This Is What We Want To Teach Children?

Sending mixed messages to our children. Inadequately identifying a problem. Not trying hard enough. Failing to provide community leadership. Taking the easy way out. Overreacting. Not doing our best. Saying one thing and doing another. Passing another meaningless rule or law simply to satisfy someone’s personal agenda. Not being logical. Failing to do the right thing.

In an American society today, where we supposedly are committed to embracing a diversity of attitudes, beliefs and social mores, we are in some cases doing just the opposite. In a society where we preach that tolerance shall be our guide and that school bullying is unacceptable, some school administrators instead convey just the opposite message. In a society where we are trying to make our schools safer environments for those who learn and teach there, we still have kids bringing guns to school and killing others. And in an American society where we are supposedly embracing “love more; fight less” and learning to adapt to a "gentler, kinder approach to one another” -- comes this new edict from a New Jersey middle school principal: no hugging is permitted among students.

That’s right. According to a recent local television report in the greater New York City metro area, the 900-member student body at New Jersey’s Matawan-Aberdeen Middle School has been told the new rule is no hugging allowed among students. The reason for this community-wide safeguard supposedly results from alleged incidents of inappropriate physical interactions among students.

Really?

And how, might you wonder, are these New Jersey 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grade students ages 11-14 any different from those same kids – your kids or grandkids perhaps – in Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Minnesota or California? A New Jersey middle school student interviewed for the news report was quoted as saying “it makes our school look bad and it makes our school look like we do more than hug, but we do not.”

I believe the student.

According to the news report, the school superintendent said the school district has the responsibility to teach children about appropriate (physical) interactions (in a public place). Isn’t this a parental responsibility? Is this not something our children should learn well before 6^th grade? Really? This is acceptable policy? This is how we teach appropriateness -- by enacting a prohibitive rule – reinforcing yet another “negative” in our society, instead of introducing a positive lesson or action item and thus demonstrating some real community leadership?

What message does it send these school children, their parents, their teachers and the rest of the community to also say that students will not be suspended or otherwise disciplined if they go ahead anyway and ignore the rule and continue to share a hug in a classroom or hallway. Does this teach the kids and the community that some people will be held accountable to obey society’s rules, while others will not? Does this teach our children that it’s okay to pick and choose which rules are to be followed, and when and in what manner? Is this how you want your school district to function?

Any of you ever wonder, or sometimes ponder, why society is the way it is today? This no hugging rule story can be found online at

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/23/10826845-principals-decree-this-is-a-no-hugging-school and is an excellent example why some things are the way they are today.  There are so many more examples out there. Where is leadership? 

OK On The Shirts; Hold Off On Packing Sweaters

A very pleasant early spring day embraces this second Sunday of March (the 11^th) in central Ohio. The sun is shining, a gentle breeze has pushed the temperature into the 60s and I have opened a few windows in the house. The forecast for the week reads like late April --- rain and daily high temperatures a couple degrees on either side of 70.

What a delight.

Like many, I’ve long been an amateur weather and climate observer. Given the usual rapid change in Ohio weather this time of year, intuition this morning said “winter is over and it’s okay to think about short-sleeved shirts.” Yeah, that’s what it said and I know I’m just jinxing myself and others here, but I can’t help it.

So yes, after two loads of morning laundry I decided to create a third load and by early afternoon I was washing, drying and hanging with care those shirt-sleeve shirts that I very soon each day will wear.

But I hedged my bet a little and also tempered my enthusiasm, fearful that I could next week or the week after be humbled by a return of Old Man Winter. It would not be the first time, but I just felt it necessary today to begin packing away some of my winter wear and preparing my warm weather wear. For my money, my climate intuitions strongly suggest much of Ohio will have an early, warm and wet spring, followed by a very hot, buggy summer. In fact, I predict that by July 4^th, many folks will wonder which is better – a very mild winter followed by a very buggy summer, or a typical winter followed perhaps by a less buggy summer.

I will take the mild winters each and every time, but yes, I do detest bugs, ticks and  flying insects. Can’t have it both ways, I know, so I’ll choose “Bugs For $200 Alex” instead of “Typical Winters” at any cost. I did pack away my winter coats and gloves, kept a couple sweaters around and the rain gear is always close at hand. I hope that I am right.             

International Women's Day

March 8 is International Women’s Day – a century-old observance to increase awareness and celebrate the progress of women while also indicating the inequalities that still exist. It also is my Mother’s birthday, who today would have celebrated her 83^rd birthday. She passed away in Fall, 2008 just four months shy of her 80^th birthday.

As an added footnote for central Ohio residents, my Mother celebrated her final birthday observance March 8, 2008 by going to church in the early morning then remaining indoors the rest of the day and the next day as the greater Columbus area received 2 feet of snowfall during a late winter storm. It was a Saturday and the snow was melted and gone away by the following Saturday, March 15, 2008.

