Thursday, September 15th, 2022
Dear Freedom Friends,
These “silver lining” topics will not appear in any particular order. They’re coming to me on an almost daily basis, and I need to say them out loud here, in a space where others can hear my thoughts, nod their head, scratch their chin, purse their lips or snap their fingers as the proverbial light bulb goes off!
These are not my thoughts alone and I am so very grateful to the many, many, many people in the world I’m blessed to witness, hear and learn from. We are all, truly, learning together and while there is a knee-jerk reaction to view uncomfortable, inconvenient, frustrating challenges in a negative light — I’m really grateful that so many of us seem to be moving beyond that.
Three years ago, consider the small, tiny, little first world problems that consumed our attention and energy. Whether a person cares a bit less about matching their fingernail polish to their shoe color, because they think the world is going to end and we’re all going to die of a VIRUS….or whether we care a bit less about our roommate who doesn’t throw his socks into the hamper, because we think the WEF planned the whole Covid BS, Fauci and the US Government/Military knew about the Gain of Function experiments being conducted in Wuhan China, and the real goal is to exterminate the weaker members of society while grasping total control of the entire planet and relegating the remaining humans to the role of serfs and workers for a new Corporate-led World Order…it doesn’t really matter.
The fingernail polish and the dirty socks are NO LONGER our primary concern. Thank Goodness! I mean, sheesh…how boring was that anyway? If we’re going to fight or argue about something, it should be worth the effort. It should matter. It should offer value in exchange for all that investment!
So, I’m grateful to be talking to people about deeply meaningful, life-altering, sometimes tragic and infinitely worthy of our time and attention topics! And one thing that matters is that we not let other people live our lives for us.
Delegation is the act of choosing to hand responsibility over to someone else. I’ve written about this for over a decade, when my close friend and I were trying to help people understand how they (and others) generally make decisions. We came up with three methods: Questioner, Delegator, Simplifier.
I’ll touch on them in more depth later, but in short, all of us do all of these at some point - so don’t get judgmental or use them as labels. They’re not. They’re simply tools we tend to use and it’s wise to know that we’re doing so.
A Questioner approach is one where we choose to be fully responsible for our decision. We will “asks questions” until we are satisfied we know enough to make a decision.
A Delegator approach is one where we choose to delegate the decision making to another person. We look for a person to trust and we follow their instructions.
A Simplifier approach is one where we decide that a complicated topic is really simple, with one choice being 100% correct and any other being 100% wrong. This tends toward religious thinking.
When it comes to education, many parents have (over the past century) chosen to “Delegate” the responsibility of educating their children to the authorities. Others. Professional teachers. School boards. Teachers Unions. Politicians. Strangers who talk a good game, wield great power and throw around a lot of money.
This is beginning to shift.
Thanks to the Covid Experience, Seattle Public Schools kicked kids out of classes and began to use Zoom to “teach them” at home. While the harms caused by school closures is becoming more and more obvious — there is a SILVER LINING! The unintended consequence of this policy was the exposure of poor Public Schooling Curriculum to parents who learned they could do better & also discovered they actually enjoy spending time with their kids!
Consider that children (aged 6-18) are typically handed over to the government for 40 hours a week (more, if you’re in an after school program or school sports/music, etc.).
If you were going to hire a babysitter for Friday Night Date Night, you’d want to know if he or she was a good babysitter. Right?
Isn’t it odd that most parents (not all, but most) do very little research into the people who will control, direct, dictate, inform and shape their children’s lives for 40-60 hours a week? Even less often do we see a parent asking a public school to share its curriculum in advance (often they outright refuse), nor do we feel empowered to make suggestions or demand an accounting for obvious problems.
Why? Because we know the truth.
Regardless of all of the “theatrics” around parent night, school board meetings (where you can talk for 2 minutes and then be ignored) and parent-teacher conferences — the truth is, WE aren’t wanted.
Most school districts, after 3rd grade, don’t allow parents to volunteer in classrooms. If you raise a question, ask about a policy, seek the references of your child’s teacher or IN ANY WAY challenge the authority of your local school district, staff or teachers?
You are framed as a problem parent.
And then, even the other parents will avoid you! This is for a number of social contract reasons, but one of them is that we all grew up in these same schools, and like an adult Elephant that can be constrained by a mere rope, because it was tied it up with chains when it was a baby, WE were groomed to be obedient.
Who challenges the new government plans to re-frame Race Concepts in America? You know, that “Critical Race Theory” program?
~ Problem Parents.
Who challenges government school demands for masks and experimental injections to be given to our newest generation?
~ Problem Parents.
Who challenges school curriculum that goes WAY beyond academics and promotes social beliefs, extreme sex education and various cultural attitudes which the vast majority of us disagree with?
~ Problem Parents.
As a result of “submissive grooming” — many parents in the USA (and other countries) have gotten used to the idea of literally handing their children off to complete strangers.
But not all parents.
And, thanks to Covid - the ranks of parents no longer willing to hand off their kids without a second thought has swelled!
Quote:
“The homeschooling population is likely to continue to grow and spread through all kinds of communities across the country,” said Lance Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute.
“Homeschooling is not just going to be the wave of the future. It’s going to be the tsunami of the future because I think so many parents have discovered homeschooling really does work and it’s more doable than they thought,” said Izumi.
Here are three articles/media sharings that I’ve found compelling:
September 2021: An Ohio Mayor spoke with a judge and then approached the school board, demanding their resignation, for teaching pornographic content in their classrooms. https://fb.watch/fzjXdx5i7Y/
September 2022: Parents across Seattle are pulling their kids from public schooling: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/whos-doing-the-quiet-leaving-from-the-seattle-public-schools/?amp=1
August 2022: Homeschooling in Kentucky has surged 81% since 2018, based on numbers from the Kentucky Department of Education. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/homeschooling-popular-pandemic/#app
I’ll end on a positive note, with an article that I think does a great job of presenting these “Silvery Opportunities” that so many parents are willing to take advantage of today — thanks to the challenges of the past 2.5 years. Because, what doesn’t break us, makes us stronger. Right?
https://eu.recordonline.com/story/news/2022/02/14/homeschooling-pandemic-spurred-growth/8890633002/