The Great American…Loan

 

People in the United States owe a lot of money on credit cards. In fact we owe about 700 billion dollars in credit card debt. The only thing we’ve borrowed more money for is home mortgages… but home mortgages aside, who owes more than adults when it comes to borrowing money?

It’s school kids! And although technically they are school adults, if you have 1 or 2 or more of them in your home they are still kids to you…but still, the number one debtor in the United States today are young adults who have taken out loans from the federal government to finance their college education.

Student loan debt has gone over 1 trillion dollars…as in 1 followed by 9 zeros, and the federal government has just forecast a record 51 billion dollar profit this year from student loan borrowers. That’s more than the earnings of the nation’s most profitable companies.

Who knew? Did you?

But the good news? In July the 3.4% interest rate that students are paying on borrowed money now will jump to 6.8% …unless of course Congress passes the “Student Loan Affordability Act” which is proposed legislation that would keep existing interest rates… on some student loans… for the neediest households, fixed at 3.4 percent. However, The bill does nothing for existing student debtors….and besides who doesn’t smell a filibuster in the air?

The Department of Education…that much maligned government entity that oversees our crumbling school system and that also gave us the “No Child Left Behind Act”, has generated almost 120 billion dollars in profit over the last five years from student loans which ironically enough, is the only kind of consumer debt that has increased since the onset of the financial crisis.

And get this… Apparently officials in Washington are now worried that perhaps overly indebted student borrowers will be unable to save enough to purchase a home, take out loans for new cars, start a business or save enough for their retirement…and become, you know…productive American citizens.

What is it that we expected would be the rewards of plunging our children into massive debt? Talk about not leaving a child behind?! What about leaving adults behind?!…before they even get started!

And for some reason these adult/children/student borrowers are also finding themselves unable to refinance their loans even if they graduate from college and secure well-paying jobs, even though  most other borrowers are able to refinance debt at quite low rates. And why is that?

Because these loans have become so profitable to lenders thanks to the Bankruptcy Reform bill of 2005 when both federal and private student loans became non-dischargeable during bankruptcy. This has turned student loans into credit risk free loans for the lender. (with a debtor who literally has a lifetime to repay it) The loans are just too good for any respectable financial institution to give up…as any gambler could tell you,  they’re a sure thing!

Getting a higher education is a wonderful achievement but once again with the help of our nation’s love affair with capitalism, we’ve turned a good thing into a profitable thing and that profitable thing into a must thing…and with ever escalating college costs happily jumping on the bandwagon, (because if you can’t afford this much it’s just as easy to not afford that much!)…this thing is spiraling out of control.

Our children are literally taking loans out on the American Dream, which is being dangled in front of them like a candied carrot on a stick, with money they do not have and may not ever have… and in what may be the most sinister twist of fate…all of their government loan filing and debt approval makes them perfect candidates for…

credit card approval once they’ve graduated.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Yesterday I wrote a satirical piece about guns and gun regulation. Some people who read it didn’t get it. No, I wasn’t suggesting that stabbing 14 people was or ever could be a good thing…and I wasn’t trying to suggest that we really outlaw people…that would be like suggesting the eating of babies to solve world hunger…My point was that guns are dangerous because people use them to hurt each other and just because guns are inanimate objects that need people to operate them doesn’t mean that people should have free and easy access to them.

But now it’s time to get serious because yesterday, in my neighborhood, a 4 year old boy shot his 6 year old next door neighbor with a 22 caliber rifle. Scout’s honor, I kid you not. And Is my neighborhood next door to Fort Apache? No. Do I live in the middle of the Middle East? Nope. It’s just a quiet residential neighborhood 2 blocks from a grammar school in the suburban New Jersey town of Toms River.

Here in Central New Jersey we mostly expect to die from old age or traffic accidents or as you might have recently  read,  the slow and deadly ingestion of toxic waste and chemicals, but certainly not from random shootings… Today that little 6 year old boy died.

