When I was in Rome, Italy, I made friends with a retired school teacher from New York who bought an Irish pub in Rome after he retired. He was cool, he used to serve me free pints of Guinness and talk, he loved having an American to talk with, and he told me that when he was a public school teacher in New York City he hated it, and he feared for his life, so he quit. And then he went to work at a Catholic school as a teacher, and all of a sudden the children really wanted to learn, and he loved teaching at the Catholic school. He worked at the Catholic school until he retired, and then he went to Rome and opened an Irish pub. He was a great guy, I loved hanging out with him and drinking beer with him.
So what we need to do is we need to teach the children in the public schools whatever it is that makes the children in the Catholic schools drastically different. Instead of being mean, and violent, and selfish, we need to figure how to reach them young and teach them to be kind, gentle, empathetic, and compassionate. Christians are taught to love our neighbors, so we need to teach the children in the public schools to love their neighbors even if they are not Christians. In Anaheim we are teaching all children to be kind, and our City Motto is "City of Kindness." So we need to teach all children to be kind. And Christians are taught to work and to be responsible and to earn their own money, so Christians know the value of an education, and that is passed down to the children. My family was already teaching me to read and they were giving me books before I even started school, and I learned to love books, and I have a natural sense of curiosity which we need to nurture in all youth. We need to reach the children young and we need to teach them kindness, and to love their neighbors, and we need to teach them responsibility as they become old enough to learn responsibility. ( One way that I learned responsibility as a child was that we had farm animals that I took care of, I fed the cows, and I had a pony that I took care of, and I fed the chickens, etc. I was responsible for feeding the animals before I came in and had breakfast, this was all before my Father died. After my Father died then I had to work to help to buy food, and I worked with my Grandmother who was a dog groomer, I learned to work. ) I loved school as a kid and I was an over-achiever, and so I used to help the other children, the teachers made me a student helper and I helped the other kids, we need to nurture that in all kids.
As we reach the children young with free pre-school then we need to teach them empathy, compassion, kindness, and we need to nurture their sense of curiosity and we need to set the public school kids with the same good qualities that the Christian school children have.
Then later in life with free community college then we can teach them parenting skills and relationship skills and they can explore what they want for their career to be, etc, and the ones with aptitude can go on to become doctors, etc.
Salute,
Tony V.
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