Hail Fellow Well Met

I read A Good Cry

a good book

a good cry

many poems that sang

free advance copy

from a poet awarded

I’d never heard of

I’m not in her traditional

audience

not being Black

But I cry.

And she cries

in Joy and in Pain

and in uncertainty

Not sure if what she’s doing

is enough

for what needs doing

needs done.

Me too!

I cry in joy and in pain and

in sheer frustration that

I cannot see

what needs doing

or what needs done

or what result the Good Lord

has in His mind.

He gives a glimpse

in her experience

in her poems,

her joys and her sorrows,

her triumph in knowing

at last

after much time

and effort

that what needs doing

is what I’m doing

now.

Melinda Ambrose, September 5, 2018

I just finished 12 weeks of self-reliance coursework, focused on getting education so that I can get a paying job.  This has transformed me in some ways.  I knew previously that I needed to become self-supporting financially.  Since my husband passed away five months ago, I have been living on a combination of life insurance payout and friends’ generosity.  I have enough for the moment, but no way yet to replace the funds I’m burning through. Hence the self-reliance course, offered by my church, but open to everyone who is willing to do the work it requires.

In this course on education, I learned that God wants me to succeed financially, and that His definition of success includes becoming debt-free over time, through hard work but also through working smart.  I had previously learned the 80-20 rule, which says that 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your effort.  Not all efforts lead to good results.  

This self-reliance course requires recognizing that my success depends on my efforts.  God helps those who are trying to help themselves.  He doesn’t wait for success to help us, but he requires us to try.  We have to reach and take His hand.  Sometimes all He needs is for us to ask; other times we must step out and work towards our goals before we see His help.

We met as a small group, initially about 10 people, finally five plus a facilitator who made sure we had a location and time to meet.  It was all work as a group, not lecture.  We took turns reading from the manual and discussed what we read.  We each made decisions based on what we each needed to learn.

I looked at what I like to do, what working conditions I prefer, what my interests and talents are.  I researched some possible jobs that make use of what I already can do and some jobs that I could be trained to do. I picked three to research in more detail.

Each person in the group then researched available training opportunities, checking their success rates, costs, and requirements. The self-reliance course materials asked a lot of questions to find out more about each training option, things I had not thought to consider. One of my group’s members said he wished he had checked this more carefully previously, because he is now in debt for training that isn’t as useful as he expected it to be.  

I decided on one job I would like to pursue, with training to pursue, and made a plan for how I would proceed.  The self-reliance course materials then covered the importance of managing time wisely, prioritizing efforts, and being diligent.  Having a plan in place is only the beginning.  I must work the plan for it to help me.

I feel strongly that this has been the best thing I could do at this time.  I learned a lot.  I committed to attend 12 weekly meetings and succeeded in attending at least 10 of them.  I grew to know and appreciate my fellow group members.  We were expected to contact each other during the week between each meeting, to encourage and support each other.  We were not very good at doing so, but when we did, we were blessed.  I know them better and I think they know me better; we are friends.  I was able to point out a couple of job opportunities to a fellow group member who was looking for jobs in a particular field.

In looking back at this self-reliance effort, I see that the very concept of self-reliance is counter to the culture around me.  Many, many people are depending on the government or on corporations or on charities to make their decisions for them, to choose their housing, to arrange their transportation, to tell them how much to spend on food or to straight up give it to them.  That is the road to slavery. God did not put us here to quiescently lie down.  He did not set us here on earth to be entertained and cared for, like pets.  As Robert Bolt said, “God ... made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind.”  (“A Man For All Seasons”, Act 2, page 78)  God wants us to struggle and to work our way through.  We are God’s children.  We are here in training to become gods, like God our Father.  He works at creating, building, making things, arranging things on the earth for our benefit.  We are here to learn what He does, to build and to create.

In April another set of self-reliance groups will start up, on these topics: education, finances, getting a job, and starting a business.  You are welcome to join one.  It requires 12 weeks of meeting once a week with your group, doing the assignments for the topic you chose, and contacting a member of your group at least once a week for support and encouragement.  They are set up by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and are open to anyone who is willing to come and do the work.  There is no fee to join.

There’s a quote from President Truman about charity regaining its old true meaning "of brotherhood, of mutual help, of love," and him giving government credit for this. Hogwash. "The government" doesn't love me or anyone else it gives stuff to, any more than it likes the people it takes from, also including me. The people who work for the government may love people, but they are constrained to do what the law states and what the law allows, whether they like it or not. It's true that a social safety net built only on private charities will miss some people. It's true that a government safety net will miss some people. That's true, period, because we are imperfect and no system set up by us will function perfectly, public or private. It's also true because the people it's supposedly going to help are imperfect. They misplace forms, they miss deadlines, they fail to follow the rules at all times. They also cheat, lie, and mislead, when it suits them to do so.

