This is the perfect analogy for No Child Left Behind, which is a ludicrously backward and ineffective (and unfunded) mandate of the Bush admin. PLEASE PLEASE let the next president get rid of it. You will not find one teacher or administrator that thinks it has worked or been a good idea. People who are not educators should not try to reform education. They have no idea what goes on in schools and classrooms every day. In an attempt to "leave no child behind" they have effectively dumbed down our education system so that every child will "pass". What level do you think tests need to be at so EVERY child, including ones with profound mental retardation, can all pass them? Yeah.
No Child Left Behind for Football...
1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If, after two years, they have not won the championship, their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.
2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!
3. Talented players will be asked to workout and improve on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.
4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game.
5. This will will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind.
6. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Environmental Footprint of Children
I was reading Mother Jones the other day and they had a stat sheet with all the facts about how much waste goes along with having kids.
It goes something like this:
It goes something like this:
- Americans emit 1,525 tons of CO2 emissions
- 72% of American adults have children
- One American child produces as much CO2 as 106 Haitians
- A typical baby uses 3,800 disposable diapers, up to 5000 before they are potty trained
- Lower birth rates in China equals fewer CO2
- The average american home has gone from 983 sq feet in 1950 to over 2434 sq feet today.
- 96% of American babies wear disposable diapers, compared with 6% of Chinese and 2% of Indian babies
- 60% of American children are more afraid of global warming than of car crashes, terrorism or cancer
- in 1969 5% of households had 3 or more cars, in 2001 23% did.
- US school busses release 3700 TONS of soot and 11 million tons of greenhouse gasses per year
- It would take 223 new trees planted to offset the CO2 produced by a child watching 3 hours of TV a day for 18 years
- 19% of American kids under the age of 1 have a tv in their room (WTH!?!?!)
- Disposable diapers constitute 2.1% of all municipal waste
- the year 2500: that is the year in which a diaper thrown away today will finally finish biodegrading (although the plastics in it will never biodegrade, only break down into tiny pieces which will get eaten by animals or bugs and create toxic pollutants)
- American children, 4% of the total world population, consume 40% of world toy production
- The average student throws away 90 lbs of packaged lunch products per year.
A child born in america today will (over his/her lifetime):
- produce 3.1 million pounds of CO2
- 22,828,508 lbs of water waste
- 16,372 lbs of yard waste
- 7,249 lbs food waste
- eat 1654 chickens, 74 turkeys, 25 pigs, 11 cows, 2 sheep and nearly 19,000 eggs.
- Use 1,870 barrels of petroleum
Kind of depressing? The solutions to me, although we need whole-society, legislative, paradigm-shift solutions as well (in other words, it cannot and SHOULD not all be on the individual) are:
- Use cloth diapers, dry them outside when you can, wash them in cold water
- don't use bleach or other chemicals. It is healthy for your kids to eat dirt and germs. my kids have probably eaten 5 lbs of pet hair since they were born and they are fine!
- Compost food waste
- leave grass clippings on the lawn (seriously! dont bag them up, just leave them there. it turns out fine, i promise)
- eat local organic food, grow your own
- buy bulk foods
- don't drive a lot
- don't buy toys and other crap
- don't let your kids watch tv (or keep it super minimal)
- live close to work and school to minimze transport issues
- don't eat meat (or keep it super minimal)
- don't buy over-packaged food, like lunchables and stuff like that
- live in a smaller house
- don't use electricity, heat, etc when you don't need to (be as efficient as you can)
- for toys/clothes: trade, barter, hand-me-down, or buy used
- don't fly a lot
Earth Life
Instead of Earth Day, or the even more PC Earth Week, why don't we just change our habits permanently? Like a dieter who yo-yos back and forth between skinny and fat, hopping on each new fad diet as it comes along, we talk about environmentalism as if one day or week could possibly have an impact. We can't go on a fad diet, we need real change and it needs to become permanent. Biofuels are a fad diet. Hybrid cars are a fad diet. Ethanol is a fad diet. Biodiesel cars are a fad diet. Shopping for 'green' products is a fad diet. We don't need an Earth Day. We need an Earth Life.
