Safer Schools

By Ray "PtaRay" Bilodeau

The safety of your children starts at the elementary level of their education. You the parent have the first and foremost responsibility to interact with your child in such a way that they learn respect and honor before they start to display actions of hate and violence.

Once they are in Jr. High or High School, you the parent should be as responsible for their actions as they are.

Time for a bad analogy: Think about this: When you get a bad product (child) from the store (school) don't you complain to them first? When in reality it is the manufacturer (the parent) who needs to change the product?? bad analogy possibly, but the I think the idea is there none-the-less.

What you create at home will undoubtedly be seen at school when you are not there to keep it under scrutiny. This does not mean I am referring to all kids, or parents, no! But many know just what I am saying... because much of this behavior is accepted at home. Disrupting a classroom is much like a virus, it is easily spread from one to the other, and the discipline much like the cure takes effort to control it.

So what about those kids who are already on a path to that proverbial dead end? I believe that there are no children that cannot be reached. I think that the safety issues we are plagued with in today's educational systems are not rooted in bad kids, but much on sub-standard parenting skills, and the lack of communication between cultures and philosophies that have been politicized and injected into the education system.

I believe that the true culprit we see is the failure of many parents and teachers to speak what was once common spoken language, that being the discipline needed to keep respect and control in the classroom. Private schools have an advantage in the discipline areas, because they can always drop a child, and this hits the parents in the place it hurts most... the wallet!!

Public education has been held hostage by threats of litigation, perceived racial and religious persecution all based on the premise that if you speak your mind freely, and honestly, you will be subject to persecution yourself!?

Parents need to be educated in the understanding of their own needs as parents to support and stand behind those they trust to educate their children. Not just drop the hammer because their child has been disciplined. Making excuses, or falling back on things which create the threat of litigation, and other political motivated actions are killing education as we know it.

The language barrier between the school and the parents has become a huge issue, this can not be met just by making more and more flyers and leaflets in multitudes of varied languages alone. The need to get those who are immigrants to this nation to see that it is paramount and a needed part of their children's lives and successful futures to integrate and absorb some of this nations culture in order to find true happiness in America. When I say culture of America, I mean the spirit to be free, and to speak freely of ones ideas and ones own thoughts. The revolutionary visions that lead this nation to be the place so many wish to come to, yet so many refuse to accept has a culture of it's own.

I'm not referring to the corporate culture that we are lead to believe is the root of this nation, I mean the culture that allows for the freedoms so many died to preserve, the belief in things which are not based on race, or money, but on the premise that the idea is sound, and the concept is worthy of listening to it, regardless of the body which it is spoken from. The concept that puts all "label" affiliation, and such aside to hear the root idea first, before judgement is passed.

You know, mutual respect for the mind.... that which if it was actually practiced, would unite your children, and possibly would help put an end to the violence and cultures of hatred we are seeing an many schools today.

Thank You for taking the time to read this.

I'd be a fool to promise to fix it all, but I certainly am willing to give it my best shot!!

"An open mind has room to grow... A closed one is merely storage" E.R.Bilodeau