The impact of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was decisive for me.
Why-ever would a relatively rational and aware intellectual embrace the idea that human society is based on lies and the truth lies buried out there? In my case, I would claim it is because I am relatively goofy and prone to believing things because I am wholly deceived by a core belief that all human beings are by nature good, and have to be taught to be evil.
But while I have a misguided misconception about the goodness of people, I also have a dark side… a faith in my own ability to dig into facts and controversies and make sense of them with powers of reason. My world changed forever in 1963, when I was seven years old. I have never forgotten how wrenching the assassination was to my Iowan family and Iowegian friends. I remember how the world can be turned upside down and feelings of love and security can be totally usurped by fear and irrational feelings. You have an innate desire to believe the grownups will put things right again and the world can go on as before. Accept what the authorities say, and all will be just as it was.
I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but E. Howard Hunt, the Watergate burglar and CIA dirty-tricks operator confessed to the part the government played in the death of JFK. He died shortly there-after. About the only benefits he could get from telling this story was a conscience that would have been about one per cent less black and horrible as he died. There are numerous ways to cast doubt on this deathbed confession, but as you follow and research each line of evidence about what Hunt says, you find that far more of these details are accurate than there are details that seem slightly questionable. I know that in the conspiracy world that “if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it’s probably an ostrich”. But the one thing conspiracy theorists say that gives support to their position is, “You can do the research for yourself.”
So why, if it is so clear that the CIA, FBI, and LBJ got together to kill Kennedy for a variety of nefarious reasons, is the information not common knowledge and plastered all over the headlines in every major newspaper? Well, the Inquirer and its ilk are a big part of the reason. Sensationalist journalism is not above making stuff up and distorting what is real. It leads my relatives and friends to think I am so convinced about the guilt of the CIA, FBI, and LBJ only because those letters keep coming up on my word tray during Scrabble games. I do actually cross-reference things and look for books and articles that have verifiable footnotes. I am always more convinced by things stated by writers who source their details.
Jim Marrs, the author of Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, offers detailed notations on his research and interviews numerous sources on YouTube.
This red-faced bozo only offers the research of others, and often distorts it when he uses it.
So, when you look at these things with a rational and thoroughly inquisitive mind, you begin to find a number of things about Roswell, 9/11, and Elvis faking his death that are quite unnerving and threaten your cherished worldview. I continue to put tinfoil on my head to protect me from alien mind-reading powers because… Dang! Some of that crap is TRUE!
Catch a Falling Star 
Why School Should Be Cool
I was a school teacher for thirty-one years, and in spite of the immense amount of brain damage that builds up over time, especially as a middle-school teacher, I think I know what we’ve been doing wrong.
We need to take a look at an education system where things are working better than they are here.
Now, I know you probably didn’t click on the boring video about school. Heck, you probably aren’t even reading this sentence. But I can summarize it and put it in easy-to-understand words. Finland does not have to educate as many poor and disadvantaged kids as this country does. The video gives five ways that Finland does it better, but all of them boil down to the basic notion that the country is more homogeneous and uniformly middle-class than ours is. Still, we can learn things from them.
The first of the five ways that Finland does it better is a difference in government. While U.S. governmental safety-net programs blame people who need food stamps for being lazy (even though some of them work 40-hour work weeks in minimum-wage jobs), Finland gives a huge package to parents of everything they might need as soon as their child is born. As long as the child is in school, the government does many things to support the family’s efforts to educate them. Imagine what we could accomplish here if we invested some of the vast fortune we give to corporations in subsidies into educating poor black and Hispanic children instead. Children have a hard time learning in school when they come to school hungry. If we could only feed them better, the way the Fins do, we would revolutionize our classrooms.
The second point the video makes is the biggest suds-maker every time I get on my teacher’s soap box. They don’t give kids homework and they only give them one standardized test when they leave high school. I have recently covered this topic more thoroughly in a post in which I was able to ridicule Florida governor Rick “Skeletor” Scott. (Boy, did I enjoy doing that.) But I won’t go into all of that again here.
The third thing is respecting teachers. In Finland they treat teachers with the kind of respect that they give to doctors and lawyers. How cool is that? In Texas, calling someone a teacher is an epithet. If a teacher is liked or even loved by their students, administrators are encouraged to keep a closer eye on them to figure out what’s wrong. Students are supposed to hate their teachers and sit all day filling out mind-numbing test-preparation worksheets. Imagine what it could be like if teachers weren’t the scum of the earth. They might actually have students convinced that learning goes on in their classrooms.
The fourth point is that Finland does not try to cram more and more memorized details into young brains so they can spit it all back out on a test. They take students thoroughly into the subject of study, and at a slower, easier pace. They dive deep into the river of learning instead of wade through the wide and shallow parts. All questions get answered. And by that, I mean, student questions, not teacher questions. The learning is student-centered.
Finally, the video states that Finland simply has fewer social ills in their country to get in the way of good quality education. But even though the work is harder in this country, the potential is really there to go far beyond what Finland is capable of. We have a natural resource that is totally untapped in this nation. We don’t develop the minds of a majority of our children in any meaningful way. And I can tell you from having done it, you can teach a poor or disadvantaged child to think. You can give them the tools for academic, economic, and personal success. You can make them into valuable human beings. But you should never forget, they are already precious beyond measure. We just ignore and trash that inherent value. So, the information is out there about how to do a better job of educating our children. We need to follow through.
Here endeth the lesson.
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Tagged as education, Finland's education system, humor, lessons learned, teaching, teaching better