an area we can impact in Sevier County with our new building....

Hi Howard, I've been reading again and am thinking this may be an area we can impact in Sevier County with our new building....

 

For the past fifty or sixty years changes in family patterns and childrearing have shifted the responsibility for the upbringing of children from the traditional family to other settings in society. With children spending a majority of their waking hours at school, parenting has largely been transferred to public school officials. In its modern context, public education cannot train character and teach right and wrong, providing the necessary moral limitations on behavior. This results in the state of the family being at the heart of many of the problems confronting young people today. Cornell University research shows that "While the family still has the primary moral and legal responsibility for the character development of children, it often lacks the power or opportunity to do the job, primarily because parents and children no longer spend enough time together in those situations in which training is possible. This is not because parents do not want to spend time with their children. It is simply that conditions have changed."

 

Today's young people often know more about sex, drugs, and violence than their adult counterparts. By the year 2000, 25 percent of U.S. teens were involved with weapons; 70 percent admitted cheating on tests in school; more than 15 percent had shown up for class drunk; and 5 million children---including three-year-olds---were regularly left home alone to care for themselves.

 

Young people are growing up in an age of overwhelming mass media, mixed messages, and multitasking. Forty-two percent of American homes are "constant TV households meaning that a set is on most of the time. The average American watches television about four hours per day, and it consumers 40 percent of his or her free time.

 

Wherever they turn, life is chaotic---wars, violence, environment crises, oil depletion, and terrorism. Children are confronted on a daily basis with issues, images, and material of all sorts---abortion, drugs, alcohol, pornography---and preyed upon by sexual predators, marketing mavens, even the government.

 

The impact that our school systems are having on young people and their psyches must be considered. Looking at our public schools today, it may be difficult to imagine that they were once considered the hope and freedom and democracy. Studies show "Ninety-five percent of American 17-year-olds cannot read well enough to understand technical materials and literary essays. This means just 5 percent of America's 17-year-olds can read well enough to understand the Bible…..Almost one-third of 17-year-olds do not know that Columbus discovered the New World before 1750! Additionally, we now have school systems that are, for the most part, heavy on curtailing inappropriate behavior and light on common sense and compassion. Nowhere is this more evident than in the over-all lockdown mentality sweeping through our public schools. TBC.....

Regards,
John Jenkins

865-803-8179 cell

Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@yahoo.com 

Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com 
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

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