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Get off my lawn!
jhocking:
--- Quote from: 0bsessions on 12 Mar 2008, 07:49 ---As someone who wasted fourteen grand in an abandoned attempt to become a teacher (And has been reconsidering said abandonment while I still have time to), I empathize with what you're saying, but feel you're a bit off base. Not all teachers are in it for the sheer betterment of others. I've met more than my fair share who've done it for a laundry list of the wrong reasons: not being willing to let go of their youth, craving authority (And being aware subconsciously that being a teacher is a better way of getting that), etc. Even from there, you run into the issue of some teachers becoming just plain jaded and resentful towards the very youth they initially wanted to help. Despite all the jokes we all make regarding how old you are (Read: really, really old), you're young yet when it comes to teaching. Your ambitions are noble, but can you be sure that someday you won't just develop a hatred and resentment towards your students? Looking at things from your current perspective as, I'd assume, the young and cool teacher, would you feel you're afforded that same respect were you to eventually change and degenerate into a petty prick who's essentially only teaching because it's what you know?
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Oh I definitely agree with you about some teachers being in it for the wrong reasons. Lord knows my students tell me dirt all the time about other teachers (not that I take all of it at face value; these are after all young people complaining about authority figures.) And ultimately, if I'm being honest with myself I know that my own desire to help others is more than a little due to selfish motivations like prestige. However, I was reacting to Emilio's statement that being payed negates the accordance of respect.
Sox:
Patrick, I don't think that people drink because it's "mysterious". I do know a lot of kids who drink because they're pretty self destructive and unstable. Making it easier for these kids to obtain alcohol is just about the worst idea in the world. The more difficult it is to obtain alcohol, the fewer people will drink it. Raising the legal drinking age certainly isn't going to cause more people to purchase alcohol.
pilsner:
If you're inclined to destroy yourself, alcohol is just one of a variety of options open to you. There's no reason to think that making alcohol less accessible reduces self-destructive tendencies in young adults or makes it more difficult for them to harm themselves.
What rendering alcohol less accessible does do is makes it more likely that a young adult will be less experienced with alcohol when he or she does encounter it, and gives the teen a great incentive to binge since if you can't go to the corner store to get it, you have to take advantage of it while it's there right? And the damage that alcohol does to teens isn't most frequently through gradual every day use, it's through binging and doing something stupid or something you can't help: driving, putting themselves in a dangerous situation, aspirating their own vomit, passing out outside and dying of exposure, etc.
For instance this news article cites experts who suggest that a higher drinking age had a significant effect on lowering car accident related fatalities in teens but has a number of negative effects including raising the likelihood that teens would drink more alcohol in a shorter period.
Amaroq:
--- Quote from: Elizzybeth on 11 Mar 2008, 23:06 ---When I was eleven, one rainy evening during Thanksgiving weekend, my mother put my brother and I through a terrifying twenty-minute ride (on the wrong side of the road, sometimes) before running a red light, crashing into another car, then spinning around and hitting a stoplight so hard it fell over. I had known, when we got into the car, that she was too drunk to drive, and I felt awful knowing that I had almost asked my dad not to let her drive us but didn't have the balls to follow through.
--- End quote ---
:cry:
That suxx. Sorry to hear about it; glad nobody was hurt.
I hope you're not still blaming yourself for that. You were eleven, and not responsible for her actions!
--- Quote ---At that point, I promised myself that I'd never drink. At about the same time, because my parents both smoke pot, I vowed never to smoke. It's hard to rebel against a couple of hippies, really.
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:laugh:
My friends and I have a long-standing joke about this: really, the only way to rebel against a pair of hippie parents is to become a Republican!
--- Quote ---I've managed to politely decline the now-almost-weekly invitations that I get to smoke pot with my increasingly drug-minded friends (one close friend and one acquaintance have started dealing in the past year), and I've kept my drinking so far to very occasional, very light social drinking. Will I continue to be such a prude? I don't know. But for now, that's how I'm different from my parents.
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I totally empathize.
When I was 13, a close friend of mine got so into hard-drug addiction that he wound up stealing from just about everybody he knew, but loathing himself for it. The epitome of low self-esteem perhaps? Anyways, I promised him I'd never ever start, and then he died of an overdose. So .. the promise had a lot of weight for me.
I had a ton of druggie friends throughout high school, and, as you can imagine, it was important to me to "take care of" them. I was always the one baby-sitting. From pot and acid to dabbling with crack and heroin, I sat through their experimentation with them - I figured I had more experience with drug use and side-effects than any non-user outside of the medical / counseling professions. I certainly got very good at talking people down out of a bad trip!
Then, as though to challenge my ability to say "no", I went to pot-haven U.C. Santa Cruz .. and played for the Ultimate team. ;) At least I got away from the people doing the hard drugs!
Just figured I'd offer my own experiences and support for your choice: I don't think it makes you a prude. It just shows that your word (to yourself) means something.
If you've got that kind of personal integrity, you're "good people" in my book.
E. Spaceman:
--- Quote from: jhocking on 12 Mar 2008, 10:08 ---
Oh I definitely agree with you about some teachers being in it for the wrong reasons. Lord knows my students tell me dirt all the time about other teachers (not that I take all of it at face value; these are after all young people complaining about authority figures.) And ultimately, if I'm being honest with myself I know that my own desire to help others is more than a little due to selfish motivations like prestige. However, I was reacting to Emilio's statement that being payed negates the accordance of respect.
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No no, i respect a lot of teachers, however I don't respect then because they are teachers, just like I don't respect anyone for whatever employment they may have.
Jon summed up my opinion here
--- Quote ---Teachers do not deserve respect. People deserve respect. Teachers are people, so they earn that base level of respect that should be afforded to all. From there, any additional alloted respect is based upon the quality of a person, not what job they perform. Beyond that, a title is not a measure of respect, it is a measure of authority.
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