So  I ask you, is there anywhere in this country where anyone should ever expect to die from gunshot wounds? If you are a gun enthusiast and opposed to any and all gun regulation and laws then your answer is probably and sadly…yes. And your solution is also probably that only more guns for more people to defend themselves with, is the answer to gun violence.

You would probably also say that the reduction of guns or the strengthening of gun laws will be of no help because people are the ones who kill and not the guns…and many of you will go even so far as to say that the guns don’t make it any easier for people to do harm. Harmful people will do harm anyway, whether they have a gun or a knife or a rock or hammer etc…or whether they are 40, 14 or…even 4! And of course there is your favorite phrase…”If we outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns.”

To which I must finally say, Will you never learn anything?

If you own a gun then you have only three possible outcomes. Either you will be an outlaw and use your weapon to rob, kill or harm others or you will wait… wait… wait…and wait some more for that imagined glorious moment in your lives when you get the drop on the outlaw and kill or harm or scare the crap out of him yourself.

The third possible outcome is that someone who you love or care about will accidently or on purpose shoot someone else who you love or care about (possibly yourself)… or they will shoot a whole bunch of others for no apparent reason other than they have lost their minds and all sense of human decency.

That’s it. 3 possible outcomes and if you don’t think that all of them are bad then really where do you see this ending? Seriously. Don’t preach to me your second amendment rights. Offer some solutions please. And please offer some solutions that don’t make you sound like a moron.

But There is however a fourth outcome and that is that your gun is never used to rob or kill anyone at all… Because here in the 21st century you really don’t need guns…not for hunting for food, not for defending your country from foreign invaders, not for fending off  savages or slaves, or wild animals who roam your domesticated suburbs and cities…and if you don’t need it for those things you certainly don’t need it for practice…unless of course you want that gun to be ready to someday kill another human being…which again is a serious reason for you to think twice about yourself and about your views on humanity.

Guns and weapons of mutual destruction only serve to keep us primitive. Only by regulating our use and need and desire for them can we ever hope to someday become completely civilized.

And if you can’t understand that, then please, please, please… don’t ever have children… Because in the long run…that probably will help us all more than you may ever know.

Why War Is Stupid! Part 33⅓

If you have not read my previous two memos on this subject, Don’t Let You Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys, and Why War Is Stupid: Part Deux, I invite you to please do so…but here is just another of so many reasons why you should not participate nor encourage anyone you know to go to war.

Depleted uranium is the waste product of the uranium enrichment process for nuclear power reactors and nuclear weapons. It consists of the same components and  it has about 60 percent of the radioactivity of uranium. Since it is a waste product and therefore difficult to find a place to put, store, hide, get rid of…The United States has stockpiled an estimated 450,000 tons of the stuff.

But…Since it has also been discovered to be heavier than lead and harder than steel, DU is used by the US  in both defensive armor and armor-piercing ammunition. These weapons contain a solid rod of DU that increases their ability to penetrate heavily armored vehicles, buildings, tanks and underground bunkers and, unlike other weapons that become blunted upon impact, DU sharpens and self-ignites upon firing and impact. These weapons also however,  create an aerosolized cloud of radioactive uranium oxide  that in effect “cooks” any unfortunates who may be inside said tank, vehicle or bunker. This makes DU weapons incredibly effective, and more and more the weapon of choice in today’s modern war scenarios.

It is now estimated that over 1,000 tons of DU have been used by US and British forces throughout the 1991 war in Iraq, in the Balkans in the late 1990′s in the 2003 Iraq War, and in Afghanistan. This of course has been very bad news for our enemies and very good news for those who have been trying to get rid of this nuclear waste product…but why should it be of any concern to you and I and our soldiers?

Well,…scientists estimate that anywhere from 50-96 percent of the dust created by these weapons is made up of respirable particles which, if inhaled, can remain in the lungs for years. As a result not only our enemies but also our soldiers breath this “depleted” uranium on a daily basis not to mention the millions of innocent Bosnian, Iraqi and Afghani citizens many of whom now live in cities under conditions akin to Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the A-bomb droppings of 1945.

