Tonight, as I browse through my tweets, I am listening to HLN Nancy Grace. They are discussing a horrible fight involving someone from MTV's Teen Mom. Now, I don't watch Teen Mom, but apparently this particular teen mom hasn't been making the best choices in her life, and now she is involved in a brutal fight with another girl. This fight comes after the fact that she has already threatened to kill her mother after learning the mother is suing for custody of the 9 month old baby. I will also note that the grandmother is already taking care of the child while the teen mother runs around with her friends.
Nancy Grace and her panel of speakers are discussing whether this teen mom should be raising her child. The panel is split - the good doctor thought that it was very important for the teen mom to have a relationship with her child. Nancy Grace said, "I'm much more worried about the effect it (visitation with the teen mom) would have on the baby, then the effect it would have on her (teen mom)." Nancy Grace goes on to say that what is most important is the baby's own good, not the teen mother, who is legally an adult, that continues to break the law and act like a cave woman.
OK, I added the cave woman part..............
Our society is riddled with dysfunction: drug use, prostitution, homelessness, mental illness. Our children are experiencing horrors that I can't imagine. As a principal, I've heard children cry when they don't want to go home because there is no food or their parent beats them. I've had a 10 year old child tell me he was forced to drive his parents home because they were drunk (over 5 miles on a rural road, with no streetlights). I've had children cry because they were living in a car which they park at a gas station every night. I've had children describe a meth lab to me, which was located in that child's living room.
All of these stories are true and are very common. Law dictates that I call when I feel that abuse and/or neglect is going on. Calls were made on every situation described above. Guess what? No child was removed from any of the homes (or lack thereof) and placed in a safe environment.
Does the general public know of the horrible conditions some of our children live in? Is it acceptable to leave children in an environment like this because its best to be with a birth parent? If a parent is a drug user, should they be allowed to care for their child? What about those parents that just don't take care of their children?
More and more, it is becoming the responsibility of the school to take care of these children. For the children I have described above, school is their safe haven. As a society, shouldn't we make sure that all children have a safe haven, whether they are at school or not?
These days, I hear teacher bashing and school bashing on the news, I read it in the paper. No one is mentioning the evils in our society that we force our children to endure everyday. Shouldn't we fix that? Isn't that more important than a child scoring Proficient or Advanced on a standardized achievement test?
All children should be learning.
All children should have a safe place to live, and someone to love and take care of them.
It's time to take a stand. It's time to do something for our children. Let's start by giving them what Maslow said every human needs: safety and security, food, shelter and most importantly, someone to love them.
Josh Wilson, Christian artist, says it best with his song "I Refuse:"
Sometimes I,
I just want to close my eyes
And act like everyone’s alright
When I know they’re not.
This world needs God
But it’s easier to stand and watch.
I could pray a prayer and just move on
Like nothing’s wrong.
But I refuse.
‘Cause I don’t want to live like I don’t care.
I don’t want to say another empty prayer.
Oh, I refuse to
Sit around and wait for someone else
To do what God has called me to do myself.
Oh, I could choose
Not to move but I refuse.
A simple challenge for all of those that say schools aren't doing a good job: We'll keep working hard, and keep doing the best we can. We will keep being facilitators of knowledge, keep loving children, keep guiding them. We will try new "best practices," keep learning ourselves so that we can be the best teachers we can be. We will do all of these things.
In the meantime, let's also work on making sure that when the children leave our schools, they have good homes to return to. Let's work on making sure that they have food in the kitchen, running water for bathing and someone to love them, teach them and guide them. I'll bet if we can fix this, the scores you want to go up will...............
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