It All Starts at Home

I’m sad as I sit here today for a number of reasons, all of which will fade with time but still cast a pretty wide shadow of despair, for some of the same reasons which are all concerned about today.

I’ve always felt, like many of my friends, that life truly is a journey and not meant to be a destination. Although I say that, knowing this place we call home at this very moment has my feet feeling relatively comfortable. However, as I think about that tonight, I come to see this quote as having many different connotations which probably doesn’t allow it to be tied down to one simple gist for each of us.

I had someone write to me the other day speaking about the fact that he and his wife had been together for 70 years. I was so excited to speak with them, I haven’t yet, but will for they certainly did have what some would refer to as “True Grit.”

A novel written in 1968 by Arkansan Charles Portis brought meaning to those two words because later in 1969 they would come alive on the silver screen as Rooster Cogburn and a little 14-year-old girl pursued the murderer of her father. This spectacular portrayal of the pursuit and perseverance to follow through on one’s goals and the resilience within one’s soul to pursue their quest to obtain their objectives in life is something we should all aspire to.

I fear that the generations to come will lack that same personal pride in themselves and the drive and ambition to overcome the odds and the impediments they will come up against in life. It is therefore the responsibility of those generations who have come before to prepare the future generations for the dangers and difficulties they will face.

The education system which has bent the rules to let them “pass,” instead of facing criticism for being too hard on them, needs to return to the sensible approach of requiring the requisite work to accomplish the necessary goals and objectives which will empower them to be successful in life.

If you’ve owned your own business or have been in the position of responsibility for reviewing those new hires, you understand that the candidate pool of skilled employees is slowly shrinking. Their interview skills, starting with personal appearance and how they present themselves, even for more entry-level positions, do demand a better approach than, “Hey Dude.” 

By the way, what genius thought it wasn’t necessary to be able to write a legible paragraph or sentence in a job interview in “cursive”? In a conversation the other day with a young lady she compared cursive handwriting to cave dwellers from thousands of years ago.

Now I’m not placing this blame on those men and women who have chosen teaching as their passion and love, while slugging it out daily in the classroom to make a difference. Unfortunately, the issues we see with violence in schools and on our streets begin in the home and they are brought into our schools.

Today there are 11 million single-parent households in this great nation and 80% find the mothers the only authority figure within that household. In that shockingly high number of households headed by a single parent, 24,000,000 children reside there. I’ll write that out for you: Twenty-four million children live in single-parent homes. That is not a number to be proud of and neither is the knowledge that the United States has the highest rate of children living in single-family homes in the world. Another pitiful number we should be ashamed of.

The more perplexing issue is how do we bring those numbers down and where lies the answer to this growing problem. I really believe this nation needs to take a hard look at how we deal with this, for many of these children live in poverty and poverty breeds serious issues within our communities.

Future generations of young people are our greatest hope, but they must have hope if we are to survive this terrible malaise within society. To close our eyes to this problem is to place us on a road that will surely condemn this great nation to second-class status.

We are the nation which has gone to the moon, vanquished tyrants, and freed millions of oppressed peoples throughout the world. We’ve led the fight against terrible diseases such as Polio and Tuberculosis, epidemics of Smallpox and other infectious diseases. In 2003 under the leadership of President George W. Bush’s initiative, the United States led the efforts around the world and in Africa to take on the HIV/AIDS Pandemic. We lead the world in many of the technological advances and have partnered with many of our worldwide collaborators making greater strides and empowering the worldwide effort in many of these fields.

Our future is bright if we light the fires of ambition and hope in all of our kids. We must find ways to re-engage with parents, for without their 100% involvement in this process I am not sure it can be successful.

The greatest threat to our nation lies not from a distant shore, but within our own borders and lies on our own shoulders to address.