Let's face it, we can't 'conserve oil', compost, recycle or 'buy green' our way out of this crisis. The only solution is a massive restructing of our society, which is coming, whether we like it or not. It is coming because the end of cheap energy is here. Shipping our cheap food over massive distances, cheap air travel, cheap commuting in a car, cheap 3000 sq foot house heating bills, all of that is over. $4 a gallon gas is 2 months away according to the latest predictions.
Everything is going to change as oil gets more expensive, which in my mind, is a very Good Thing. People aren't going to change their habits unless they HAVE to. And believe me, we are all about to have to.
There is no substitute for oil that is going to allow us to keep living the way we have been. There just isn't. The only solution is to use less energy because to do otherwise is about to become prohibitively expensive.
I recently read an article somewhere about how companies have convinced us that the way to save the environment is to save our own families by buying certain products, etc. For example, people buy water from a water company because our tap water is 'unsafe'. Or they buy organic food. Or they buy an organic mattress. While there is nothing inherently wrong with these things, in fact I support it, it does smack of saving yourself and saying screw it to everyone else. If water isn't safe to drink, we need to do something about it, not just buy bottled water. Its kind of like the yuppification of environmentalism. Instead of a movement, we just have another offshoot of consumer culture. I really think a lot of people have bought into this idea that you can 'help' the earth by 'going green'. I've said it before and i'll say it again, every time you buy ANYTHING you hurt the planet. Not consuming is the only solution. You don't help the earth when you buy an organic cotton shirt, a Prius, a box of organic crackers, an energy star diswasher, or anything else. You only hurt the earth less than the standard counterpart. Consuming is not the answer. It has never been. Not buying is the only solution...we need to strive for that ideal, as hard as it may be.
I was teaching my juvenile delinquent students at the night school the other night, and I decided since it was Earth Day that I would focus on environmental issues. We were talking about carbon footprint and how to reduce it, and I showed them how to calculate it. It occurred to me then, as it often does, how incredibly horrible our family is doing at the whole car thing. The weather this spring has been terrible and I've been so not wanting to ride my bike or walk anywhere long distance. We are doing great on every other front, with the exception maybe of food packaging, which I still find practically impossible to reduce further, except car driving. And if you want to feel REALLY depressed about our future, try talking to some high school students. So many of these kids, the vast majority, are so self-absorbed, instant-gratification junkies that they don't care at all about their impact on the planet. They are obsessed with material things. I know some of it is just their age, but I can't help but think that a LOT of it is how we are raising our kids: in front of the TV, exposed to commercialism everywhere, 5000 advertisements a year, video games, IPods, cell phones, fast food, instant EVERYTHING. They get what they want when they want it. They never have to delay their immediate desires. It's sad. Even the poorest kids I work with have an IPod and a cell phone and eat junk food at almost every meal.
Our plans for the near future involve moving to a smaller town. I sincerely hope that this reduces our need to drive. Not that portland is so big, or doesn't have great mass transit, but it is just big ENOUGH that riding your bike everywhere is a pretty big challenge. Riding the bus and transferring all over the place with 2 kids is a similarly daunting challenge. I think my "Earth Life" challenge is going to have to include a limit on mileage...we are going to have to set a limit, such as 50 miles per week in a car, and stick to it. So if we want to drive to salem, we pretty much just used up our whole week's rations in one go. If we want to drive around town, we need to keep track of it and stay below it. Our family has done a lot of work, but giving up or reducing our car use has pretty much....well, it's just not happening. Now if gas is $5 a gallon, i'm pretty sure i'll be thinking differently...
Oh, and we bought a new laptop. GOD! i'm such a hypocrit! we are all hypocrits. How do we live in this society and not trash the planet? Sometimes it feels like the most impossible task on earth. I'm sure the parts to make this laptop were mined by 12 year olds in South Africa.
So...how's that for an uplifting Earth Day message? I just can't stand it when people's solution for earth day is to buy an organic cotton earth day t-shirt. Yeah, that's gonna save us all.
Let's face it, we can't 'conserve oil', compost, recycle or 'buy green' our way out of this crisis. The only solution is a massive restructing of our society, which is coming, whether we like it or not. It is coming because the end of cheap energy is here. Shipping our cheap food over massive distances, cheap air travel, cheap commuting in a car, cheap 3000 sq foot house heating bills, all of that is over. $4 a gallon gas is 2 months away according to the latest predictions.
