and to give them passports to the grownup and responsible society whether they have bothered to learn responsibility or not. We allow discrimination in so many forms it is difficult to even know where to start in reforming the problem.

There is little reward for academic scholarship. Where are the school letters for good grades? Where are the school letters for good citizenship. Where are the school honors for contributing to the health of the community? Where oh where! We reward those who are the jocks and the girls who can be popular enough to be cheerleaders but ignore the good student. We give letters to the average jock. We ignore the average student. We give no letters for the A student. What are we teaching?

Let the average jock go without the letter. Give one only to the top 5 football heros. Give equally important letters to the top academic performers. Give letters to the top community workers. Give letters for the best leaders of tolerance and cooperation. What an improvement on the horrible system we have built instead.

And you wonder why our children grow up and have difficulty adjusting to the real world and the work-a-day society? Of course, the USA is the greatest nation in the world. It is also the greatest debtor nation in the world and is rapidly losing economically to most of the rest of the world and we will soon find that out to our dismay. We are already finding that we are not keeping up academically with the oriental countries and have not kept up academically with europe for a long time. We have the greatest military force in the world. We do not have the greatest Schools in the world. That must change. We must begin to teach our children to be students again and the value of tolerance and cooperation.

Now you can see the value of learning to be a student. Being a student does not mean closing your eyes and blindly going on. It means paying attention and doing so with grace and care. It means honoring the teacher without giving up your independence in such a way that the teacher is abused or the student is brainwashed. It is absurd to expect a teacher to put up with abuse from the student. It is equally absurd to expect the student to learn when allowed to be abusive. Respect is not too much to ask in the learning process. When the student will not respect the teacher and this is permitted, the system of learning breaks down into competetion and a war is on. In such a war the student always loses since they now will not learn what the teacher had to offer.

And, the student is not the only one to lose when a teaching is lost. We all lose. It is similar to losing the dna of the rain forest. When we lose ideas, we damage our wholeness. When we lose those capable of understanding how to see the earth as flat we will have lost one of our abilities. Yes, I know the earth is round. I also know that there is a special way of seeing which allows someone to understand how to see a flat earth. That may not seem of very great value but then neither does one small plant in the rain forest seem important. When either one of these becomes extinct, we all lose.

Who were those two broken children at columbine? They were defeated members of the outcast group pursued and punished by all the gangs the school allowed to run the halls and abuse those they felt superior to. Is this the Nations fault? Yes. Is it your and my fault? Yes. Is it something we can change? YES! We must change the character of our teaching and the character of how we tell children what is important in life. Gaining self satisfaction at the expense of others is not good training.