A couple of homosexuality/educational asides (Who me? Asides? :)
We live in a relatively quiet development of about two hundred middle-class homes. There are no fences between our half-acre (give or take) yards. Lawns are well manicured and landscaped, etc.
For the first time in the thirty years that we have lived here, a homosexual couple moved into the neighborhood about four months ago – two very masculine looking women (I had always thought that one tended to be feminine in a lesbian couple), with two small boys, ages approximately six and eight years old. They live three houses away from our home.
The little amount of contact I have had with them has left me with an unsettled impression. Quite often when I am walking my dog by their house, one of the women is standing out on the porch smoking and pacing (apparently the other one does not allow smoking in the house), and she always looks angry. Twice when I was running by the house on my nightly run very late a night (generally after midnight) I heard loud screaming coming from within. A few times I have seen the little boys standing at the school bus stop, and each time I stopped to talk with them briefly. I am not a stranger to them – introduced myself shortly after their moving in, and they know that I am the ‘neighborhood piano teacher’ who deals with many children on a daily basis, so it is not as though I pose a stranger threat. Each time I attempted to talk with them I came away with a profound sadness. They do not smile. They do not look you in the eye when you speak to them, or they to you. They seem terribly burdened.
Of course, this kind of behavior could be manifested by children who are a part of a normal nuclear family with heterosexual parents, but I can’t help but feel as though these poor boys have two strikes against them from the word go. And yes, I am an intolerant conservative bigot who, each time I pass by that house, cringes at the thought of what most likely goes on between those two women (call me old fashioned ...)
As regards what passes for public education today, I have less and less use for it. In doing occasional substituting in county schools under Pennsylvania’s emergency substitute certification program over the past six months, I have seen and heard much more than I would want to about the generally uninspiring, uncaring, indoctrinary behavior of public school teachers (with some notable exceptions, of course), and the lack of learning that occurs within the walls of the average classroom (but that’s a subject for an entire thread of its own).
A full ninety-five percent of the teachers I have come to know are staunch union people who place the education of their students very low on their list of personal priorities. Almost as many of them are avowed socialists, and (not coincidentally) have little or no real knowledge of American history, or the Constitution. Their students are not inspired to learn, and they come away from their classes with a sense that there is no reason for what they are being forced to do. I am not a popular lunchtime conversationalist. There are generally two or three of us at any particular school (sometimes, but thankfully rarely, only I) whose conversation includes any allusions to knowledge about what America was Constitutionally meant to be, as opposed to expressions of support for the socialist experiment (without necessarily referring to it as such). And the most common source of facts and information among these teachers are USA Today (the Bible) and Dan Rather (the prophet). Our teachers view the world, and indoctrinate their students, through biased left-wing sound-bite education.
Our son is in his second year of teaching high school physics. He is only one of two physics teachers in his school (the other one being a fifty-ish teacher who has been in the classroom for almost thirty years). When Dan began teaching last year, because he was the junior of the two physics teachers, he was given the non-college-bound physics classes. The result was that the majority of his students were not really interested in the subject matter, and a good many of them were simply putting in time in the classroom.
Dan creates and writes his own lessons, and believes in visual, hands-on physics teaching, using many interactive experiments and lab work which take place both on and off school grounds, and which emphasize real-word applications.
Just before Christmas, the principal informed Dan that, for the second half of the year (and for the very first time that he could recall), there was a long waiting list of students wanting to take his two physics classes. The children – even the non-college-bound ones – love his hands-on teaching method.
Yet the fifty-ish-year-old, thirty year teaching veteran, who I would think would consider himself something of a mentor to a much younger teacher, took Dan aside a few weeks ago and told him that he ‘had better turn down his flame a little’ (i.e., stop being so enthusiastic about his classes and his teaching) or he would burn out.
That man’s attitude is a big part of what is wrong with many teachers today: they are not devoted to the quality of their students’ education, and they literally resent the small number among their members who are. The devoted teachers make them look bad, by comparison.
If I were the mother of young children today, I would do everything within my power to see to it that they were not subjected to the public education system, with its inferior education, its left-leaning teachers, and its socialist indoctrination curriculum. Home schooling is, of course, the best solution, but quality private schooling runs a close second.
As for higher education, I would do all that I could to steer my children toward the only two (as far as I am aware) colleges which do not accept any form of federal ‘aid’ (not even federal student loans or grants for those who attend), and are therefore the only two colleges (as far as I am aware) that do not have to abide by federal dictates, as far as curriculum content, admissions quotas, and the like: Grove City College (PA) and Hillsdale College (MI). Two of my piano students are currently attending Grove City, and more than a dozen former students are graduates. To a person, those who have graduated all have wonderful careers and are deeply loyal to their alma mater. (Our son received his degree there as well).
And it’s no coincidence that, when the various yearly ratings of colleges and universities are published, these two schools invariably rank within the top two percent of those in their respective categories. Both attract the brightest and best students from high schools all over the country and the world. Both base their educational philosophy on a reverence for, and in-depth teaching of, the history and current state of western civilization. And both enjoy incomparable financial alumni and private business support and loyalty (thus the ability to thrive without government assistance or dictates).
IMO, the farther one can manage to distance himself from government schools or government interference in private schools, the better chance one has at receiving a quality education.
Wake up! End of rant. If it weren’t for FreeRepublic, I believe I might have exploded in pent-up frustration a long time ago. Thanks for the opportunity to diffuse the pressure, yet again. :)
~ joanie
Yeah, when I was living in an apartment, 14 years ago, I had two lesbians living below me. The butch was as you describe, a blonde with cold blue eyes -- tough. Drove a white Montero. The other woman was brunette, amiable and roly-poly, an ex-nun. At night the tough one would say ugly things to the roly-poly one in a low monotone, and the roly-poly brunette would wail disconsolately. FWIW, there was also a heterosexual couple next door that did that one night, the man berating the woman and she crying quietly like she had lost her last friend in the world -- why people do this to one another is utterly beyond me. If you don't like someone, why don't you just break up? But no, the infliction of pain has to be involved. But withal, it seemed that the blonde lesbian did it more than anyone, and she was pitiless -- even when I came home and found their apartment pullulating with young women who described themselves as the "vanguard friends" (first time I heard that expression) of the roly-poly brunette, who'd just been taken away to have the pills pumped out of her, the blonde was there, and she was absolutely unflappable, and when I spoke to her, to ask about her roommate, she replied in a cool, level voice that showed not a trace of concern. Her eyes reminded me of things I'd heard said about Larry Byrd, that he had gunslinger's eyes. This woman was that cold, except this wasn't a basketball court, and the alleged light of her life was rolling away to a hospital somewhere.
But don't let me prejudge butch lesbians.