Everything is going to change as oil gets more expensive, which in my mind, is a very Good Thing. People aren't going to change their habits unless they HAVE to. And believe me, we are all about to have to.
There is no substitute for oil that is going to allow us to keep living the way we have been. There just isn't. The only solution is to use less energy because to do otherwise is about to become prohibitively expensive.
I recently read an article somewhere about how companies have convinced us that the way to save the environment is to save our own families by buying certain products, etc. For example, people buy water from a water company because our tap water is 'unsafe'. Or they buy organic food. Or they buy an organic mattress. While there is nothing inherently wrong with these things, in fact I support it, it does smack of saving yourself and saying screw it to everyone else. If water isn't safe to drink, we need to do something about it, not just buy bottled water. Its kind of like the yuppification of environmentalism. Instead of a movement, we just have another offshoot of consumer culture. I really think a lot of people have bought into this idea that you can 'help' the earth by 'going green'. I've said it before and i'll say it again, every time you buy ANYTHING you hurt the planet. Not consuming is the only solution. You don't help the earth when you buy an organic cotton shirt, a Prius, a box of organic crackers, an energy star diswasher, or anything else. You only hurt the earth less than the standard counterpart. Consuming is not the answer. It has never been. Not buying is the only solution...we need to strive for that ideal, as hard as it may be.
I was teaching my juvenile delinquent students at the night school the other night, and I decided since it was Earth Day that I would focus on environmental issues. We were talking about carbon footprint and how to reduce it, and I showed them how to calculate it. It occurred to me then, as it often does, how incredibly horrible our family is doing at the whole car thing. The weather this spring has been terrible and I've been so not wanting to ride my bike or walk anywhere long distance. We are doing great on every other front, with the exception maybe of food packaging, which I still find practically impossible to reduce further, except car driving. And if you want to feel REALLY depressed about our future, try talking to some high school students. So many of these kids, the vast majority, are so self-absorbed, instant-gratification junkies that they don't care at all about their impact on the planet. They are obsessed with material things. I know some of it is just their age, but I can't help but think that a LOT of it is how we are raising our kids: in front of the TV, exposed to commercialism everywhere, 5000 advertisements a year, video games, IPods, cell phones, fast food, instant EVERYTHING. They get what they want when they want it. They never have to delay their immediate desires. It's sad. Even the poorest kids I work with have an IPod and a cell phone and eat junk food at almost every meal.
Our plans for the near future involve moving to a smaller town. I sincerely hope that this reduces our need to drive. Not that portland is so big, or doesn't have great mass transit, but it is just big ENOUGH that riding your bike everywhere is a pretty big challenge. Riding the bus and transferring all over the place with 2 kids is a similarly daunting challenge. I think my "Earth Life" challenge is going to have to include a limit on mileage...we are going to have to set a limit, such as 50 miles per week in a car, and stick to it. So if we want to drive to salem, we pretty much just used up our whole week's rations in one go. If we want to drive around town, we need to keep track of it and stay below it. Our family has done a lot of work, but giving up or reducing our car use has pretty much....well, it's just not happening. Now if gas is $5 a gallon, i'm pretty sure i'll be thinking differently...
Oh, and we bought a new laptop. GOD! i'm such a hypocrit! we are all hypocrits. How do we live in this society and not trash the planet? Sometimes it feels like the most impossible task on earth. I'm sure the parts to make this laptop were mined by 12 year olds in South Africa.
So...how's that for an uplifting Earth Day message? I just can't stand it when people's solution for earth day is to buy an organic cotton earth day t-shirt. Yeah, that's gonna save us all.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Pity party
Ok...so...no, in fact, this house isn't going to work out. It turns out there is a whole bunch of stuff wrong with it and the people buying it wont have the money to fix it up. Apparently it is totally uninsulated and is like 110 degrees in the summer and costs $250 a month to heat in the winter. the people buying it wont have the money for new flooring, fixing, etc, for probably a year. so if we want to live on plywood floors...
she also, it turns out, wants a bunch of money for the place. which was not what we had originally understood.
So can we just take a moment to reflect upon all of the bad, annoying, horrible crap that has happened to our family in the past year?
Good stuff....
she also, it turns out, wants a bunch of money for the place. which was not what we had originally understood.
