It's Red Ribbon Week here in public education land. This means collecting pennies (pennies!) for in-class drug awareness education, wearing red ribbons (or, in the case of our son's school, a red, white and blue rubber bracelets) and, these red suckers, three of which made it home yesterday. Our first-grader confessed that had already eaten two at school. Two!If you look carefully, you can see that the red sucker is imprinted with the phrase: RESPECT YOURSELF - DON'T DO DRUGS.
Our son's name (misspelled) is written on a label that is attached to the lollipop stick.
Rebel Girl is all for responsible age-appropriate education about drug use, addiction, etc. After all, she can count the addicts in her own immediate family on two hands - two!
But this ain't it. And don't get Rebel Girl started on the sugar-junk food angle. Health education? Suck on this, kid.
What started in 1988 with Nancy's Reagan's Just Say No campaign has mushroomed in an industry where our children are not taught as much as they are bought and sold - yes, just google "red ribbon week products" and see what you can buy to celebrate this week: plush toys! frisbees! tattoos! yo-yos! cell phone charms! Lip service is paid but the real causes and the real solutions, well. Our children deserve more, better.
Meanwhile, in nearby Tijuana, children go to school only to find the real cost of the drug war bleeding in the street. Over 150 people have been killed in the last month. 150! Students arrive at school walking past decapitated bodies. The Los Angeles Times covered this recently in For Tijuana children, drug war gore is part of their school day. Click on the title and read it and weep - or better yet, get angry. These children deserve better, more.Yes, Rebel Girl is a bit all over the place today. Forgive her. It's the sugar and platitudes on one side of the border, the blood on the other, children in the middle. Something has to give somewhere.
She sure asks for a lot, doesn't she?
But as the line in the Leonard Cohen song goes, "Why not ask for more?"
Indeed.
8 comments:
Sounds like your son's school could use some extra minds and hands to consider these agendas thoughtfully and create meaning for the kids.
My own attempts at addressing similar matters at my kid's school have been met with suspicion and resentment - I know teachers are overworked and underpaid and schools feel forced to participate in awareness programs like these so that the schools who lack resources are most likely to go through the sugary motions - but it does seem that if you question any of it at all you are viewed in a bad way.
Most school districts have a policy about distributing candy in the classroom - doesn't yours?
I hate that when it happens. Using candy as a reward.
Long before our nation's adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, Torabora was and still is an advocate for the invasion and liberation of Mexico and it's people.
It kinda makes you wonder why we let the badness go down right next door and spill across the border into our cities. Instead we crush Saddam and his crew on the other side of the planet.
Invade Mexico? Are you insane?
Let's invade Canada too while we are at it. Make Pam Anderson a POW.
It will soon become necessary to filter out unwanted "comments." I urge some of you (certainly not all) to follow these rules:
1. If you are commenting on some controversy, make sure you have a point, and if is the kind of point that requires support, provide that support. Assertions are not arguments.
2. Exchanges of curses and four-letter words are undignified and don't belong on this blog. If you must throw such things around, for God's sake be clever about it!
Mexico is too big to invade and Canada is too cold. We should practice on Catalina Island first and then move on to Arizona. Winnable wars guys, that has to be our strategy in the 21st Century.
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