The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Read more articles on The Rambling of a SAHM.July 14, 2006
Posted by Rebecca Lanham
July 14, 2006
Posted by Rebecca Lanham
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I have seen it all today. People being their absolute best to their absolute worst.
The Good:
As you know from my post a few days ago…my infant broke my glasses. You might think that is the bad, but it actually falls under my good today. I took them back to the optical shop where I bought them only to find out that my frames are not manufactured anymore. That style is no longer made. I also found out that lenses are not cut approximately the same size for any frame…each frame is different. So, my $200 lenses don’t fit in any other frames.
Anyway, the lady who works at the optical store called to a bunch of warehouses, but no luck. So, she offered to work with her lab to get them to fit into a different frame. However, that would take several days and I am going on vacation next Tuesday.
When she heard that, I guess she looked through their whole stock of frames and found one that my lenses almost fit in. There are a few gaps around the edges, but I’m sitting here typing, they are on my eyes and I can see just fine. And I didn’t have to pay a cent for them…she has given them to me as a “loan” during vacation! Talk about nice.
So, that is my Good story for today. This woman went above and beyond what her job required, and I salute her.
The Bad:
I am signing up my kids for public school. Since I have left the Catholic School where I was working, my husband decided it was just as well to move them to the public school and try to get a handle on our debt load.
Well, my almost 3 year old will be going into a special PreK 3 program for her delayed speech development, and I wanted my PreK 4 student and my Kindergarten student to go to the same elementary school. So, I called the out of zone office and then said that shouldn’t be a problem.
Then I called the Voluntary PreK office - ha! Here is the bad! I was informed my PreK 3 child and Kindergarten child could go to the same school, but my PreK 4 child could not because we make too much money!!! Yes, they will split up a family and make them go to different schools because our income is too high! Isn’t that ridiculous? Since they consider it “voluntary”, only the low income children get to go to the public school PreK 4 programs.
Now it is looking as if I will have to have my children at two different schools, even though they are only a year apart! So, if each of the schools start at the same time, one or two of them will have to be dropped off extremely early. 
The Ugly:
Here is the worst one!
Today, I went into the Catholic School where I was working up until about 3 weeks ago. I decided to go ahead and collect my things out of the library and clean up the computer of all my documents, so the new person coming in could have a clean start. Well, I went into my email and up pops a message from the Principal:
“You need to speed read through the collection and remove all the questionable materials with the help of The Consecrated Miss _______ (the nun) and a parent volunteer. All Judy Blume materials need to be withdrawn unless you can prove they are of value.” Etc, etc, etc.
Ugh! I am so glad I left. I would have absolutely popped my cork if that had actually come to happen. Don’t these people know that censoring, restricting and making all of these issues a mystery to kids are the very reasons that our kids are so curious and going out there, doing the stuff? We make our children ashamed of their bodies (don’t touch that, keep it covered), ashamed of sex (that’s dirty…however, don’t they know we couldn’t survive as a species without sex?), and uninformed about sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. Not letting children talk about this stuff, and then us as adults, parents and educators not having the opportunity to discuss and guide the kids…THEY ARE GOING TO GET CURIOUS! They will ultimately go looking to do that stuff, because they will think it is “cool”.
What in the world are Catholics so afraid of? Do they think their children are so stupid that reading these books (which really aren’t that awful…some are quite educational!) will change them into criminals? Or alcoholics? Or get them pregnant? Maybe if they let them read the books and then talked frankly with the kids about their options, they would have the knowledge they need to make the right choices in life.
What does a consecrated nun know of sex? Absolutely nothing! Yes, abstinence is best. But lack of teaching what sex is and what you should be abstaining from is stupid! Take away the mystery, you take away the curiousity, and possibly take away the whole problem this country is having.
That is a long post! I think I’ll go write a letter to the editor about all of these things. I have had one in the paper before…maybe I’ll see my name in print again.
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I absolutely agree, Becky. I’ve never been able to understand the rationale behind censorship. One piece of interest, though - I went to a Catholic high school - and on our summer reading lists, as well as on the lists of books we read each year in school, were quite a number of books from the so-called “banned book list”. Even more ironic than that, however, was that my junior biology teacher - who taught evolution - was a none. Anywho, I’m sorry for the children at your former school - the so-called “adults” may believe they are protecting them, but this kind of restriction only hurts.