As I was contemplating yesterdays blog and thinking about what to write I took a bike ride and listened to Air1. On one of their segments “3 things you need to know” they talked about their is a movement to change high shool start times to 10:00, even 11:30 for juniors and seniors. All because some kids are hard to wake up to go to school at 7-8:00. Seriously? That led me to think, what kind of children are we leaving our world?
A short note on the above. If high schools start that late, doesn’t that mean they would have to go until 6-7 pm to meet the required hours? How does that affect after school activities? How does that affect family time, family dinners? How does that affect them when they get in the real world and have a job that starts at 8 or 9? What happens when they have a college class they can only take at 8? Quit catering to our kids. If they need more sleep, go to bed earlier. Parents, put a lights out policy and take their cell phones and laptops at 10-10:30. Children are exhausted in the morning because they aren’t getting enough sleep. They are constantly getting beeped by text messages and email alerts by their friends that is interrupting their sleep. The issue IS NOT because school starts too early.
Support, love, teach your children, quit enabling them. It is okay to fall down. Let them learn to get up by themselves. Yes, I know it can break your heart because I have been there but it is what is best for your children to grow. Our oldest daughter made a mess of her life. Moved out of our house, into her uncles, out of there to her boyfriends, got pregnant, had her baby, broke up with the father, moved back to our house but made our house so chaotic that it was hurting our marriage and our other children. We made the painful decision to send her to a shelter, YWCA. It was painful but today she thanks us for doing that.
Who thought of participation trophies? What does it show our kids? That they are entitled to something just for showing up. What happened to kids working together as a team, pushing each other to get better, trying to win games so that you can be first and WIN the trophy. When my teams didn’t finish first, I understood we just weren’t as good a team as the team that won. I understood as an individual that my team didn’t deserve the trophy. There is only one Super Bowl Champion. There is only one World Series Champion. That’s the world I grew up in. A world where we worked hard, did our best and sometimes it just didn’t work out and that was okay. The most important things we learned were working hard, doing our best, teamwork, supporting a teammate that had a bad game, and having some fun along the way.
What are we actually teaching our kids? As I did some research I found many educators think we are dumbing down America. we switch from one standarized test to another to another all while our kids are thinking the last math book didn’t teach me to do math this way. Why do we do this to our kids? Because companies buy our politicians, our politicians get paid to switch and then more books are made to support the new curriculum, or in some cases the books don’t even match the new standards. See the video below from Charlette Iserbyt about the deliberate dumbing down of America. The former US Department of Education Senior Policy Advisor suggests that the our educational system is not based upon children learning. She isn’t the only one that thinks this.
Schools won’t teach creation but they will teach transgender identity, gay marriage, etc. (for more details see Dr. James Dobson – September Newsletter 2015 EM. The Real Fallout of the Same-Sex Ruling.) Target now has unisex toy department. Why? Many states, and in the end probably all of them, have to change legal documents for marriage from husband and wife to spouse and spouse. Parents are no longer mother and father, they are parent 1 and parent 2. We need to quit playing politically correct and get back to the things this country was founded upon. Because I am a heterosexual I can’t be a father on my child’s birth certificate because the minority demand parent 1. What have we become? The minority is ruling the majority.
Our children now are following God less than ever. Many are living for pleasure, instant-gratification, and entitlement. Credit cards are being maxed out by them or by the parents that are buying for them, leaving no money to help the poor or give to charity or to have for the future. They are hooking up instead of having relationships because they have seen their parents have affairs and go through divorces. They are not being taught the values of saving, living for others, giving, volunteering, working for a relationship- it isn’t easy but it is worth it.
This generation is the first in history that is not supposed to outlive their parents. This generation is also the most physically inactive in history. Our health, self-esteem, happiness, productivity, quality and longevity of life all depend on being physically active. Physical inactivity is also now the leading cause of death, outranking cigarette smoking. The leading non-communicable diseases- heart disease, respiratory disease, diabetes, cancer and mental illness are all linked to physical inactivity.
Be active. Create active environments for your children. They will do what you do. I never thought of running long distances when I was ten years old but my daughter Kylie has grown up watching her mom and me run and has completed 16 5k’s, one quarter marathon and just this past Monday a 4 mile run. If they see you reading the Bible, they will read the Bible. If they see you drinking water, they will drink water. If they see you exercising, they will exercise. If they see you doing good, chances are they will do good. If they see you doing bad, chances are they will do bad.
I may not leave my children much money but I pray that I leave them a legacy of a good work ethic, values, ethics and morals to live by. Things that can take you a lot farther in this world than money ever could.
