There's a video on CNN.com today about a high school that is abolishing the honor roll because it causes too much stress for students. Put simply, I think that's BS.
I remember high school. I always made pretty good grades, and part of the reason for that was that I liked be rewarded for my efforts. There were other reasons, too (internal motivation, my dad killing me if I didn't, etc), but recognition did play a role. I knew that if I went to school, turned in an assignment that wasn't up to par, I'd hear about it - from my teachers, friends, and parents. Sure, I was stressed in high school. But when has stress become such a bad thing??
In the last 5-10 years, kids have become coddled to the point that it makes me want to puke. Teachers can't use red pens because it's damaging to kids' self-esteem. Huh? Sports teams can't hold try-outs because it's not fair that some kids aren't good enough to make the team. Oookay. Sure, seeing your mistakes and realizing that you're not the best can be stressful, but that's what life is all about. If kids go through life without learning about these things, they're going to be in for a fun time when they're adults. Can you imagine an employer just hiring everyone so they didn't hurt anyone's feelings? Unfortunately that's not the way things work in the real world.
I think schools have an obligation to prepare students for life after high school. Any way you look at it, stress is part of the real world. We are not doing kids a favor by protecting them and not teaching them how to deal with these things. Life's tough - and they should be prepared. Abolishing stress from their lives is NOT they way to do it.
Showing posts with label Politico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politico. Show all posts
Monday, December 18, 2006
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
One of the best Pro-Choice Essays I've read in a while
The Rights Of the Born
By Anne Lamott, ANNE LAMOTT is a novelist and essayist. Her most recent book is "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" (Riverhead, 2005).
February 10, 2006
EVERYTHING WAS going swimmingly on the panel. The subject was politics and faith, and I was on stage with two clergymen with progressive spiritual leanings, and a moderator who is liberal and Catholic. We were having a discussion with the audience of 1,300 people in Washington about many of the social justice topics on which we agree the immorality of the federal budget, the wrongness of the president's war in Iraq. Then an older man came to the mike and raised the issue of abortion, and everyone just lost his or her mind.
Or, at any rate, I did.
Maybe it was the way in which the man couched the question, which was about how we should reconcile our progressive stances on peace and justice with the "murder of a million babies every year in America." The man who asked the question was soft-spoken, neatly and casually dressed.
First Richard, a Franciscan priest, answered that this is indeed a painful issue but that it is not the only "pro-life" issue that progressives even Catholics should concern themselves with during elections. There are also the matters of capital punishment and the war in Iraq, and of HIV. Then Jim, an evangelical, spoke about the need to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and the need to diffuse abortion as a political issue, by welcoming pro-choice and pro-life supporters to the discussion, with equal respect for their positions. He spoke gently about how "morally ambiguous" the issue is.
I sat there simmering, like a samovar; nice Jesusy me. The moderator turned to me and asked quietly if I would like to respond. I did: I wanted to respond by pushing over our table.
Instead, I shook my head. I love and respect the Franciscan and the evangelical, and agree with them 90-plus percent of the time. So I did not say anything, at first.
Then, when I was asked to answer the next question, I paused, and returned to the topic of abortion. There was a loud buzzing in my head, the voice of reason that says, "You have the right to remain silent," but the voice of my conscience was insistent. I wanted to express calmly, eloquently, that pro-choice people understand that there are two lives involved in an abortion one born (the pregnant woman) and one not (the fetus) but that the born person must be allowed to decide what is right.
Also, I wanted to wave a gun around, to show what a real murder looks like. This tipped me off that I should hold my tongue, until further notice. And I tried.
But then I announced that I needed to speak out on behalf of the many women present in the crowd, including myself, who had had abortions, and the women whose daughters might need one in the not-too-distant future people who must know that teenage girls will have abortions, whether in clinics or dirty backrooms. Women whose lives had been righted and redeemed by Roe vs. Wade. My answer was met with some applause but mostly a shocked silence.
Pall is a good word. And it did not feel good to be the cause of that pall. I knew what I was supposed to have said, as a progressive Christian: that it's all very complicated and painful, and that Jim was right in saying that the abortion rate in America is way too high for a caring and compassionate society.
But I did the only thing I could think to do: plunge on, and tell my truth. I said that this is the most intimate decision a woman makes, and she makes it all alone, in her deepest heart of hearts, sometimes with the man by whom she is pregnant, with her dearest friends or with her doctor but without the personal opinion of say, Tom DeLay or Karl Rove.
I said I could not believe that men committed to equality and civil rights were still challenging the basic rights of women. I thought about all the photo-ops at which President Bush had signed legislation limiting abortion rights, surrounded by 10 or so white, self-righteous married men, who have forced God knows how many girlfriends into doing God knows what. I thought of the time Bush appeared on stage with children born from frozen embryos, children he calls "snowflake babies," and of the embryos themselves, which he calls the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.
And somehow, as I was answering, I got louder and maybe even more emphatic than I actually felt, and said it was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses are not babies yet; that there was actually a real difference between pro-abortion people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.
