The Value of an American Education

I'm in the early stages of planning a preschool fair to target local families whose children are in need of early childhood education.  Statistic after statistic shows that access to a quality early childhood education program correlates with greater success for those students later in life.  Adults who had a preschool education have lower levels of crime and early pregnancies, get paid more, and have a better shot at staying married.  They are less dependent on welfare as adults compared to those who did not have a preschool education.  The problem is this: as a society, we don't value education, including preschool education.

The problem is cultural and, I believe, very deeply entrenched in our society.  The deep part: our current public education system was meant to spit out worker bees for factories and manufacturing.  Look at how the jobs Americans work has changed over the course of the last 10 decades.

http://statchatva.org/2012/04/06/occupation-change-1920-2010/

Obviously, we should continue to tirelessly champion for many of our high school graduates to leave high school ready to work in the sales, service, administrative, professional and managerial fields.  Manufacturing and agricultural jobs employ less than one third of these graduates.  School districts, principals, teachers and parents across the country are working hard to do just that.  I think we are making great headway in this area.

The second problem is cultural, and I believe less progress is being made here.  Culture doesn't have to do with gender, skin color, native language, or religion as much as it has to do with values.  I believe every household, every family, has a culture.  Families prioritize values differently - I don't buy into a one-size-fits-all culture.  All middle-income suburban families do not share the same values.  Nor do all families who live in poverty.  We can't prescribe a "cure" to poverty with a broad brush and expect it to result in positive change.

In America, we have a poverty problem.  Education is a key to break the cycle of poverty.  But, we generally don't value education in it's current form.  We need everyone to get desperate about obtaining our American education.  We need a sense of urgency about education.  We need to unite as Americans and see ourselves as what we are: players in a global economy.  We need to reshape the cultures of our families to truly value education, starting with preschool.  

This takes a massive education effort in itself - we have to educate people about America's role in the global economy.  Can you imagine how far we would get in turning this big cultural boat if even a fraction of the money that was spent in the presidential campaigns went toward educating our children and informing society about the cultural shift that is happening?  In the absence of millions of dollars, we do what we can: we offer free and sliding scale tuition to preschoolers whose families have need, we offer parenting classes for parents, we provide government assistance, we prescribe a number of things for people, but they don't take it because they don't value it.  Somehow, someway, we have to get scrappy, desperate, urgent about getting our education.  It may be the most important national defense issue of our time. 

Vote Your Values

As an Evangelical Christian, I have been bombarded with messages during this election season to "vote my values."  This weekend, a pastor at my church announced that we are electing a new president this year and everyone needs to pray for guidance and then vote.  I did pray and did not vote for a new president.  As a Christian, I was led to cast my vote for the Democrat, not the Republican, not because I espouse the Democratic platform in its entirety, but it more closely aligns with my interpretation of the Biblical platform.  In fact, both Republican and Democratic platforms fall short of the Biblical platform.  I just don't understand why many Christians believe to vote their values is to vote for the Republican party.  

I am no Bible scholar, but I do know the Bible.  I have read it cover to cover once.  I study it daily.  I memorize about 5 verses each month.  I teach Bible stories to children at my church once a month and to my own kids weekly.  I immerse myself in the Bible because of God's great love for me and in order to grow closer to Him.  Beyond the salvation of my life because of Christ's death on the cross for my sins, I get no greater take away from the Word than this: love and serve God by loving and serving others.  That compelling love should trump compelling judgment in the lives of Christians.

I often wonder how any Christian could align with the Republican platform.  When I ask Christian Republicans why they vote the way they do, they generally respond with the issues of homosexuality and abortion.  Yet, when I read our Bible, I see loving and serving the poor mentioned thousands of times, homosexuality mentioned a dozen times and abortion not at all mentioned.  I'm left wondering: are these Christians being deceived about our purpose here on earth?  Do they miss the value God put on helping the vulnerable people on earth over condemning others of their sins?  Mercy triumphs over judgment [James 2:12.]  I see their judgment.  Where's their mercy?  

I find the Republican platform most offensive beyond these social issues that tend to hook the "good Christian voters."  The Republican party seems to judge and demonize the vulnerable in our society rather than showing compassion and helping them.  The platform leans towards self-interest.  The platform puts down those who utilize safety nets that exist in our modern society, calling them entitled.  The Republican platform wants to minimize individual contribution to our society, presumably out of greed.  The sleaziest business people I have ever worked with were "Christians", saying it's good business acumen to make the most profit without accountability.  And they do all this under the veil of being a "good Christian."

I'm calling bull "skubalah" [Phillipians 3:8] on the Republican platform best representing Christian values.  Republicans, go about your business.   Feel free to work hard to keep what's yours for yourself and call it your right.  Continue to utilize the governmental programs that you value while you criticize others for their use of the programs they value.  Restrict people's rights to equality, safe medical procedures, and hope of American citizenship.  Veil your racism and class-ism but realize it's showing in your words and deeds.  Lobby your government to favor greedy corporations over oppressed people.  But don't do so in the name of God.  You're making the rest of us Christians look bad.

Romans 13:1 says: "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established."  We were put in this country at this time for a reason.  God has ordained the last four years - He will ordain the next four too either way it goes.  God is calling us to put our faith in action to meaningfully impact those in need in our world right now. I don't believe the Republican platform does that - I do believe the Biblical platform does.  I encourage Christians to evaluate the Republican platform in terms of the Bible and pray for God's guidance.  Please stop using the Republican and the Biblical platform interchangeably.  They aren't even cut from the same cloth.  

