A mouthful of food for thought

[Quoted from a story I shared on FB about a wyt teacher bullying a student he did not even teach]

I come from an educator. I have a sibling who works in the public school system. I grew up around teachers. We speak about bullying in school, but most folks think about student-on-student bullying. But there are teachers who bully, too. In fact, there are many bullies teaching students. I should know. In middle school, JFK Junior High, the teachers as well as the students bullied me and many of my peers. There were a few good educators, but the bullying teachers outnumbered them. We say "a few bad apples," but no one says the full quote, "spoils the WHOLE BUNCH." Law enforcement, Education, Medicine, and most other industries did Not begin with Black folks, brown folks, QUILTBAG+, and women in mind. In fact, the police began as slave patrols. Medicine experimented on enslaved people. And though Public Education, started by *Immigrants* in order to equal the playing field, "so the miller's son can be in the same classroom as the bankers son," know that the USA continues its institutions on the basis of systemic bigotry(racism, seismic, homophobia, and xenophobia). Reform does not and will not fix what was made to oppress in the first place. We need complete and total change. Have a thoughtful Friday.

Just A Quick Thought

Artistic skills, abilities, and talents do translate/transfer well into many career paths, if education and industries would just show the respect and time for the arts they show for others.

The Relay of Traumatic Events

I tried to use this as a Twitter reply and realized it might serve better as a blog post. 

I recently tweeted that we need viable trauma history taught in schools. What do I mean? I mean, as of right now, we aren't teaching about recent historical genocides, ethnic cleansings, or slavery, and exploitation of human beings the right way in schools. We get names and dates and that's usually about it. We don't get a personal or credible narrative of what I want to call 'trauma events'. 

Not only are our methods of teaching ineffective in their impact on younger generations, to say the least. Such information on the matter doesn't seem to be building empathy in the students learning about the trauma event.

When I hear folks say: 

But it happened a long time ago! It doesn't apply to me!

Or, my personal favorite:

Why can't you get over it?

And, I want to scream at and shake these people. Let me explain why:

A) Trauma events are constantly happening. There is no "But that happened then" or, "Those were different times". No, no, it wasn't. It isn't. Human recorded history likes to put things into timeframes such as eras and periods in order for our brains to process. However, as any history scholar, academic, or hobbyist will tell you, there is nothing new under the sun. History constantly repeats. Certain factors can replay at another place and time.

Here are some of my suggestions and they aren't perfect. I respectfully look for further suggestions or different ideas.

First, let us not assume that we will always have the luxury and privilege to have those who have gone through such events around. Sure, some may still be living, but time, resource, and distance may make it almost impossible to get information from the person or people who have gone through said trauma event.

Also, we need to go back to the training of storytelling statuses such as what bards, griots, and other cultural/academia tellers of old were accorded. 

Why do I say this? Because while society must and should give every right for a variety of voices to speak up and speak truths to power, the onus of the retelling of trauma events should not always be expected of those that actually went through them. 

Oftentimes, the people who have gone through said trauma event may not be willing to speak about it as they're still hurting and psychological wounds may still be fresh. 

This is why I feel it's a privilege and honor when a Holocaust survivor, a Native person who has family remembering the Trail of Tears, or the Black person who has family remembering Slavery, or the Japanese person survivor of Hiroshima/Nagasaki speak on and teach others. 

I commend them. I honor them. I weep for them. But at the same time, not everybody is willing to speak on or about such matters, depending on personality, the depth of the trauma, and how much culturally they're given to tell about the event.

However, we still need to be taught these things and so, who should do it? It should be left to those of us who can be objective as well as empathetic to what we are about to impart. 

Not only should the storyteller/educator/historian be given the unenviable task to relay trauma events, it should be done with compassion, a sense of responsibility, as well as the scholarly understanding that such events are not so far in the past that they can't or won't happen again. 

To Inspire Girls!

It hurts when I am teaching young women, and a few times, older women, and I see that often, the sense of curiosity has been lost or damaged.
What I mean is that girls often show they want to DO something but family, peers, and society tells them to leave things to the boys and men. 

What was I doing as a little girl? I was playing with my brothers' toys that they outgrew. My sister is an extrovert and appeared to know what she wanted to do.
As a child in the Bronx, I played with a magician's kit, my Xmas gift one year. Another gift years later when I was in Florida, and from big sis, was a chemistry set. I was performing experiments before and after receiving it, which is probably what may have inspired my sister to buy it for me. 

I believe these childhood experiences fostered a hunger in me to learn, to question, to seek out the truth...
Many of the young women I now encounter often yearn for knowledge, or don't appear to understand that they must ask questions. Their excuses range from 'I don't want to be a bother' to 'I didn't THINK to ask'. 

What is going on? Where is the female potential to question and to understand? As a functional human being, it is each individual's responsibility to seek and to learn! Especially us women! As the majority of the world's population, we can contribute so many things to our distinct societies, and yet, many things in those very societies, whether overt or subtle, bar us from doing so.

Why not take the challenge to challenge yourself? Don't just leave it to some, do the world a favor and participate in the human story.... We need ALL the chapters to tell it.