We are so stupid, we deserve that F

WOW…are we really that dumb?? As children we could not wait to be adults…to live in the adult world and “make the rules”. As adults we have a responsibility to our community for its present survival and well as its future.

I am seeing adults have become “stupid” (a word I reserve usage of unless it is needed). Stupid people are people who make “stupid judgment calls”. Now the state of Alaska‘s voters are being “stupid”. We are all over 18 and have obtained the “rights” of an adult in our society. Why do we still think like children?

As kids we “hated school”…is this why we will not keep the school budgets up to par? That hate for having to get up every morning and go sit in a class room and listen to other students snore, fart, and belch. The hassle of carrying books and studying for exams…and we wont even go into the teachers…their bossy and nosey.

GROW UP!...If it were not for the lessons we learned in school…more than “those teachers” ever taught us…we would not function as adults. Getting up in the morning and having to meet a schedule, taught us how to hold together a job, family and social life. This lesson taught to us at the expenses of our parents who were there to bail us out should we screw up.

The social life in school helps us learn to deal with the differences of opinion and person on the work front…it is so much more than just book learning. We need to realize this.

After school sports, band, art classes, foreign languages, and even “study hall” are important to our communities…not only do they provide something that is structured and time consuming for our youth, (in case you don’t see it…this will keep them off the streets and drugs too…hellooo) but they provide the students with a sense of school spirit. Who did not look forward to going to the Home Coming Game? Sports and music provide entertainment for the community and can be used to keep a community in contact with each other.

My fondest memories are of Homer at a time when the whole town turned out to freeze their buns off and watch a “Winter Carnival Parade” that consisted of mainly local businesses and children…after words…cherry pit spitting contests and bowling…warm meals with friends and bon fires on the beach…oh yah…the reason for Winter Carnival was NOT the parade…but the Schools Wrestling Meet…Homer High hosted one of the largest State competition back then…schools from all over the state would show…people would be camping in “host” families yards…Thanks to the School we made new friends from Bethel to Barrow, Sitka to Dutch Harbor.

This is long gone…budget cuts from long ago…omitted the Villages and Island communities from joining the rest. Anchorage and the Mat-Sue became so populated that they no longer “needed” the smaller schools for competition and new “districts” were formed. I see this as segregation…I see it as discrimination…I see it as unfair…and I will forecast that the “no kid left behind” program is leaving a “huge” portion of Alaska children “left behind.”

When the Peninsula Schools get to the point that they can only offer “core classes” needed for graduation…they will lose a big portion of their students. For many students it is the art, shop, and music classes that bring them to school in the first place. By removing these classes we are removing incentive for them to attend. If the problems that will arise are not obvious I will point a few out to you…

1.Kids without anything to do…will find something to do.

2. Denying these kids anything but Core classes will affect them in attempts to get into a decent Upper Educational Facility.

3. No education leads to lower income jobs…poverty, drug abuse and all the things we are trying to alleviate from our society.

Funding for schools is a serious Nation Wide Problem…it is time we find another source for this income. Tax payers do not want the whole responsibility for the children of their community’s education, nor their communities’ future. As these “children” will soon be responsible for our well being. The Federal Governments monies are tied up in trying to “better” foreign countries education and legal systems. This may do us some service when our crime rates rise so high we need somewhere “safe” to migrate too.

I am not sure of the answer to the funding issues but the answer to our crime problems is written all over the text book.