My Mother was not a feminist,  but a staunch supporter and avid fighter in the battle for women’s rights and equality in the workplace. She had married my Father at age of 19 on September 11, 1948. A high school graduate, my mother had taken one course in bookkeeping at a local community college in Grand Rapids, Michigan and one additional course in general business. She worked as a waitress at a local hamburger joint.

Upon relocating to Columbus, Ohio in 1955 when and where my Father had accepted his first civil engineering job, my Mother worked downtown in the LaVeque Tower as a bookkeeper. Within just a couple years, she joined and was an active member in the local chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Association.

After a span of about seven years to raise a young son and daughter, my Mother returned to work. I was so distraught about this as a young boy that I became a behavior problem at home and at school. In fact, I was very disruptive and got to the point that my Father was at his wit’s end, so to speak, without any clue what to do. Then one evening, my Mother took a turn to put me to bed and tuck me in and while doing so she had a little Mother-to-Son chat with me about my emotional duress over her going back to work. It was 1966 and I was but 7 years old and this is what she said to me as if she again had said it just last night:

“Son, your Dad and I love you dearly and I especially love you so much. I’m sorry that you have been so upset lately, but I need for you to understand that it’s okay for me to be a wife to your Dad, to work as Mr. Frampton’s secretary, to volunteer at the school and to just be who I am. What I need for you to know is that while I can be all those things, I will always, always first and foremost, be your Mother.”

End of behavior problem; beginning of acceptance about a woman’s role in American society during the mid-1960s. Yes, I was just 7 years old.

My Mother soon joined the state medical association where she eventually rose through the ranks as comptroller and membership director and to serve as the only woman on the association’s executive staff. Her pay was not equal to her male counterparts and she did not feel she shared in equal respect among many of her male peers. Privately, she one day was told by the association’s executive director that the apparent inequality most likely resulted from her lack of holding a college degree. This was about 1972.

She came home from work and was furious beyond all compare. I’ve never seen my Mother more upset, but also more determined and this is what she said that night at the dinner table. “I’ll fix those sons-of-bitches and really show them who they are dealing with. I’ll show them.”

So this 43-year-old female executive, mother of two, loving wife, community volunteer and high school graduate with just a few community college credit hours on her education balance sheet from the 1940s, enrolled in night school at Ohio Dominican College. She was a dutiful and masterful student, earning high grades and praise from her professors. She was even more involved as a business leader, wife and mother – still able to adjust a schedule and come see her’s son’s high school baseball game, still able to alarm every family member on the summer vacation camping trips when she decided to swing an axe and chop wood, and remained devout to her marriage and her religious faith.

We all cheered her and supported her and in 1977 she attained her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Ohio Dominican College and was rewarded well at work with added recognition, equality and pay. But she went another step further – she stayed in night school and some Saturday classes at Ohio Dominican which had a shared instructional partnership with Cincinnati’s Xavier University and several years later also added MBA – Master’s Degree in Business Administration – to her list of accomplishments.

So on this March 8 – International Women’s Day – I celebrate many of my Mother’s accomplishments and especially those for all the women who went back to school and who sought additional training and instruction, so that they may improve their position in the workplace and community, and still be a great Mother to her kids. Thanks Mom.

Your Ever Loving Son John.

March Right In Why Don't You

I’ve never been a big fan of the month of March.

Yes, it’s the bridge between Ohio’s cold and warm seasons, but it always has seemed to me to be such a very long bridge. I’m pleased that the extra Leap Day we experience every four years occurs in our short month of February as compared to March. This month seems to be plenty long enough at a slow 31 days. I sometimes feel like Bill Murray in the comedy movie Groundhog Day where every single day I awake seems to still be March.

Perhaps this March will be far different from the typical March as we have enjoyed an exceptionally mild winter by Ohio standards. It is such a long middle ground that very gradually ushers out winter and welcomes in spring. And yet, by the end of the month not much has changed as it might appear on its surface. If one looks closely though beneath the surface a little bit, the end of March is busy with the cycle of life getting ready to emerge out into the open.

March is a tease.

One day it may be a balmy 65 or 70 degrees, followed next by a cold and clammy 43 degrees. In Ohio, one only needs to wait a few brief moments for the weather to change, according to a traditional adage. March plays with our mind and toys with our heart. We can hardly dislike the month of March if in fact we do not learn to love it a little, or a lot.

I’ve come to accept that March is a transition period that needs to be better appreciated. It adds structure to my life and is a reminder that indeed, patience is a good thing. I still don’t care for the month – instead preferring the seemingly endless period of summer in June, July, August – but I understand that it must be so. And yes, I understand that to accept March is to better appreciate that which follows.