Educational Excellence

Well, I am going to try anyway.  After all, effort counts a lot towards ones success … at ANYTHING!  One of my former students had re-posted a “slogan” type poster on a social network which said: “A Negative Mind Will Never Give You A Positive Life”!  Truer words have ne’er been uttered!!

This is the reason I often try in these e-mails to identify a social ill or problem … or just tell a story based on something in our world news … and show how it is either lacking basic human values or illustrating the use of those rare human values that we are born with like harmony, love and peace.  We must admit, most everything else is learned … conditioned in to us even … especially the violence.  So where does one get the idea to spray paint anti-Semitic comments on someone’s car … and house??  Not ones OWN car and home … but someone ELSE’s property??  That’s why this real old book has the words written in it: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Have you heard of the security breaches in … The White House?!?  I mean, dang!  It’s like, with all the technology WE supposedly have … here’s that division again – we being the United States of America vs. the World – that can be used in many different ways, a “package” can be left at a door to Congress.  Yet, a computer hacker was able to get in to some very sensitive websites and information related to our military members.  Someone even initiated a “bomb scare” IN the White House!!!

Now, we have moved from some folks in law enforcement profiling black men to now “man handling” black teen girls, , specifically in McKinney, TX!!  That situation occurred in a more affluent community at a club swimming pool.  Now the story behind how it all got started varies.  One report had it that a white mother was taunting the teen aged black kids, some invited while others just showed up to the pool, and told them to ” … stay on the other side of the bars (to the pool) because you’re not getting in any way!”  It went further and escalated when the white woman supposedly hurled racial slurs at the kids and one even got in to “fisticups” with one of the teen girls!!!  How adult-like is that?!?  Are we still wondering where some of this racial hatred comes from?!?

Another report from an African American male had it that the teens showed up in large numbers, many uninvited guests, to enjoy the pool on the last day of school.  The African American male said that it wasn’t the irate “parents” who called the police but it was the security on patrol at the complex’s pool who called the police.  According to this same man, the security there felt overwhelmed by the number of kids who purportedly “fought and jumped fences” and local security called the police for help.  One white teen who filmed the police officer Casebolt (he has resigned) throwing the teen girl to the ground, and when approached by black teen boys, pulled his gun out, begged to differ from the Black man.  The white teen said it was a bunch of kids who were horsing around but nothing serious enough for an officer to take out his gun on these teens!!  One white mother commented, “I can understand why he pulled his gun out!”  I am just glad that the young lady wasn’t hurt and that no one got shot again.  Her family has hired an attorney and I am sure, there is more to come legally from this event.  It’s getting so hard to explain some folks’s behavior nowadays.  Just be able to explain your OWN … and keep it on the “up and up”, y’all!

Peace,

John I. Cook, Director