And consider these figures which are now being reported…Just 467 US personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that within one decade, 56 percent of those soldiers who served in the first Gulf War now have medical problems.

We’ve all heard that “war is hell” and that it is an unfortunate  ”necessary evil” but now when you consider that we as a country are fighting wars against such overmatched militaries like Iraq and Afghanistan much if not most of the damage that is done to our own soldiers is either from what is known as “friendly fire” or the newly added dangers of exposure to our own deadly weapons caused by the fallout from DU, and then if you add in the concussive effects of these incredibly powerful weapons and the head trauma that is experienced by troops who are simply on the battlefield when these weapons are fired,  then include the ever growing anti-social and anxietal problems of simply being in the modern military and the high incidences of  rape and suicide they produce, we truly have become our own worst enemies.

We have finally met our most formidable foe…and it is us!

So Mamas… and Papas…do not let, encourage or even suggest to your babies that they  grow up to be cowboys and fight in wars.

I fear,  and perhaps even more frighteningly so, that we must now and forever only let our robots do it…and that, sadly and ironically enough, may just prove to be the best and most imperative reason to no longer do it at all…

 

When will we ever learn?

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
      -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

When will we ever learn that this is the only lesson that matters and that everything else in this world will fall into place once we finally get this lesson into our heads.

Violence and hate are not only the wrong answers they are not answers at all. They are reactions and instincts from our distant past and primitive brains. To declare ourselves to be truly enlightened, emotionally evolved and intelligent people we must learn to answer all questions with love and light, compassion and kindness. That is why we bring children into this world: To live and learn and do better than we did…and that is what we must teach them first and foremost and above all other things.

  “Think you can. Work hard. Get smart. Be kind. And have fun!”                                           – Sandy Hook Elementary school motto

Isn’t that what we all want?

Violence and hate will never secure that for us or our children or our families or our communities or our countries or our cultures or our religions, not in any place, nor at any date nor in any time.

Teach it now. Teach it everywhere. Teach it always.

 

Where your Treasure Is There Is Your Heart Also

In school, Students are always falling in and out of love, always grappling with and agonizing over the question, “Does he/she love me?” or the age old exclamations:

I thought she loved me

Why did he say that?

How could she treat me that way?

It’s just not fair!

This is my advice for those who want to know what love is.

And I believe it to be the truest of tests.

And if you ask yourself and answer this question honestly,

HONESTLY,

It will never fail.

And ask this question both of yourself and your lover, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, significant other, life partner, parent, child or whomever…and ask it just as it is stated and in the proper order.

“Where is your treasure? What do you treasure? What does your partner treasure?” Now answer it honestly for that is where your/her/his heart is and what you/they love.

Then you must accept the answers.

Does your boyfriend, lover, etc. treasure you? Are you what’s important to them? Then they love you. Their heart is with YOU.

If they treasure something else (i.e.: that something else comes first in their lives) like work, money, car, sport, hobby, mother, father, whatever, then their heart is there and that is who or what they love the most, above all else.

It’s nothing to get angry about. It’s the truth and must be accepted. You can’t change it and it won’t be changed through wishing or begging or imagining or promising or by people saying it is or isn’t so. If you can honestly say that you are the one treasured, the one who comes first, then you are truly loved. And consequently if you can say that about someone else then you are in love. And if two people can say that about each other then they are in love and they have found true love, and it will last. But you must ask and answer the question honestly within yourself. Do not let others answer for you and do not rely on others to answer honestly to you for they will always respond with an answer that they will think you want to hear.

You must discern the answers through your own honest and heartfelt observations. If you do, then the answer cannot be disputed. Don’t sugar coat it, don’t compromise it and don’t rationalize it, if it is not the answer that you were hoping for.

Life is truth and truth is neither good nor bad. It is simply truth… and it is only confusing when we endeavor to confuse it.