Truman’s quote is paragraphs 8 and 9 in this radio address from October 1946:

I find it interesting that in all the hoopla over who should be Secretary of Education, some facts are being overlooked: there are several groups that want educated children, all with different objectives. These are generalizations, and there is overlap, but the main categories I see are: the Mainstream, the Dyed-in-the-Wool Homeschoolers, the Private School All-the-way, and the Frustrated-With-Whatever-Option-I-Was-In-Last. The Mainstream still includes most students in the U.S. and their parents, but the boat is leaking fast. The Private-School-All-the-way are generally better-off financially or willing to bend into pretzel knots to get funding from somewhere; they're savvy at how economics works and determined that their children will succeed, period. The Dyed-in-the-Wool Homeschoolers are from a wide variety of backgrounds and finances, but share a determination that their children will be taught by Their Parents--or whomever their parents ask for help-- at the Parents' expense; there is almost no desire for financial assistance, because this group is painfully aware that whoever pays the money gets to decide what is taught, when, where, and how. Homeschoolers are determined to set up their own hoops to jump through. The most mixed-up, indecisive-as-a-group, confused, and often loudest group, is the Frustrated-By-Whatever-Option-I-Was-In-Last. This group wants change most of all. They have a list of gripes about the education their children have been getting or have not been getting, gripes about where, when, how, and whose standards are being used. Some are so frustrated that they will herald Any Change At All, and then tear it down when it doesn't cure whatever their problems are. This is where the discussion of Education Alternatives comes in.

Everyone wants their children and other people's children to learn what's what and how to survive in this world without causing too much trouble for other people.  Discussion of exactly what that entails is part of the discussion but not the most important part, for this reason:  What, where, when, why, and how children should learn, are all decided by the children themselves.  We adults only decide on the environment, the inspiring materials, the examples we set, the stuff we learn in front of them. We adults want results we can recognize, hence standards; we adults want our hard-earned money to be wisely used and not wasted, hence conflicts over who should pay for what and why.  We adults get on power trips and decide that our own opinions are gospel, hence efforts to force other people's children to adhere to our standards, when truthfully their own parents can't get them to conform.

The results of all of these Educational groups are mixed, of course; if parents can't force children to obey, what hope do any other adults have?  There are stellar examples of inspiring parents, inspiring teachers, inspiring loving caring adults in a wide variety of environments who are helping children educate themselves.  There are generalizations that can be made, however:  

The Mainstream is mostly composed of people who grew up in the public school system, who see it as their children's best or only option to gain education.  It's the default for most people.  It's paid for by a mixture of governments, local, state, and national, all with their own rules and objectives.  This group puts up with a certain amount of punitive policy in exchange for “free”, taxpayer-funded, access to basic arts, sports, and childcare, besides the basic subjects, and a stamp of graduation approval at the end.

Private-School-All-The-Way is mostly composed of people who either attended private school themselves or who see it as better, more rigorous, a better environment than the public schools near them, And who do not choose to teach their children themselves, but who want their children to know this is important, expensive, worth putting lots and lots of effort into. They get really good results, most of the time; children can be influenced.  

Dyed-in-the-Wool Homeschoolers are mostly people who sacrifice financially and socially to give their children the advantage of spending many, many hours with their own family, parents and siblings together, doing what they want to work on, learning what they want to learn.  They frequently get excellent results, in part because of the close family relationships and trust that are built in this way.  Children in this environment depend more completely on growing an emotionally healthy family than do children who spend most of their time away from home.  They also spend most of their time in very small groups, with more personal attention and the ability to wander far off the beaten path.  Homeschoolers, by external societal standards, tend to stretch the boundaries, excelling in niche pursuits far more often than do children in the other groups.

The Frustrated-By-Whatever-Option-I-Was-In-Last are people who, for many reasons, have decided they don't like what their children were doing and want change.  These are the only people who really matter in the Charter School, Vouchers, Online Public School, discussion, because these are the people who will be using these options.

The environment we are all in, is a world of ever-increasing access to information.  Education is no longer in any kind of silo; it's flowing loosely, all of it, the college courses, the elementary spelling games, even the hands-on simulations are going online (video dissection!).  Eventually the biggest issues are going to be: who feeds and houses your children while they learn what they want to learn; who pays for their access to media, books, and supplies; who keeps an eye on them to supervise their learning; and what standards will we use when a high school diploma no longer means they spent 13 years in one set of buildings.

The current institutions will still exist, I believe, but formal school buildings and teachers will be much reduced, and instead will arise more equivalents to Montessori and Sudbury at one end of the spectrum, and an increase in military, super-strict schools at the other end.  We Americans do not do moderation very well; the stampede to the extremes will look very unlikely until it is suddenly everywhere.  Pity the children whose Frustrated-By-Whatever-Option-I-Was-In-Last parents send them to one and then the other.

http://www.sparehed.com/2014/09/22/styles-and-characters/

I was thinking about the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the one that addresses weapons.  It occurred to me that the real problems are the ones that lie behind the obvious issue of gun control or freedom to own weapons.  What we should be addressing are the reasons why people want to control who has and who uses guns, and the reasons why people want to own and use guns.  What we're afraid of is what we should be dealing with.  If this person is afraid the government or some organization will limit his ability to defend himself, what reasons does he have to doubt the government or its agents?  And if this person is afraid some individual will attack him with a gun, who is he afraid of and why?  Are there reasons to trust the government to restrict weapons?  Are there reasons to suspect government of misusing this power?  Are there other, better ways to deal with unstable personalities instead of removing weapons from everyone?  How can this person remove the need for forceful self-defense?

The first and most important thing I think we can do is calm ourselves, think clearly, and refuse to get angry.  Then I can breathe deeply and try to resolve problems, difficulties, without conflict.  Without contention.  If there is no anger, there will be very little need to fight.  Then I can help my family and thereby my community, live more calmly.