Wednesday, March 26, 2008

What's Wrong With Middle America?

I hate to get all preachy and serious but...

First, watch this video.

For those of you too lazy to watch a video (seriously, what is wrong with you? It's a video), a teacher in Indiana was suspended for a year and a half without pay (she cannot teach in the district until after the 08-09 school year) for teaching a "banned" book in her classroom. Insubordination, it was termed.

"This must be some horrible book," I thought.


So I decide to see what this book, The Freedom Writers Diary, is all about. Socialism, no doubt!

Um, oh.

The Freedom Writers Diary, is a true story in the Stand and Deliver/Dangerous Minds vein. No doubt, The Freedom Writers Diary script is already in the works in Hollywood, just as the aforementioned true stories were dramatized*.

I haven't even read this book, but reading the reviews on Amazon is rather inspiring. This 23-year old teacher is thrown to the wolves, 150 "at-risk" kids who no one else wanted to teach, and she manages to turn their lives around. They all graduated high school and many went on to attend college. You couldn't make this stuff up.

So why would this be banned? The book contains the diaries of these kids from Long Beach, CA. I'm sure those kids have hooked many-a-left on 21st and Lewis (word up, Warren G!). Stories of racism, abuse, etc. no doubt abound. This reality is too much for these kids in Indiana to handle? Isn't that just silly?

This type of story is not alone.

A friend pointed me in the direction of this story. A state representative from Oklahoma declared the "homosexual agenda" a bigger threat than terrorism. Really. Really? I found rumors that her husband used to be a KKK leader. Positively shocking!

We all know the story of school districts in Kansas teaching Creationism as a scientific possibility. Yeesh. And some people actually believe it to be true, and aren't sure if the WORLD IS ROUND and think that NOTHING PREDATES JESUS...wow.

I don't hate religion or anything. It's not really my thing, but if it helps other people, what's the harm? But when religion starts to instill bigotry in people, that's where the line is crossed. Homosexuals aren't hurting anyone and they're not trying to take down American society, Rep. Kern; Hello, Kansas. The Bible is not meant to be read literally. God didn't create the earf in 6 days and it is ROUND.

What causes people to be so strange?

I try not to blame individual people. Most people, even intelligent ones, have similar political/social beliefs as their parents. There's a line from the Oliver Stone movie JFK that seems appropriate, "How do you know who your daddy is? Because your momma told you so."**



*Yes, I am now aware that it is already a movie. You can all stop telling me. Sheesh.
**I realize none of this is groundbreaking social thought. I just had to rant.


Afterword: On the way home today, a beautiful sparrow did a nosedive right into my truck's moving path, dying in an explosion of feathers. I took this as a sign that I had angered the Christian God, and edited some inflammatory things out of this entry. I pray these changes will suffice, and that a rhino does not run me over on my way into the gym today.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Yeah, tommy. They totes made that movie already. God would have told you that himself, if you hadn't hit that innocent bird.

Nob Hill Forreal said...

The JFK (movie, not the guy) quote is cute, but seriously at some point, an individual must do some free thinking.
How do we know anything? Well, the science proves it. Thats not a secret, its in books and shit. Its a matter of faith vs. fact. Actually, its more than that, its faith IN faith vs. fact. Think about it. Yeah.
Its circular logic.