Decapitation is not assassination and other first grade lessons
Because of budget cuts I was not invited back to teach the current affairs class to the first and eighth grades at my local schools. I continue, however, to be very aware that two main focus areas for educators need to be:
· Basic skills of “reading, writing, and arithmetic “as well as others which are necessary to navigate the world as adults in today’s world.
· How we select core values and how we use those to make decisions.
I am a firm believer in learning basic skills whether one is operating a machine, designing and implementing a budget, communicating within one’s family, the workplace or the community, operating a vehicle, or designing a drone which can access damage following an event such as a hurricane. Those skills do not tell me what core value need to guide decisions about how we live with mother nature and each other or even how we take care of ourselves. It is up to all those responsible for teaching our children – parents, school teachers, neighbors, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other community leaders – to impress upon our children that skills are used in a specific situation to enhance our goals of how we live with each other and mother nature. In order to arrive at those decisions our children need to know how to choose core values and how to apply them in decision making situations.
Although I love poetry and the creative use of language in general, I have never thought that what I think of as double speak is a helpful tool for learning to work and live together. Yet, daily we are all confronted with double speak. We are told that A is not always A. Sometimes A is A and sometimes it is B or C or ….
I was thinking of this yesterday when listening to a report on National Public Radio about the options of the President of the United States with regard to leaders such as President of Kim Jong-un. I heard the “expert” saying that while it is illegal for the President to order the assassination of the leader of a country with which we are not at war such as was the case with Iraq, it is legal for the president to order or authorize the decapitation of the leader of what is considered a hostile leader. That would legally not be considered an assassination. It would not necessarily be what is now termed a regime change.
Later I spent some time attempting to do some internet research on this subject. I did not locate the specific NPR interview, but I did find some articles in Forbes Magazine and elsewhere essentially containing the same assertions. I could not help but imagine attempting to teach the distinction between assassination and decapitation to a first grader, an eighth grader or a senior in high school. How does one teach children double speak? How does one learn to be a person in a marriage relationship, the spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company, a politician, or a sales person who can convincingly speak double speak. Apparently a great many of us humans learn to do this. We learn to use words and phrases which are designed to convince others that A is B. We not only learn to use these words but we learn to use them as if they are coming from our heart. We learn to keep a straight face while doing so. How do we learn this? Do we become so practiced at double speak that we convince ourselves that A is B? I suspect that this is true. I do believe that most of us want to be people of integrity and/or to be viewed/accepted as people of integrity. Why else did the Nazi regime have a licensed medical doctor signing death certificates for everyone murdered in the gas chambers? Why else use words like ethnic cleansing. Why else the history of “separate but equal”? Why else target homosexuals while living the life of one? Why else ….
At what point, does one learn to say to the children living in an alcoholic family, “Oh, mom just had a drink or two. She did not go on a rampage last night or you did not happen on her and another man in one of the bedrooms or …” At one point, do we learn to say to children with a straight face that decapitation is not assassination which is not murder which...?
At what point are we teaching our children that double speak is not lying? Is it?
Written September 6, 2017
Because of budget cuts I was not invited back to teach the current affairs class to the first and eighth grades at my local schools. I continue, however, to be very aware that two main focus areas for educators need to be:
· Basic skills of “reading, writing, and arithmetic “as well as others which are necessary to navigate the world as adults in today’s world.
· How we select core values and how we use those to make decisions.
I am a firm believer in learning basic skills whether one is operating a machine, designing and implementing a budget, communicating within one’s family, the workplace or the community, operating a vehicle, or designing a drone which can access damage following an event such as a hurricane. Those skills do not tell me what core value need to guide decisions about how we live with mother nature and each other or even how we take care of ourselves. It is up to all those responsible for teaching our children – parents, school teachers, neighbors, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other community leaders – to impress upon our children that skills are used in a specific situation to enhance our goals of how we live with each other and mother nature. In order to arrive at those decisions our children need to know how to choose core values and how to apply them in decision making situations.
Although I love poetry and the creative use of language in general, I have never thought that what I think of as double speak is a helpful tool for learning to work and live together. Yet, daily we are all confronted with double speak. We are told that A is not always A. Sometimes A is A and sometimes it is B or C or ….
I was thinking of this yesterday when listening to a report on National Public Radio about the options of the President of the United States with regard to leaders such as President of Kim Jong-un. I heard the “expert” saying that while it is illegal for the President to order the assassination of the leader of a country with which we are not at war such as was the case with Iraq, it is legal for the president to order or authorize the decapitation of the leader of what is considered a hostile leader. That would legally not be considered an assassination. It would not necessarily be what is now termed a regime change.
Later I spent some time attempting to do some internet research on this subject. I did not locate the specific NPR interview, but I did find some articles in Forbes Magazine and elsewhere essentially containing the same assertions. I could not help but imagine attempting to teach the distinction between assassination and decapitation to a first grader, an eighth grader or a senior in high school. How does one teach children double speak? How does one learn to be a person in a marriage relationship, the spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company, a politician, or a sales person who can convincingly speak double speak. Apparently a great many of us humans learn to do this. We learn to use words and phrases which are designed to convince others that A is B. We not only learn to use these words but we learn to use them as if they are coming from our heart. We learn to keep a straight face while doing so. How do we learn this? Do we become so practiced at double speak that we convince ourselves that A is B? I suspect that this is true. I do believe that most of us want to be people of integrity and/or to be viewed/accepted as people of integrity. Why else did the Nazi regime have a licensed medical doctor signing death certificates for everyone murdered in the gas chambers? Why else use words like ethnic cleansing. Why else the history of “separate but equal”? Why else target homosexuals while living the life of one? Why else ….
At what point, does one learn to say to the children living in an alcoholic family, “Oh, mom just had a drink or two. She did not go on a rampage last night or you did not happen on her and another man in one of the bedrooms or …” At one point, do we learn to say to children with a straight face that decapitation is not assassination which is not murder which...?
At what point are we teaching our children that double speak is not lying? Is it?
Written September 6, 2017
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