Shattered Families…

How can our cities and Nation afford to shatter immigrant families? These families, who may never see their children again, become the financial responsibility of the US. The parents are maintained until deported and the children are maintained until they age-out of the foster care system. We already have problems with the US foster care system, and when these immigrant children age-out of the fcsystem many will continue to be a financial burden on the government in some form or another, especially since many families won’t ever know where their parents and children are. How can an economy that is teetering on the verge of collapse support this, or the additional aged-out children?  And why are we ripping children from the arms of their parents when abuse is not an issue. This growing unrest is an indication of things to come.

Approximately 285,000 foster care teens “age-out” of the foster care system or become emancipated each year. Once they leave the system, their state and foster families are no longer required to give them assistance. They are left to fend for themselves.

Unfortunately, many foster care teens don’t have the support and life skills necessary to live on their own. Foster care studies show that 25 percent of “aged-out” foster kids must earn a living without a high school diploma or GED. At least 20 percent of have been homeless and fewer than 20 percent are able to support themselves. Nearly a quarter of former foster care children are incarcerated within two years of their emancipation. Because they lack the support systems most young adults take for granted, aged-out foster care teens are at high risk for substance abuse, domestic violence, and poverty. {Jamie Littlefield} [SOURCE]

Related articles

• Obese boy placed in foster care over weight concerns (cbc.ca)

New York Students Are Struggling, Reading Test Scores Show!

This is an article headline that was run today in The New York Times. I wanted to share it because I immediately thought about the information I found when researching how the education system in America had changed from its Bible based beginnings. After reading this article, I couldn’t help but think about the corruption that goes on in this arena. Back in 1955, a man by the name of Rudolf Flesch, wrote a book entitled, Why Johnny Can’t Read. What follows is just a snippet of what he discovered…

Only in the U.S., reported Flesch, is there any remedial-reading problem. In Britain, kindergarten children read Three Little Pigs; in Germany, second-grade pupils can read aloud (without necessarily understanding all the words) almost anything in print. By contrast, average U.S. third-graders have a reading mastery of only 1,800 words. Why is the U.S. so far behind? Says Flesch: “We have decided to forget that we write with letters, and [instead] learn to read English as if it were Chinese.”

“Quack, Quack.” Since the 1920s, most American schoolchildren have been taught to memorize the “appearance” of words, one after another, like Chinese characters, without reference to the sounds of the individual letters that make up each word. By this “word method,” largely developed at teachers colleges and schools of education, children must plow through endless illustrated stories, in which words are repeated over and over. How can the teaching of reading be improved? In essence, Author Flesch urges a return to the old phonetic method still used in Europe.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807107,00.html#ixzz0v0qsPZmn

This is what Leximo had to say about Reading Teacher Preparation Courses offered in our Higher Halls of Learning.

 

Examples abound. One reading course syllabus says, “Knowledge is … constructed by individual learners through social interaction … learning occurs within a collaborative community.” Another says, “Reading and writing are acquired through social collaborative interactions and life experiences.” A popular reading textbook advocates “classrooms that allow children to design their own route to further knowledge about print; the role of the teacher is supportive assistant.”  (Did you read that, social collaborative interactions and life experiences? We can thank John Dewey and his Humanist Manifesto for that. That is why Johnny can’t read he is not being taught how to).

According to the professionals, then, reading teachers don’t really have to teach reading. Like cheerleaders, they can lend sis-boom-ba support while kids magically teach themselves to read through “collaboration” and “social interaction” and “life experiences”—in much the same way they teach each other to reproduce bodily noises with their armpits.
SOURCE: http://blog.leximo.org/2009/03/why-johnny-still-cant-read.html

 

The sad part of this is that taxpaying parents are funding this slide towards social collaborative interactions and life experiences, unaware.  Why is it that the cost of educating our children has quadrupled since 1955 when we found out Johnny couldn’t read, and according to the New York Times, he still can’t read. I have a daughter who excelled in school. I homeschooled her for grades 7,8, and 9. She returned to public school for 10-12 grade. She was an honor roll student in the Public and Homeschool, she is in the honor society, received many awards for high school achievement. But, when she got to college…she said mom, I feel that my education did not prepare me for this.

Memoirs of An Empty Nestor pt. 8

HOME ALONE YIPPEEEEEE!

I have been mothering since the age of TWENTY-FOUR. And I am still mothering just from a distance, but as any mother will know that once a mother always a mother. I want the best for my daughters, and I want them to make the right choices, right? But today, DECEMBER 17, 2009, I don’t have to mother ANYBODY. BECAUSE ALL OF MY CHILDREN WENT OUT OF TOWN. For the first time in my life, for real, I can just about do what I want to do. It is just me. This is so weird and exhilarating. My little munchkin isnt calling mom mom every 5 seconds, I’m not cooking breakfast for anyone. I don’t have to duck hormone imbalances. I don’t have to be a rutter for anyone’s ship. I don’t have to be a sounding board. I want to see how long I last before I miss all of this and begin to drop tears. Never!!!! I refuse to miss them and cry…stay tuned!!!!!!

 I have decided to return to school and get a masters in education. I’m nervous about that but, I figure, this is a dream and you only live once. I’ve got to face the fear and go forward. If I keep going forward, the UNIVERSE will rise to fulfill my destiny. I love it…life is great, AMEN.

Memoirs of an Empty Nester!! pt5

I can go a good length of time without talking to my youngest daughter, who is now a college student.  She is at a local college, so I can go to the campus if I have to.  But I don’t really want to do that because she is taking care of her responsibilities as a student. Yet, the apron strings and my heart strings are not completely severed, she is still my baby, and with all that is going on in campus news right now, I want to hear from her. I miss her.