It's your right, but is it right?

Small business owners and corporations across the nation are informing their employees that if President Obama is re-elected and Obamacare is fully implemented, they will lose hours, health care coverage and management bonuses. I call this coercion. Because of a Supreme Court ruling in 2010, referred to as Citizens United, this is legal.

Law experts say “Citizens United frees companies to propagandize their employees with their political preferences.” Before the decision, businesses were prohibited from instructing their employees to vote a certain way. This presidential election is the first to allow employer coercion and it is a tool that is being widely used by companies of every size across our nation.

Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, told a group of business executives from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) on a conference call in June 2012 to “make it very clear to [their] employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”

To coerce is to "force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation." Just because one has the right to coerce his or her employees to support one's political agenda doesn't make it ethically right. It is ethically wrong to bully people in the workforce to vote for your candidate if you are an employer by threatening them with job, compensation or benefits loss.

Further, it is wrong to blame voters for the choices businesses make. The employer, not the voter, takes personal responsibility for the choices [s]he makes relative to their business. I don't get to vote on how you run your business, what profit margin is acceptable or how many people at what rate you employ. You don't run a democracy, you run a business. Run it how you want. Make the choices you need to. But take personal responsibility for your own business - don't blame your business decisions on me, the voter.

It is your choice to pass all the associated costs of a fully implemented Obamacare program to your employees. You could choose to shoulder some of the burden yourself. How can you innovate a new way to do business to keep your profit margin high? Could you raise prices to maintain your high profit margins?

A note: after sharing this common practice with a friend of mine who was undecided, she has decided to support the candidate who does not encourage coercion.  She will cast her vote to re-elect President Obama.  

I'll carry your mat, son.

We found out yesterday that my 4th grade son is being teased in school by a girl classmate because he has freckles.  The animosity between the two has been churning for weeks. After being ridiculed by her in front of their classmates, my son had internalized a lot of emotion. Yesterday, in an emotional moment, he told a couple of his classmates that "she sucks."  The classmates told the girl.  The girl told the teacher.  He had to stay after school with the teacher and the girl and apologize.  In tears.  For saying the girl sucks.  He never told the teacher about the girl's teasing him.  Until this happened, he never told us he was being teased.

Enter Mama Bear.  Did you tell my son that his freckles are his only friends?  Did you tell him you can't stand to look at his freckly face?  Did you ridicule him in front of his peers?  Do you realize how hurtful your comments are?  What if he believes you?  Who else do you spew ugly lies to?  What if the things you say to your peers when you are 10, 15, 19 become a part of their mental tape and distort their self-image?  How many people will you damage?  I agree with my son: you suck.  There, I said it.  Now, I'll grow up and forgive you just like my son has.

I spent the evening fretting and planning, deciding what the best course of action would be.  I wanted to give him a solution to this problem but also a formula for how to deal with this if it comes up again.  I wanted to make sure he told us when stuff like this is going on so we can fix it.  But, how do we fix it?  Can we fix it?  What do we do?

Enter God.  This morning, Mike's and my morning devotion was about Jesus healing a paralyzed man. A large crowd gathers at a house in Capernaum to hear and see Jesus. One local man was paralyzed.  Without the modern conveniences of medical technology, paraplegics in ancient times were confined to life on a mat.  They were completely dependent on care from family, friends, or strangers.  Four people carried the man's mat across town to the house where Jesus was.  We assume they were either family members or close friends.  Seeing no way to get through the crowd, they thought outside the box.  They climbed to the top of the house, peeled away the thatched roof, and lowered the man's whole mat down to be in front of Jesus.  Jesus first forgave the man (apparently that was a need that he and Jesus knew about) and then he told the man to take your mat and go home.  The man did, changed forever.

The four who brought the paralyzed man had not only great faith but also amazing loyalty to the man on the mat.  After lugging their dead-weight friend or family member across town and being met with an overwhelming crowd, they could have turned back around and given up.  Instead, they figured out how to get through it.  Had God always known that the man needed healing, both forgiveness and to be able to walk?  Yes.  Jesus didn't heal the man until he saw faith in action.  In this case, his friends put their faith in action on behalf of their friend.  What amazing people these mat carriers were!  

I was instantly overcome with a new perspective on this teasing situation.  I can't fix my son's bullying situation any better than the four could have healed the paralyzed man.  I can do what they did and carry my sweet son's mat to Jesus' feet.  He can and will heal all his needs - the ones I know about and the ones only he and God know about.  And it's important that my son have several mat carriers.  It's important the mat carriers don't just carry my son to a nice place like a football game or laser tag, but that they carry my son to Jesus' feet.  His parents, grandparents and teacher are great mat carriers.  He named 2 other Christian friends who could carry his mat.  

Bullying and teasing is a real problem that happens every day everywhere children interact - public school, private school, church, parks, sports teams.  Nice kids tease and bully too - it's not just the "mean" kids.  Bullied kids can become overwhelmed with anger, pain and warped self-images.  More often than not, unresolved self-image issues like this end up going south at some point in life, usually resulting in violence.  These kids need to learn to reject the lies they hear from bullies and talk to a trusted mat carrier who can help them, pray for them, and point them to the one who can solve their problems.  

My challenge to my kids is to know who can carry their mats to Jesus so they don't have to carry the weight of someone else's lies about them.  My challenge to parents is to carry their kids' mats to the one place where they know they are whole: to Jesus.