Let Public Schooling Respond to the Challenge

   Instead of fighting to decide if should have more private schools as opposed to public schools, make them both better.Yes, it is true private schools have outperformed the public variety. But rather than just accepting that the private model is better, let the public schools respond to the challenge and improve their own product.

   Utah is embroiled in a controversy over proposed legislation to expand public funding of private and home schooling. Perhaps the bill, HB215, should be approved. Let the parents vote with their feet, so to speak. If they choose to send their children to a "private" school, let them -- and let the government funding follow them in that decision.

   I put "private" in quotation marks because if the funding is coming from the government, the "private" schools are not so private anymore. They become hybrids.

   But, what is important is not where the children are taught, but how well. Competition often brings improvement. In essence, the public schools now find themselves competing for school enrollment -- a thing they never had to face before the arrival of private schools and home schooling. 

Say Woah to Hatred and Discrimination

    Wipe Out All Hate -- or WOAH. I read of the episodes of hate at BYU and wish a program would be organized to root out and end the hatred that comes from a small percentage of BYU students. 

   "Every team in BYU Athletics has had sessions related to belonging at the start of each athletic season (since February, 2021)," said associate athletic director Whitney Johnson as a story hit the fan this week about a baseball player shouting slurs at those protesting for gay rights -- and he did so while driving around with a gay athlete, bisexual gymnast Mina Margraf, who broke the story this week in an interview in USA Today.

   Johnson is wonderful for organizing sessions addressing and discouraging hatred of Black and LGBTQ among athletes at BYU. It would seem BYU has done all it can to fight hate. They brought in Johnson to serve as associate director for student-athlete development, diversity and inclusion. They formed the Committee on Race, Equity & Belonging. They have classes which provide teaching on race and gender. They are considering whether they need to increase the hiring of minorities on the faculty and staff. They have a statement in their honor code calling for racial justice, equity and inclusion. They have a Anti-Racism Club and a Black Student Union. 

   So, what the need for WOAH? Why one more organization to fight hatred and discrimination with everything else that is being done? Answer: because the problem remains, and if it remains, you must look for yet more you can do to correct it. And, in addition to that, if you set a limit on your resources for solving a problem -- if you say more resources are unnecessary -- how wise is that? Why oppose additional efforts? 

   WOAH could benefit not only BYU but most every organization in America, from prisons to police departments. The idea with WOAH is to regularly teach the members of a student body or other group to not speak disrespectfully of minority groups, nor mock them, nor shout slurs, nor marginalize them.

   WOAH is not a one-time lesson, it is a commitment to repeating the message in staff meetings, and classrooms. Sprting events? What would be wrong with an announcement before every sporting event asking for both sportsmanship and the absense of hate speech? If that is a place you are having your greatest problem, that is a place you should exert your greatest effort to make improvement.

   Woah means stop. It is an alternate spelling to Whoa. We need to stop the hatred among us. We need to say woah to the hatred and put the breaks on it. 

Why Little Children Sometimes Grow Up to Be Big Monsters

    Little children have big ears. They have wide eyes. And they are curious.

   And, they learn from the world around them.

   While the nation struggles to comprehend how it is that a 6-year-old student in Newport News, Va., brought a gun to school and shot his teacher, we should consider on how a child learns. He learns from the teachings of his parents, true, but he also learns from the examples in the world around him. Newport News is not a quiet little town -- not in terms of gun violence. More than 400 out of almost 1,000 incidents of crime in the city in 2021 involved firearms. Prior to the boy shooting his teacher, there were two other incidents of serious gun violence in the schools in the previous 17 months.

   People talk; kids listen. We might not know what angles of conversation the 6-year old overheard -- whether any justified gun violence. But, we are safe to assume one thing: When the boy heard about the violence, he could see it was an option in society. 

   And, it became an option in his life.

   Fortunately, the teacher lived. And, it appears the boy might well have wonderful and careful parents who will seek to get him on the right path. He is a child with disabilities, and we know not the struggles he has had that lead him to his terrible act.

   But -- as bad at the incident was -- there are thousands of times it plays out worse, thousands of times the child grows up with the attitudes he saw around him as a youth.

   . . . Thousands of times the child grows up and kills someone.

   Little children have big ears. We should be conscious to the fact that they hear our idle words. They have wide eyes. We should realize when gun violence is before them, they see it -- and it affects them. 

   Though, sometimes it is years and years later.   

Ask the People if Our Laws on Immigration Are Just

   Survey them; ask the citizens of America if they think the U.S. is breaking the law in not allowing immigrants to seek asylum. We complain about the immigrants, saying we don't mind them coming, we just want them to come legally. 

   We throw the law in their face, then we ignore the laws that we, ourselves, don't like. We conveniently set aside the laws that we are breaking. You see, both U.S. and international laws say that anyone who expresses a credible fear of returning to their home country should be given a chance to seek asylum in the U.S. -- regardless of how they got into the country. Once you get here, you present yourself and ask for asylum. 