Something To Believe In by Poison – 2003 alternate acoustic version with alternate lyrics
We Can Change The World by Hawk Nelson –
We Can Change The World by Bridgit Mendler –
Together We Can Change The World by Rilee O’Neil –
One Girl Can Change The World by Shuree –
We Can Change The World by Colby Jeffers and Awu Donson –
As I look at our world today I can’t help but wonder what are leaving behind for our children. Will there be any polar ice caps? Will there be any animals left that aren’t in our local zoo? Will the beach be thirty yards more inland? Will the United States be a desert and Africa be lush farmlands? Will they have any trees left? Will the sci-fi worlds we see in movies about the future really be all there is left of this world?
Corporate greed. A recent Stanford study estimates the world could convert to 100% renewable energy by 2030. Do you think corporate America will let that happen? I don’t. So many people fight for what keeps them making money instead of what is best for the world and the people in it. Take cigarette companies for example. As late as the 1940’s there was proof that smoking caused cancer. As of 1994, all seven of the top cigarette making companies denied that smoking causes cancer. Smoking is said to cause 1 out of every 5 deaths in America. The tobacco industry destroys more than 500,000 acres of forest per year. If tobacco farmers grew food instead, they could feed more than 78% of the worlds 28 million malnourished people. In 2012, cigarette companies spent $27 million lobbying government agencies and members of Congress. Now I am not picking on the cigarette industry because you can look up just about any industry, including the health industry, and find where money is being spent to get their products to sell instead of doing the right thing and selling the right products.
Just think about that for a minute? What if tobacco farmers grew food and fed the world instead of tobacco? They would help the world but make less money. What if they spent $27 million on healthier options – growing food, planting trees, charity, getting water to third world countries? What if Anheuser -Busch or Doritos spent the $ 4.5 millon for a 30 second ad for the Super Bowl on something that benefitted the people in the world? I mean we all know who Anheuser-Busch is right? Does that $4.5 million really make someone want to drink there brand over someone elses? I don’t think so. That money could be spent more wisely.
We destroy one area and take out all the non-renewable resources only to move to another area and destroy it. We cut off mountain tops and leave sludge in its place. We deforest large areas of land and do not plant trees to replace them. We are releasing high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous into our water systems and oceans from fertilizer use. We water, even on rainy days, our grass areas by our exit ramps but yet many in this world do not have water to drink.
We take away farmland to put up more and more strip malls. Many of them are abandoned in ten years for new strip malls. We introduce new animals to new lands that wipe out the old animals, therefore changing the food chain.
We over fish, so we make fish farms. We take away our farm lands then we produce GMO’s to make the food grow faster, be resistant to weeds, insects etc because we have less land to farm. This then causes super bugs which are resistant to the weed killer and antibiotics. We give animals steroids to grow faster. We grow chickens that never see the light of day in overcrowded enclosed shelters. How will this all affect not only ourselves but our children as well? Only time will tell but from what I can see, it isn’t good.
There is hope. Companies like Chipolte – who quit selling pork at hundreds of locations because they found a supplier wasn’t meeting their animal welfare standards. They will not be using GMO foods. Chipolte’s core mission is food with integrity. By the way, Chipolte is still making nice profits. Other companies like Toms, who give away one pair of shoes to children in need for each pair of shoes bought, is making money. Chick-fil-A who many people said wouldn’t be succesful being closed on Sundays is very succesful. Sevenly donates a portion of each sale to charity. Their core statement is people matter. Sevenly is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading “social good” companies, mashable.com just named Sevenly “America’s most social business” and “one of the Top 10 Stories in the First 10 Years of Facebook.”
You can do things the right way and still make a profit, keep the business healthy and help the world.
Stay tuned for tomorrow on what kind of children are we leaving this world. Can’t wait to see you then.
When The Children Cry by White Lion –
Something Worth Leaving Behind by Lee Ann Womack –
Heal The World by Michael Jackson –
We Could Change The World by Matt Redman –
Leave The World a Little Better –
Imagine by John Lennon –
Salvation Song by Avett Brothers –
Mad World by Gary Jules/ Tears For Fears –
Ghosts of Days Gone By by Alter Bridge –
Change The World by Los Lonely Boys –
Difference Maker by NeedtoBreathe –
Show Me A Sign by Michael Franti –
Same As It Ever Was by Michael Franti –
So Much Trouble In The World by Bob Marley –
Gonna Change My Way Of Thinkin by Bob Dylan –
We Can Change The World by Live Hart –
Together We Can Change The World by Nick Vujicic/ Elliot Band –
My God, My Music, My Life 