Then I said that a woman's right to choose was nobody else's goddamn business. This got their attention.
A cloud of misery fell over the room, and the stage. Finally, Jim said something unifying enough for us to proceed that liberals must not treat people with opposing opinions on abortion with contempt and exclusion, partly because it's tough material, and partly because it is so critical that we win these next big elections.
It was not until the reception that I finally realized part of the problem no one had told me that the crowd was made up largely of Catholics.
I had flown in at dawn on a red-eye, and, in my exhaustion, had somehow missed this one tiny bit of information. I was mortified: I had to eat my body weight in chocolate just to calm myself.
But then I asked myself: Would I, should I, have given a calmer answer? Wouldn't it have been more useful and harder to dismiss me if I had sounded more reasonable, less what is the word spewy?
Maybe I could have presented my position in a less strident, divisive manner. But the questioner's use of the words "murder" and "babies" had put me on the defensive. Plus I am so confused about why we are still having to argue with patriarchal sentimentality about teeny weenie so-called babies some microscopic, some no bigger than the sea monkeys we used to send away for when real, live, already born women, many of them desperately poor, get such short shrift from the current administration.
Most women like me would much rather use our time and energy fighting to make the world safe and just and fair for the children we do have, and do love and for the children of New Orleans and the children of Darfur. I am old and tired and menopausal and would mostly like to be left alone: I have had my abortions, and I have had a child.
But as a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women is a crucial part of that: It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.
During the reception, an old woman came up to me, and said, "If you hadn't spoken out, I would have spit," and then she raised her fist in the power salute. We huddled together for awhile, and ate M&Ms to give us strength. It was a kind of communion, for those of us who still believe that civil rights and equality and even common sense will somehow be sovereign, some day
By Anne Lamott, ANNE LAMOTT is a novelist and essayist. Her most recent book is "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" (Riverhead, 2005).
February 10, 2006
EVERYTHING WAS going swimmingly on the panel. The subject was politics and faith, and I was on stage with two clergymen with progressive spiritual leanings, and a moderator who is liberal and Catholic. We were having a discussion with the audience of 1,300 people in Washington about many of the social justice topics on which we agree the immorality of the federal budget, the wrongness of the president's war in Iraq. Then an older man came to the mike and raised the issue of abortion, and everyone just lost his or her mind.
Or, at any rate, I did.
Maybe it was the way in which the man couched the question, which was about how we should reconcile our progressive stances on peace and justice with the "murder of a million babies every year in America." The man who asked the question was soft-spoken, neatly and casually dressed.
First Richard, a Franciscan priest, answered that this is indeed a painful issue but that it is not the only "pro-life" issue that progressives even Catholics should concern themselves with during elections. There are also the matters of capital punishment and the war in Iraq, and of HIV. Then Jim, an evangelical, spoke about the need to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and the need to diffuse abortion as a political issue, by welcoming pro-choice and pro-life supporters to the discussion, with equal respect for their positions. He spoke gently about how "morally ambiguous" the issue is.
I sat there simmering, like a samovar; nice Jesusy me. The moderator turned to me and asked quietly if I would like to respond. I did: I wanted to respond by pushing over our table.
Instead, I shook my head. I love and respect the Franciscan and the evangelical, and agree with them 90-plus percent of the time. So I did not say anything, at first.
Then, when I was asked to answer the next question, I paused, and returned to the topic of abortion. There was a loud buzzing in my head, the voice of reason that says, "You have the right to remain silent," but the voice of my conscience was insistent. I wanted to express calmly, eloquently, that pro-choice people understand that there are two lives involved in an abortion one born (the pregnant woman) and one not (the fetus) but that the born person must be allowed to decide what is right.
Also, I wanted to wave a gun around, to show what a real murder looks like. This tipped me off that I should hold my tongue, until further notice. And I tried.
But then I announced that I needed to speak out on behalf of the many women present in the crowd, including myself, who had had abortions, and the women whose daughters might need one in the not-too-distant future people who must know that teenage girls will have abortions, whether in clinics or dirty backrooms. Women whose lives had been righted and redeemed by Roe vs. Wade. My answer was met with some applause but mostly a shocked silence.
Pall is a good word. And it did not feel good to be the cause of that pall. I knew what I was supposed to have said, as a progressive Christian: that it's all very complicated and painful, and that Jim was right in saying that the abortion rate in America is way too high for a caring and compassionate society.
But I did the only thing I could think to do: plunge on, and tell my truth. I said that this is the most intimate decision a woman makes, and she makes it all alone, in her deepest heart of hearts, sometimes with the man by whom she is pregnant, with her dearest friends or with her doctor but without the personal opinion of say, Tom DeLay or Karl Rove.
I said I could not believe that men committed to equality and civil rights were still challenging the basic rights of women. I thought about all the photo-ops at which President Bush had signed legislation limiting abortion rights, surrounded by 10 or so white, self-righteous married men, who have forced God knows how many girlfriends into doing God knows what. I thought of the time Bush appeared on stage with children born from frozen embryos, children he calls "snowflake babies," and of the embryos themselves, which he calls the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.
