Black men in America have problems with self-control, self-respect, the ability to interact properly in society. I want to believe that morons like this are in a tiny minority. I cannot in good conscience agree.

My local paper is full of violent crime stories accompanied by pictures of black men young to old

My national new media sites, all of them, are full of black men behaving badly, to the point of guns and gunfire being used practically in every instance.

I see this crappy behavior in my classrooms. I see it on the local news media, and national. I have observed it consistently and continually happening in my 65 years of passing through.

I do not understand. 

Blacks argue that they are only a couple generations removed from slavery, lynchings, de-humanizing treatment, banned from facilities, voting booth, yet allowed to die in our wars. They argue it takes time to establish family values. 

How long must we all wait? There aren't going to be any black men around to establish these values. Our prisons overflow with black men. Our courts overflow with cases involving black men. 

Anyone out there have any suggestions?

 Or is this all just me?

The letter I'm still waiting for:

My Congressional reps at both federal and state level send me a letter informing me that there were X votes for or against a bill and that in turn is how he/she voted, in line with the people he/she represents, as their employee, and not because of what he/she actually thought of the bill.

One of these days.....

March 9, 2017:

In response to a writer's letter to our metro newspaper reference a discussion over repairing and building high school football stadiums, I offer the following. The write said he didn't have a stake in the outcome.

--Well, if you are a taxpayer, you do have a stake. These young people and those that follow them will be taking care of you in your advanced years, your retail clerks, cooks, waiters, drivers, lawyers, doctors, plumbers. You better have a stake in how they turn out.

Time to re-think public education from top to bottom. Clearly, based not just on PISA (look it up) scores, but on general malaise in our society, we are failing to adequately educate our young. Districts consistently complain about not having enough funds. I say enough.

Proposals:

1. Get off the agricultural education cycle and extend the current 170 school year length to 230 days. Massachusetts school year is 190 days and rated among the best if not the best k-12 ed. systems in the country, for a reason.

2. Dissolve all varsity sports programs starting in middle school. Convert all sports to intramurals, and require every student, no matter physical status, to participate in at least two sports annually starting in 7th grade. The lessons being learned on the playing fields that adults have raved about since Spartan times, still exist. However, only a handful of students are being exposed to them. Why not all?

3. Eliminating traveling sports in general and football in particular is needed. SC school busses are antiquated and unsafe as documented by this paper and our employees in the legislature. It's heretical in the South to talk about banning football, I know, but hear me out. Only a handful of any school's students qualify for varsity sports, thus leaving the majority of the student population on the sidelines for the rest of their lives, literally. Club sports exist for those parents and students who have special skills and the inclination to want to play at such levels. Fine. Parents can pay for that out of their pocket, not mine. Schools would save thousands of dollars by halting football programs. No stadiums, light bills, parking, insurance, equipment costs, to save a few. Field can be converted to soccer, the international sport, and used for intramural programs. This Friday night tradition doesn't have to be about 16 year olds risking injury and concussions. The last two can occur in any sport, but let's reduce the risk.

4. No student gets out of third and eighth grades without being able to read, write, communicate at those levels. That simple.

5. Special needs students usually have until age 21 to graduate. Expand that time frame to all students. Some actually need it. The correlation is that starting ages probably should be higher as well, especially if the home environment wasn't conducive to a good start. Remove the social stigma of being held back, and graduating at an older age. The idea is to graduate educated, not just graduate. Principals and supts. love to brag about grad. rates. How about we start bragging about education rates?

6. High schools need to be equally college and vo-tech track. Not all students are oriented towards nor want to attend college, at least not right away. We need educated plumbers, tradespersons, etc. My plumber gets $75 just to ring my doorbell. Students need to know about these options. Thankfully, many high schools run such programs now.

Worrying about the number and quality of h.s. stadiums is anachronistic, 20th century thinking. World is moving pretty fast. We don't want to run alongside playing catch-up. We want to, we need to lead. Our system prevents us from doing so. ----------------------------------