So can we just take a moment to reflect upon all of the bad, annoying, horrible crap that has happened to our family in the past year?
- august 2007: jay gets fired from his job because his boss is a mental case
- september 2007: jay and i both find jobs, start working, find daycare
- our daycare falls through and there is a scary, desperate, last-minute struggle to find new childcare
- october: jay loses his other, new job because his boss is a jerk, which is later confirmed by several other people, but he didn't know it when he took the job. He suffers subsequently from some kind of PTSD where he is convinced that he is actually a bad person and didn't just get unlucky twice.
- november: laura suffers a mini mental breakdown from job stress; jay hates being a stay at home parent
- december: laura's temporary job ends, we lose our health insurance
- january: we get denied life insurance due to a mix-up and are STILL going through the process of trying to get it reinstated
- February: our dog leaps over our fence and bites our mailman. Chaos ensues with the post office threatens to sue us, mail delivery is stopped, we have to take our dog to another state, etc.
- Jay goes to the emergency room for abdominal freakyness
- march: the dog can't be adopted out and has to come back to us to live with us incognito. We have to basically hide him.
- We are told that we have a 'free' house waiting for us across the street from my mom. Hallelujah! we are saved!
- april: oh, actually, no, we DON'T have the house.
- Our computer crashes and we lose all data on our hard drive, including a report for jay's work that is over 15 pages long and all his research for the report. We also lose all of my application materials, resumes, letters of recommendation, etc.
- Due to miscommunication, Jay misses his first meeting with his supervisors at his new part-time, contract-based job. Thankfully they were understanding.
- Laura and Jay realize that we need at least one of us to to have stable, long-term work that provides benefits and so Laura starts looking for a teaching job full time for next year
- For the first time ever, our taxes show we OWE $1000. How is that possible?
Good stuff....
- when jay lost his job, at least i had the education/training that i could get a good paying job and a temporary position was open at my old school.
- I've been able to substitute teach every day since that job ended and the pay is pretty good, the work is easy and stress-free and its almost always at my school where i know all the staff and students.
- Jay's friends (the ones who cost him his first job due to starting up their new company) gave him a part time job at that new company which has helped him mentally and us financially
- we have lots of family and friends who support us.
- we were forced to take our dog back, which really is better than never seeing him again
- jay has recently been offered and started working for a job that could possibly turn into full time employment. for now, its a good part time job that he can do from home
- we got all our stupid life and health insurance business sorted out (we think!)
- Thanks to our great president, G.W. Bush, we will get an 'incentive' check which will pay off our tax bill and then some
- we will not be moving to a homeless shelter any time soon
- I'm sort of excited to start teaching for real next year
- We have possibly found good drop-in childcare for when we both need to be working
- our kids have never been in daycare or in the care of another person other than short-term since they were born
- nobody in our family is sick or dying (with the exception of some very old grandparents)
- I didn't get accidentally pregnant during this time (this is sort of a joke. whenever jay is really stressed out, i'm always like, look on the bright side, at least i'm not pregnant!)
- we met some amazing people and are in the process of starting something really exciting with them, but this is kind of a secret and i will tell you all about it later.
- did i mention nobody in our family has cancer or anything? yeah.
- i got to go to ireland and it was awesome
- we get to spend some time on the east coast this summer to see friends/family
- nobody has wrecked any of our cars.
- we didn't have to borrow any money or rack up any credit card debt during this past year. somehow, miraculously, our expenses and intake have evened out somewhat and we STILL have no credit card debt. student debt on the other hand...
- our children are smart, fun, cute, healthy, loving, play together now, and are just joyful (usually!)
so yeah, it hasn't been all bad. but it has been incredibly stressful. I try to remember that we have a lot to be thankful for.
Oh, and i LOVE shampoo bar! i will never use shampoo out of a bottle again! and i also love conditioner bar! its the best.
I'm proud to say, we now make our own of the following: laundry soap, dish soap, air freshener, household cleaners, food (our garden is starting to grow again!), bread, kombucha, etc. and i get to mooch homebrew beer off my brother.
on a final note, is it just us, or is food CRAZY expensive lately? i swear we spend more money on food now than we ever have. i sadly just do not have the time to go all the places that i should in order to lower the bill. i need to quit New Seasons and start loving Winco again.
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