It's STILL National Police Week...
I am going to try to address our "saviors in blue" to some extent every day this week, so keep that in mind.
Now when it comes to police work, those who CHOOSE this vocation do so at risk to themselves every day.
That's a given.
The regular citizens have little, if ANY idea of all the "things" (for lack of a proper nomenclature) that describe what only ONE officer can be privy to during ANY shift in ANY city.
If it's not some guy with motor oil, a hammer and a plastic bag exposing himself in front of his picture window, it might be a call for an "unusual odor" that happens to turn out to be nothing more than COFFEE BREWING (at a place that ...well, brews coffee).
It could be a pursuit that rises to speeds well in excess of posted limits.
Or it could be a man urinating against some building.
It could be pulling someone over for a traffic stop, and finding a METH lab in the back seat (next to the infant in the car seat).
Or it could be a distraught person attempting suicide with a firearm.
Whatever the situation, THESE people are the ones that have to deal with it FIRST.
They get on scene before anyone else like the EMS or fire department, and THEY are the ones that walk into all these potential piles of crap that the populace seems fit to place at their disposal.
If you ever want to see how weird or disturbed some people can be, ride along with an officer. It's like living an episode of COPS for a few hours. You will see things that will change the way you view life in the city you live in.
Granted, most runs are pretty much breaking up domestic squabbles, ticketing speeders, and even sometimes (yawn) directing traffic.
Then there are those times when chasing the radio can get real nasty, real fast.
I like to think of it as hours of banality, laced with minutes of adrenalin rushes and profuse sweating (and that can happen in the middle of January).
And of course, there IS the paperwork (digitally-speaking). Using computers sure beats the snot out of writing a report (and then getting someone to decipher it, because the officer tends to write in TONGUES...LOL), or typing one (and blowing the city's budget on White-Out).
So again, I would mention to everyone that the best (and easiest) thing you can do for your community this week is to THANK AN OFFICER.
Doesn't take much, means a helluva lot to many, and goes a LONG way to make that officer appreciate the reasons they do what they do.
Meanwhile, closer to home...
We hear the FWCS wants to reinvent the method of teaching (again), so that schoolkids have more "relevancy" with their studies.
Well, that would work out BEST with HISTORY, right?
Kind of, but think about MATH...pretty "relevant" subject, don'cha think?
I mean, if you can't count for crap, you're NOT going to balance a checkbook (or possibly even get one), figure out home finances, or wonder if you got the right amount of change at the BK.
Then again, you don't need great math skills to figure out that "dime bag amount" on that postal scale, do you?
Seems ENGLISH would ride along on that thought as well. If you cannot properly COMMUNICATE with other people, who the hell is going to know WHAT you're getting at? And that especially goes for all this "street-talk" these days.
Enough with this sub-cultural bane on our society.
Man the hell up and LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH, for God's sake...you're in AMERICA, not some 3rd world African nation. That goes for all the immigrants. It's fine and dandy to keep your "mother tongue", but don't FORCE everyone and their kids to HAVE to learn YOUR language because YOU'RE too damn lazy to want to learn ENGLISH.
Get with the freaking program, people!
Now that's not to mean that FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROGRAMS should be abandoned...Hell, no.
It makes SENSE to involve yourself in another culture and language, but NOT to the extent that you push aside your OWN, Many of the sciences and medical fields still use root words from those languages such as Latin and German. And there's nothing wrong with going to a Spanish restaurant, and ordering in the native tongue with the proper dialect, is there?
Hell, I can swear in about EIGHT different languages, so there IS something there for everyone...!
But with ANY "reinvention" of ANY program, it's ONLY AS GOOD as the students who are OCCUPYING the seats in the classroom, and that's a whole OTHER subject. With no warm bodies learning in the classroom, any learning process WILL fail those not present..simple, huh? This refers to those "problem" kids with issues about LEARNING (like it's a "white" thing, for example).
That will take better PARENTING skills and education OF those parents.
Address THAT, and the kids will be a lot less troublesome, and a lot more visible in the classroom.
I tend to think of this as going BACK TO BASICS.
Along those lines...
Our Governor has passed a bill that gives educators MORE PROTECTION in their classrooms...and about damn time, too.
This will go to prevent those "frivolous lawsuits" that are all to common in schools these days.
Educators are not YOUR kids' parents or a policeman.
That's YOUR job, and this bill goes to highlight that aspect.
If your child is NOT behaving in school, maybe YOU need to change tactics AT HOME.
School doesn't make bad kids...or bad kids WORSE.
That we can attribute to life OUTSIDE of those hallowed, ivy-covered walls of education.
It's not the teacher's responsibility to UNDO all that the world is doing to these kids the REST of the time they're NOT in class. That's the job of the parents, and the community (to a lesser degree).
It would also involve the church.
It involves the "friends" your child pals around with, and THEIR friends as well.
It involves respecting other people and their rights.
It involves respecting authority, whether that authority wears a shield or not,
It involves teaching your children MANNERS, ETHICS and MORALITY.
It involves imbuing them with a sense of personal responsibility and integrity.
And it involves them learning accountability for their OWN actions, and understanding what consequences are.
If parents force the schools to start teaching ALL this to their children, then they have abrogated the responsibility of that child's upbringing...not the best path to SOCIALISM, but it DOES WORK...ask anyone living during the 1930s in Germany.
It really doesn't have to be that way (thankfully).
YOU have the power to change that.
YOU are the ones that should be providing such knowledge to your children.
YOU control the outcome of the future by molding the minds of the present.
And only YOU can make that difference, thereby passing such values along TO your children, so that THEY can do likewise.
It's not hard, but it DOES require effort.
But you're AMERICANS...and we do "effort" pretty damn well, from past history. So remember that...in this case, it IS all about YOU.
Stay safe out there, America.