A Teacher’s Guide to Marriage and Love

 

           We all know that public school isn’t just about learning. Mostly it’s about love isn’t it? It’s mostly learning until about the 5^th grade and then middle school and puberty strikes in all its glory with its boobs and behinds and tight jeans, and your brain has little room any more for concentration on the moot and mundane, and your quest for sex, romance and the finding of that one person who will always love you (and who is not your mother) begins.

            For the middle and high school teacher this is a sickening process to watch. Boy meets girl. Boy meets another girl. Cat fight! Did you know that the word catfight actually means a fight between two girls and not a fight between two cats? But I digress…

Once a boy came running into my class completely out of breath and with a big grin on his face. “I just saw two girls fighting in the hall! He said. Man, they were really going at it! They fought so hard they actually fought right out of their clothes!” and he summed it all up with, “Today was the greatest day of my life!” We all looked at him in disbelief and just sighed, wishing we’d all been there to see it too…but I digress again…

            Ahhh love…but ask any student and they’ll always say, “Yes, someday I do plan on getting married. And predictably, most do. And then just as predictably they mostly always undo.

            So here, after 33 years of observation in the wild, is my foolproof guide to choosing the correct mate…or at least one who, for you, will last.

            When you think that you have found the right girl or boy, woman or man, don’t just date them, date their parents! Yes, that’s right. Go out with their parents. Visit their home and stay there, with them, for a while. If, after a few days you find yourself saying, “Hey, I like these folks. They’re nice. I could live here.” Then you’ve found the right man/woman for you. But if you find yourself saying, “Holy mother of god! These people are crazy! They fight all the time. I’m nervous here. I’m anxious here. I have no idea why they put their cat in the dishwasher! I want to go home…and then if you turn to your BF/GF and he/she looks at you and says, “Don’t worry; those are just my parents, not me!” THEN RUN! RUN INTO THE NIGHT AND DON’T LOOK BACK BECAUSE, that’s the kind of home you’re gonna get. You have just seen the future and you WILL be that family someday, so RUN! (By the way, the same can be said about you. You will try your best to re-create your family experience too)

            Of course no life advice is fool proof, but just in case you ignore the warning signs and stay in your relationship anyway and your new family life turns out just as I have predicted… Always remember: Protect the head! Put your helmets on!

Follow Your Bliss

Follow Your Bliss

After 33 years of experience as a teacher, this is the best advice that I have to give to any student, or person, for that matter…          

Follow your bliss!

What makes you happy? What are you drawn to? What do you see yourself doing in your dreams? (And for you movie lovers out there) What completes you? (But it should not be another person. We’re talking about YOU remember?)

The late author and mythologist, Joseph Campbell, wrote, “Follow your bliss and doors will open for you” and I believe this is true.

We should direct our students and children to what their aptitudes are not for what WE want for them or for them to be, to complete US.

Happiness is the thing! Happiness is the key. All of us who are older and who have been around for a while all now want the same thing. We want to be happy. We want to pursue and be around those people and things and activities that make us smile and feel joy. We would trade everything we have and everything that we’ve accumulated for happiness.

So we should direct our children towards that which brings them joy; that which fills their heart with a love of life, whatever it may be. There can be no substitutes. When we make substitutes and sacrifices, when we say that this “isn’t what I want but it will do”, when we make decisions based on compromises we close that door little by little until it seems as though there is no turning back.

But I will say this to anyone at any age. It’s never too late to turn around and open that door and follow the path that is right for you. The door is always there and it’s always open, even if just a crack. It never locks.

How would you follow your bliss? Take a moment, put your feet up, sit back, relax and think about it.

 Do it now! Happiness awaits!

Let Girls Do It!

If we are going to talk about the subject of education, let’s get to the really important lesson that I believe we all need to learn when it comes to women, and that is: it may just be our women who will save the world! Women constitute the world’s largest minority. This is really quite amazing because their minority is so large, in fact… that it’s a majority… but apparently no one told women! So parents of America get to it! Explain to your daughters that they can lead our country and our planet to a better future for us all even without the help of men. It’s time to encourage and empower our daughters to not want to be like our sons but rather to remain who they are, the kinder, gentler, nurturing sex, and take power!