   Today, a Yahoo News poll showed more Americans disapproving of President Biden's handling of immigration than ever before. An interesting poll it is, for it asks such things as whether a wall should be built, whether children should be turned away at the border, and whether those already in the U.S. should be given a path to citizenship.

  Most Americans are not even aware of the laws that say the immigrants are to present themselves when they arrive in order to begin the quest for staying. A nice survey question would be to ask those polled if they are aware of that law. And, the second question would be, now that you are aware of the law, do you think the U.S. should process the immigrants in accordance with the way the law requires?

   We could also do a survey on Title 42. It was created by the Trump Administration under the guise of keeping immigrants who might have COVID from entering the U.S. A survey might ask whether the person being polled believes COVID is still harmful, and whether it ever was harmful, with the third question following up to ask if it is just to lock the immigrants from entering the U.S. based on Title 42.

 

Arms Race II

 A CBS headline pronounces, "Russia suggests 'defeat' in Ukraine could 'trigger a nuclear war."

"Kremlin Threatens 'Whole New Level of War' Over Western Weapons," screams another headline.

But the new arms race is more than a chase toward nuclear holocaust. It's upping the ante with conventional weapons. As the Free World pours weapons into the war, Russia scrambles to match with more weapons of its own. One side pours more weapons into the war, and the other side responds in kind.

Arms Race II. This isn't like the Cold War. This time, the weapons are being used, not just threatened to be used.

If Russia loses the race for conventional weapons, will it pull out its silver bullet? Will it scream in horror and unleash its nuclear warheads? Yes, the threat that remains might be larger than the current exchange of fire power. But, in the mean time, the war is intensifying with the conventional weapons.

 

A Fire in the Forest Is a Fire in the Village

  When there's a fire in the forest, there's a fire in the village. Often, anyway. As the fire grows and intensifies, it threatens the homes. Then it more than threatens them; it consumes them.

  As we consider school shootings like the one in Newport News, Va. -- where a teacher was shot by a 6-year-old student -- there's a lesson to be learned from forest fires: the "fire" doesn't start in the classroom; it starts in the community, at large.

  Teacher after teacher, and parent after parent had gotten up at a school board meeting this past week to complain that students weren't properly disciplined. They spoke of how teacher after teacher is assaulted by students, and student after student is not suspended. There's a big problem in our schools, and it is not being properly addressed, they said.

   Then, another parent, David Wilson, rose. He suggested the problem starts at home. I would add that it comes from the culture that is developed in the whole community. The whole area is analogous to a forest, and as the fire spreads and intensifies, it threatens the village.

   And the village, in this case, is analogous to the schools. If the whole forest is burning, it's going to burn the village down with it. Schools don't escape.

    Suspend the students to correct the problem? "We can do what everybody wants to do -- we can start suspending more kids, sending them home," Wilson said. "So you just prevented a school shooting, but you just caused a 7-Eleven shooting. You didn't solve the issue; you shifted the issue from one thing to another."

   No, if you are going to stop a forest fire, you have to stop it in the forest. Newport News has a gun violence problem; more than 400 out of almost 1,000 incidents of crime in the city in 2021 involved firearms. I would suggest it is not just that many have guns; it is the attitude of the community on what guns are used for. Remember the old adage that what you do speaks so loud I can't hear what you say? You don't need to verbally teach a child to kill. If the kid sees people killing their fellow townspeople with guns as a way of settling their differences, he's quick to learn the trick. If it is the attitude of the community and those around him, even a 6-year-old child can conclude that if he has a problem, the gun is his way to solve it. 

   Gun violence is a constant in Newport News, So of course it's going to affect the schools. "Gun violence has even made its way into our schools," said eighth-grade teacher William Fenker. 

   A fire in the forest is a fire in the village.

The Count of Race Massacres in America Exceeds Fifty

   One wonders how many race massacres there have been in America. 

   There was the Rosewood Massacre in Rosewood Florida 100 years ago. Officially, six Black people and two White people were killed, but eyewitnesses put the death count at about 27. The town of Rosewood was destroyed and residents forced to move and live elsewhere. 

   Then there is the much-more famous Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, with officially 37 killed (26 Black people and 13 White). One count put the death toll at 176. More than 800 were seriously injured.

  But, those are but two in a long list. Begin the list with the massacre of Pequot Native Americans by Puritans in 1637. Continue with the attack on a fort on the Apalachicola River in Florida that was home to more than 300 African and Choctaw families. Then there was that election day "Bloody Monday" in 1855 that stands as one of the worst anti-immigrant massacres in our nation's history as Protestant mobs attacked German and Irish neighborhoods in Lousville, Kentucky.

   The Zinn Education Project lists more than 50 such massacres, though some might not quite fit under the race label. Chinese have been killed, Muslims have been killed, and obviously, Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans have been killed.

    And, the Zinn list is not complete. It does not include the 1945 Midnight Massacre in Salina Utah, in which nine German prisoners were killed by a guard, who simply explained that he hated Germans.

   And, one wonders about the children's graves that have been found, from Native Americans being sent to perochial schools only to be killed.