And somehow, as I was answering, I got louder and maybe even more emphatic than I actually felt, and said it was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses are not babies yet; that there was actually a real difference between pro-abortion people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.
Then I said that a woman's right to choose was nobody else's goddamn business. This got their attention.
A cloud of misery fell over the room, and the stage. Finally, Jim said something unifying enough for us to proceed that liberals must not treat people with opposing opinions on abortion with contempt and exclusion, partly because it's tough material, and partly because it is so critical that we win these next big elections.
It was not until the reception that I finally realized part of the problem no one had told me that the crowd was made up largely of Catholics.
I had flown in at dawn on a red-eye, and, in my exhaustion, had somehow missed this one tiny bit of information. I was mortified: I had to eat my body weight in chocolate just to calm myself.
But then I asked myself: Would I, should I, have given a calmer answer? Wouldn't it have been more useful and harder to dismiss me if I had sounded more reasonable, less what is the word spewy?
Maybe I could have presented my position in a less strident, divisive manner. But the questioner's use of the words "murder" and "babies" had put me on the defensive. Plus I am so confused about why we are still having to argue with patriarchal sentimentality about teeny weenie so-called babies some microscopic, some no bigger than the sea monkeys we used to send away for when real, live, already born women, many of them desperately poor, get such short shrift from the current administration.
Most women like me would much rather use our time and energy fighting to make the world safe and just and fair for the children we do have, and do love and for the children of New Orleans and the children of Darfur. I am old and tired and menopausal and would mostly like to be left alone: I have had my abortions, and I have had a child.
But as a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women is a crucial part of that: It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.
During the reception, an old woman came up to me, and said, "If you hadn't spoken out, I would have spit," and then she raised her fist in the power salute. We huddled together for awhile, and ate M&Ms to give us strength. It was a kind of communion, for those of us who still believe that civil rights and equality and even common sense will somehow be sovereign, some day
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Sometimes I Hate Mississippi
I'm really upset right now. I found out that it is going to cost nearly $2500 to license my car in Mississippi. EVERY YEAR. Are you freaking crazy?!? That's almost as much as Donald makes in a month -- there is no way we can afford to spend a month's income putting a sticker on just MY car. There's seriously something wrong here.
Here's how car licensing fees are figured: it's 30% of the blue book value of your car plus whatever the county wants to charge. I drive a 2001 Ford Focus that's worth about $8000. 30% of $8000 is $2400. You've got to be kidding me.
I get that states need to charge taxes to make money, yada yada yada. But come on now. I know Mississippi is not the richest state out there, but charging that kind of money to license a car is ridiculous. In Wisconsin it costs $55 a year, period. How does this state expect its citizens to ever get ahead when the average annual income is about $20,000 and then charges over 15% of that just to legally drive your car???
Charging that kind of money to license a car just doesn't make sense. I guess I could see charging a percentage on luxury vehicles. I mean, really, who NEEDS a car worth $40,000? If you've got that kind of money to spend on a car, then I'd guess you've got the money to pay high taxes on it. But for average, everyday people like me and my family, charging those kind of amounts only hurts us. With my car payment, insurance, gas and the liceensing fees, it costs $635 a month to drive my car. I don't even want to think about how much it will be when I add in Donald's car. That's more than we pay in rent each month.
If there was an alternative to owning a car in Mississippi, I'd consider it. But there's not. No car = no job = no money. There's no public transportation system here. So really, this state's gotcha by the balls. That is, unless you want to drive a $500 piece of shit rust bucket that MIGHT get you where you want to go. I don't get it. I really, really, don't get it. It makes me want to move.
Here's how car licensing fees are figured: it's 30% of the blue book value of your car plus whatever the county wants to charge. I drive a 2001 Ford Focus that's worth about $8000. 30% of $8000 is $2400. You've got to be kidding me.
I get that states need to charge taxes to make money, yada yada yada. But come on now. I know Mississippi is not the richest state out there, but charging that kind of money to license a car is ridiculous. In Wisconsin it costs $55 a year, period. How does this state expect its citizens to ever get ahead when the average annual income is about $20,000 and then charges over 15% of that just to legally drive your car???
Charging that kind of money to license a car just doesn't make sense. I guess I could see charging a percentage on luxury vehicles. I mean, really, who NEEDS a car worth $40,000? If you've got that kind of money to spend on a car, then I'd guess you've got the money to pay high taxes on it. But for average, everyday people like me and my family, charging those kind of amounts only hurts us. With my car payment, insurance, gas and the liceensing fees, it costs $635 a month to drive my car. I don't even want to think about how much it will be when I add in Donald's car. That's more than we pay in rent each month.
If there was an alternative to owning a car in Mississippi, I'd consider it. But there's not. No car = no job = no money. There's no public transportation system here. So really, this state's gotcha by the balls. That is, unless you want to drive a $500 piece of shit rust bucket that MIGHT get you where you want to go. I don't get it. I really, really, don't get it. It makes me want to move.
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