In public school settings, statistics have shown that girls do much better educationally when boys are not around. Why is that? For whatever reason, boys seem to make girls flat out crazier than girls seem to make boys. And boys and men should take note of this. Women actually do better without men! It’s a fact. And how do men do without women? Well, if there were beer and chips and something to watch on television we’d be just fine.

Beyond being in charge, making money, spending it all and sports, men don’t concern themselves with much else, but just imagine what would happen if we started putting women in charge of more things in this world…so sit back, relax, close your eyes and imagine this…

We let women go to school together, study hard, graduate, go on to get their advanced degrees and then put them in charge of everything! Here’s what I think would happen. We’d have no more wars. Governments might argue a lot and stop talking to each other for a time but can you actually see women organizing armies of other women to fight one another while spending all of their country’s money on weapons of mass destruction? I think we’d all have nicer shoes maybe, and more to eat and we’d most definitely have no third world countries. Put a women in charge of a third world country and their first order of business would be to clean all the shit up and at least make the place look presentable. Men are perfectly content with being the president of a shit hole as long as they have a nice palace to live in and the country’s sports teams are fairly decent.

And why is this? Why are men and women so different? Is it because we hale from different planets? Nah! Mostly it’s testosterone levels and the fact that men hit their heads a lot. Watch little boys. Mostly they run around and hit each other in the head while their parents look on and say things like,

“Oh well, he’s a real boy!”

or “Boys will be boys you know!”

or “Hit him again before he gets up you idiot!”

Then their parents are just as likely to sign them up for activities where grown up men organize them into groups where there is more head hitting to be done and ironically that’s when parents decide to start fitting their boys with protective helmets, after they’ve already gotten in all that head hitting during their formative years!

Honestly I think that it’s not so much that boys will be boys but rather that boys make boys…by smacking themselves silly! Girls don’t do this. Women don’t do this.

And here’s a little side note about helmets. They are supposed to protect the head in case the head comes in contact with some outside force. They are not supposed to invite more head hitting just to see if the damn thing works!  If women or girls put anything on their heads it’s a cute little hat that serves as an ornament. Boys get fitted with mind altering headgear that’s more often weaponized than it’s protective.

When will we learn that because women don’t hit their heads as often as men do, women simply know better. That’s why we should separate the boys from the girls and put the girls in charge. Then put protective helmets on the boys so that their brains get a chance to evolve unimpaired until we are all, both men and women, living on the same planet and working together towards peace, prosperity and a cleaner planet that looks nice in case company comes to visit.

Is “Adult” Really Just Another Word for XXX?

Adults and Responsibilities

When I was a child way back in the late 1950s and 60s I remember being aware of a distinct difference between the adult world and the world of the child. We kids were always running around and playing or falling down and getting hurt or doing the wrong things and getting into trouble or having to sit still and behave or being made to take showers and baths and go to school and church etc., and adults were not.

 Adults were always in charge and they always seemed to be on the same page in just about everything they did. One adult was pretty much like the other. If you went to a friend’s house to play and you met your friend’s parents it was like meeting your own parents… All over again! They said the same things, had the same rules, wore the same clothes and did the same things. We never saw them running or jumping or playing or falling or getting into trouble… or anything for that matter! They lived in another dimension: The adult zone. They lived in other rooms that we couldn’t go in and seemed to disappear only to reappear when we did something wrong or had to go somewhere we didn’t want to go or wash something we didn’t want to wash.

It was weird and kind of creepy but it was the adult world and it was a place where we were all heading and would find ourselves someday and had to get ready for because someday we would be adults and have to live where they lived…in the adult world!

Kids played with other kids and adults never showed any interest in participating with us and it was pretty hard to even get them involved if we wanted to.

