What's Up Hawaii?
Aloha Hawaii,
Thousands of you know me; who I am is not important. Our children and grandchildren are important. We are a State of beautiful, kindhearted, and loving people. My interest is in our children, especially those in economic depressed areas. Often the child displaying deviant behavior is considered a, "Youth-at-Risk." In Hawaii, we have a terrific Office of Youth Services, providing outstanding services for our youth, through community organizations. On this site, I want to suggest methods in which individuals, groups, and communities can work together, in accomplishing the goal of eliminating many of the contributing issues, linked directly to delinquent and deviant behavior.
Opinions expressed on issues are for discussion, the more discussion; I feel the greater the benefit will be, for the people of our State. Agree or disagree with the opinions expressed. I'm requesting that you seriously consider and discuss subjects mention. Hopefully, together we will find means of eradicating many of the casual factors associated with, Youth-at-Risk. In my opinion, the single greatest factor in placing our Youth-at-Risk is the lack of a quality EDUCATION. Therefore, my first topic will be on education. I will discuss education from several aspects updating this page periodically. I will also discuss other issues, I believe directly place our youth at risk of not becoming successful adults.
EDUCATION
Parents, education should be a daily discussion between our children and us. The future of our Nation, State, and personal lives, depends on the quality of our children's education. Educating our children, involves many complex units comprising of parents, families, neighbors, communities, schools, social organizations, and government agencies. It's no secret those most adversely affected by the lack of a good quality education are the residents of our economic depressed areas, and those living at the lower-income level of our State. The next group greatly impacted is the middle-income level. Many of us believe the public education system is not working, as we desire it to work. The question is how can we assist in educating our child?
Individually we can assist in several ways, beginning with the parents. Our children are our gift of "Mother Nature." When one truly loves their child, they are sharing that gift of "Mother- Nature." Its natural, to want the best for our children, a good quality education is their future survival. Many parents on the Island of Oahu work two jobs. Several of these same parents, spend from three to four and a half hours daily, commuting to and from work. Many empathize with people in this situation; however, empathy does not educate children.
Children begin displaying signs of cognition long before they can communicate verbally. This we know from observing our child imitating our actions, long before they can pronounce words. Actions such as, reaching to pick-up a bottle, or spoon to feed themselves, these actions are our first indicators that our child is acquiring knowledge by the use of reasoning, intuition, or perception. Long before, they can express themselves verbally. I have often thought, how much greater our child's vocabulary would be, prior to entering pre-school or kindergarten, if we their parents, speak to them in one sentence phases. From my perspective, once an infant is able to make the correlation between spoon, food, and mouth or any other two or more things; they are exhibiting signs of cognition. Parents living under the most poverty-stricken conditions can assist in providing our child a realistic opportunity of entering pre-school or kindergarten prepared to learn.
Talking in sentences assist in building vocabulary, playing number and word games with our children increase their thinking and reasoning skills . Tell little stories; use our imagination to invent games, from simple things around us. Read magazines and newspapers with your child. The idea is to stimulate the child's eagerness to learn, prior to entering a former educational environment. Parents we have the ability to stimulate the desire to learn within our child. We do this by displaying a loving interest in the child learning, long before the child starts to school. It does not require finances to stimulate our child's mind, only our willingness to devote the effort to insuring our child, their best chance at life that we the parent can give them.
Hawaii, our state as many other states, has been adversely affected by our nation's and the world's economic recession. The economic impact on our state is distressing to many families. Much of our state's employment is derive from tourism and the Federal Government. Our tax base declined to the point, our elected officials decided to use the education of our children to assist in balancing the budget, by instituting seventeen furlough Fridays from our past school year cycle. There is very little we as individuals can do to change these rules at present. However, there are things we can do in the future, to insure our child's education, is not subjected to the dictates of tourism within our state.
Recently, the price of school lunches increased, school bus fares increased, as well as student public transportation cost. Our homeless population has increased significantly within the past few years. Many grandparents find themselves facing difficult times, trying to assist in raising of our grandchildren. Those in good health must do everything possible to help insure our grandchildren, acquire the necessary skills to compete in a high technology society. Our survival and future as we age depends upon our children and grandchildren's ability to compete in this world. Those of us in these two groups, low and middle-income families, must become much more actively involved, in the education of our children, if not, many more of us, will become homeless.
Educating our children is one of our greatest challenges. I believe parents are the most important teacher in educating our children. Most of us, are lacking in the academic skills, necessary to train our children academically, that is why we have schools. Parents and community members, the lessons we teach, far exceed the sphere of academics. On the average, our teachers do a tremendous job, preparing our children, of various backgrounds, and cultures, with limited resources. Parents, we are the primary teachers, each of us have the ability to teach our children respect; respect for themselves, family, friends, and neighbors. We have the ability to teach discipline, in my opinion, one of our most important obligations, is to teach our child discipline. Discipline to follow the rules of the home, discipline to follow community rules and standards, to me, discipline is the one quality necessary to survive with a reasonable level of sanity.
How do parents teach discipline? I don't know, if I knew the answer, I would happily share it. However, I suggest a good starting place, is with the parent. The example we demonstrate, to our children, and youth of our communities, are reflected back to use, in the behavior of our children. I wish to share a few thoughts on the subject, of educating our children. Parents we teach our children love, when we show love, we teach them commitment, when we show commitment. We teach honesty, when we are honest with, our children. We teach self-esteem, when we listen to them. We teach self-control, when we establish limits of conduct and enforce those limits, within our home. We teach good citizenship, when we involve them in our community activities, and we greatly, enhance their academic skills, by reading to and with them. We assist in their education, by limiting their television time, to educational programs during the weekday. If in school, they should have a mandatory study period daily. Many parents do this, but many do not. The consequences of their actions is magnified in the behavior of many youth of our communities.
More to follow,
Aloha
