1 %
no, I am not writing about those with incomes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Instead I want to remind people of two other groups of people who represent 1% or less of the population of the United States.
1) those who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since 9-11. As of Veterans Day 2011, according to this ABC news story, that number was 2,333,972. Even with the additional who have served in the 16 months since, that number remains well below 3 million, and thus well below 1% who have borne the direct costs of the stupidity of the Bush administration's military policies
2) those who teach in public k-12 schools, which according to this table from the Census Bureau was in 2009 3,167,000, or just about 1% of our total population.
Two very important roles.
Neither properly respected the way they should be.
I fell in the latter category until I retired.
Make of this what you will. As a teacher I know that 1% of us cannot fix the problems of society with which students arrive at our schools. As a former Marine I know that less than 1% of us should not be required to bear the burdens we imposed through badly executed wars of choice.
Not when the other 1% continues to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth and fails to pay appropriately for the support of the governments at all levels which make their wealth possible.
Instead I want to remind people of two other groups of people who represent 1% or less of the population of the United States.
1) those who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since 9-11. As of Veterans Day 2011, according to this ABC news story, that number was 2,333,972. Even with the additional who have served in the 16 months since, that number remains well below 3 million, and thus well below 1% who have borne the direct costs of the stupidity of the Bush administration's military policies
2) those who teach in public k-12 schools, which according to this table from the Census Bureau was in 2009 3,167,000, or just about 1% of our total population.
Two very important roles.
Neither properly respected the way they should be.
I fell in the latter category until I retired.
Make of this what you will. As a teacher I know that 1% of us cannot fix the problems of society with which students arrive at our schools. As a former Marine I know that less than 1% of us should not be required to bear the burdens we imposed through badly executed wars of choice.
Not when the other 1% continues to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth and fails to pay appropriately for the support of the governments at all levels which make their wealth possible.
Prejudice
I cannot claim I am or ever have been completely free of prejudice, but perhaps I am lucky in the family I lived in and in how I have lived my life.
I just read The Price of Hate: $85 + ? (which if you have not read I strongly recommend that you do) and it got me thinking.
When I was growing up in Larchmont New York it was a period of time where gifted women like my mother rarely worked - when she went back to work as a lawyer when I was around 8 or 9, and then became an Assistant Attorney General for NY State when I was 13, it marked her as very different from the mothers of my friends. I remember when Michael Mermey's mother Faye became President of Larchmont Temple - not the Sisterhood, but the whole congregration - she was apparently the first such synagogue president in the US.
Perhaps it was our Jewish background that made us more sensitive towards prejudice and discrimination.
As I look at my life, I realize how different are my expectations now than they would have been when I was a child.
I just read The Price of Hate: $85 + ? (which if you have not read I strongly recommend that you do) and it got me thinking.
When I was growing up in Larchmont New York it was a period of time where gifted women like my mother rarely worked - when she went back to work as a lawyer when I was around 8 or 9, and then became an Assistant Attorney General for NY State when I was 13, it marked her as very different from the mothers of my friends. I remember when Michael Mermey's mother Faye became President of Larchmont Temple - not the Sisterhood, but the whole congregration - she was apparently the first such synagogue president in the US.
Perhaps it was our Jewish background that made us more sensitive towards prejudice and discrimination.
As I look at my life, I realize how different are my expectations now than they would have been when I was a child.
What we need to remember about our students
is how absolutely unique each one is, which is why we need to stop attempting to impose a standardized education on each one.
Allow me to share two brief quotations from Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, from his famous 2007 TED talk, "3 clues to understanding your brain."
Perfection
Allow me to share two brief quotations from Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, from his famous 2007 TED talk, "3 clues to understanding your brain."
Here is this three-pound mass of jelly you can hold in the palm of your
hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space. It can
contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself
contemplating on the meaning of infinity.
There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, and each neuron
Perfection
Torvill and Dean
they had already won Olympic Gold earlier in 1984, at Sarajevo, with perfect scores for artistic performance
on this day day the same year in Ottawa, in the World Championship, in what was then believed to be their final performance, they against scored 9 perfect sixes on artistics performance, and with the four for technical performance on this free dance, became the first to ever score 13 sixes in one competition.
It is arguable that they should have had all 6s for technical, although some judges did not like the one lift. It may be arguable that their Olympic performance was better.
Be that as it may. This is style perfection.
Simply watch - Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, the greatest ice dancers ever:
Pop
they had already won Olympic Gold earlier in 1984, at Sarajevo, with perfect scores for artistic performance
on this day day the same year in Ottawa, in the World Championship, in what was then believed to be their final performance, they against scored 9 perfect sixes on artistics performance, and with the four for technical performance on this free dance, became the first to ever score 13 sixes in one competition.
It is arguable that they should have had all 6s for technical, although some judges did not like the one lift. It may be arguable that their Olympic performance was better.
Be that as it may. This is style perfection.
Simply watch - Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, the greatest ice dancers ever:
Pop