“Hey dad! We were thinking about going to the store!” hoping that maybe my dad would take the hint and offer us a ride. “Yeah? He’d always say, How ya gonna get there?” That was always the end of any conversation with my dad. “How ya gonna get there?” We couldn’t drive. We were just kids! Parents back in those days would always know just how to cut to the chase. We were just kids and we couldn’t get anywhere and we didn’t have any money so we went to school, did our own things and minded our own kid business and waited until we could become adults.

But today those divisions between the kid and the adult world have been all but obliterated. Adults today won’t leave kids alone! And instead of kids trying to grow up and become adults it’s the adults who are trying to behave more like kids. Now it’s the adults who are involved in all of the running and the jumping and the falling and the misbehaving and the partying and the troublemaking too. Who’s providing that stable adult world environment for the kids to aspire to? Some adults are, for sure, but not enough anymore to provide that iconic adult realm that kids would look expectantly forward to where they knew their lives would someday be filled with stability and sameness and calming boredom.

Today’s world is a free-for-all where it seems everyone is careening towards the same age. Mom’s on Facebook! Dad’s on the internet pretending to be a teenage girl! Your daughter has breasts at 9 years old and is hoping to someday become a successful pole dancing stripper like that grown up old lady, Miley Cyrus who she saw on video! (And she’s already practicing her primping, prancing and teasing in Advanced, Junior, Midget. Pee Wee Cheerleading!)  Your 10 year old son is already a veteran of World War III…in Cyberspace! Wherever that is! Experienced teachers are dating 5^th graders while inexperienced 5^th graders instruct adults on Television!

Where are the grown ups? Who’s minding the store? Has the golden age of television replaced the classics as a reference source for the civilized world? Will this unstoppable new virus called modern technology turn us all into same-age juvenile delinquents? Because everywhere we look now-a-days we can see and hear adults bemoaning, “They have to have it! We have to buy it! I don’t see how we can live without it no matter how much it costs! How can we keep them from going there and doing that and behaving like this and eating that and buying what they want…” How can we control them? We can’t control ourselves?!

Parents used to do it. I remember when. I was there. I’m not sure how they did it but I’m pretty sure it had to do with growing up and maintaining self control and taking on responsibility and well, acting like an adult and taking charge. I do know however, that we can’t go back to that time in the past or make the world be like it was then, nor should we want to. But parents had something back then that is lacking in many parents today. Even now I can still hear what my dad’s solution would be…

“Hey dad! We want to go to the internet!”

“Great! How ya gonna get there?!”

Back then parents were adults and ADULTS OWNED EVERYTHING, including access. Adult’s don’t own crap now-a-days and access is everywhere and access has become excess and it’s triple x all day long 24hrs a day.  One of the lessons that we need to learn or perhaps re-learn is that ownership, in the sense of taking responsibility for our actions and owning up to what our responsibilities are toward each other and our children, is everything and the public, us, everyone, must own the public schools together.

 

Feed Your Head: The Arts

Fine Arts Project!

art/ɑrt/ [ahrt] –noun 1. The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

Art, by allowing us to individually express our own feelings, experiences and realities helps each of us to answer the question, why? If we are honest about life then we know that there is always a why to be asked. And if there is always a why to be asked, there must also be the ability to imagine what we might yet know.

Setting our children, our students and ourselves on a lifelong journey with the arts, will encourage us to develop our own perceptions, appreciation and relationship with the world. I believe that nothing is more important than this. Even though people require relationships with others in order to lead a happy and healthy life, we are all still very solitary creatures immersed in our own self interests and we need to develop a relationship with our world as we see it and feel it and experience it during those times when we are alone. That’s what art is for!

It’s no accident that the arts have existed since the beginning of recorded time and undoubtedly since before that. We as artists have the ability to create that, which did not exist before, do we not? So then are not artists creators? Is a creationist then an artist too? Is, was, God an artist? That might explain a lot about what befuddles us in this world don’t you think? Discuss with yourself or whoever’s handy!