A teacher`s value

Much can be determined about civilization by the value placed on its teachers. I don`t mean the alleged value or what society may think it should be, but the actual importance, we as a nation attach to this inarguably critical position.
Every culture has had teachers of renowned. Even if the sound of their names have long ago died to any ear, the essence of the truly gifted teachers` lessons live on in the lives of the students they taught, sometimes beyond the lifespan of the nation or republic of their origin. Instructors of the sciences have passed on invaluable formulas, bards have given the world brilliant patterns of prose. Scholars and architects have contributed to humankind, disseminating vast knowledge of philosophy and spectacular structures. The seldom praised and underpaid middle class man or woman laboring daily in our towns` public school, spent at least part of today teaching your young son or daughter basic spelling, mathematics, art, music and or history. Why does this last sentence seem to pale in the light of the previous? It has everything to do with the priorities of our public interests, and the values of culture.
Today our society values that which entertains above what educates. From the Obscene yearly contracts of overvalued sports stars, to the vulgar royalties paid to popular actors, we as a culture are far more concerned with diversion than direction. This sad truth is slowly becoming evident in this country as we slide further down the list of the worlds educated developed nations, and take a back seat to places like China, Japan, and Germany in the developement of advanced technologies. Except for domination in the film and sporting industry, we seem only to excell in the field of new military hardware. At least this keeps us in a position of world power by capacity of force, if not brilliance.
So much of this tragic dilema has its` roots in a place far deeper than distraction, preoccupation or just plain negligence. Can we pay our teachers lavishly and expect better educated children? Possibly. Should we make the qualifications for this position more rigid? There are certainly some substandard instructers in todays schools. Should we institute a year- round education program for the students, a smaller pupil to instructor ratio, better equipped classrooms, more modern textbooks,a curriculum updated to the needs of this century? Obviously these thing could help, yet none of them truly address the underlying problem, the deterioration of our nations values.
We have available to us the best instruction there has ever been, provided by the best possible teacher we could have, who provides us with all we need to know about values and the teaching of our children. Yet the wisdom of our Creator and His Word are all but outlawed in the forum of education today. Because of this what is left for our kids, after the best substance of ethical and moral teaching has been stripped from the classroom, other than the cold facts of declining average national grades and a withering interest in the persuit of the knowledge of God, and the critical teaching He offers.
We have turned far from the education Jesus labored so hard to provide us with from the Father, and we can see the painful evidence of this in the world our children are growing up in . The teaching to children of strong ethical and moral truth as defined by the Bible must be the priority of the people in our country, if we are to continue as one nation under God, and truly come to understand the value of a teacher.

PROBLEM PARTY

By the din of battle, we can surmize that it is election time again. As a Christian Conservative Republican going to the polls in a few weeks, there is much to consider. This will be a monunental point in time for the values voter, we will either continue in domination of house and senate and the governorship of Massachusettes, or we will see the stage set for disaster on the fronts of legitimate marriage, national security, sound social ethics, and religious freedom just to name a few.
Tune in to the news media if you dare, and you will hear the ranting of liberals and the expounding of conservatives on more issues than you could count on all your fingers and toes. It seems to me, that according to statistics, a great many people in this country do not vote, yet there are an awful lot of people complaining about an awful lot of things.
Let us examine this. If we do not vote, we need to shut our pie hole. If we can not be bothered to make our opinion clear at the ballot box, we should put our heads back in the sand and let the adults make the decisions. The Good Lord knows that there is trouble in our nation, and He has provided us a voice to address our concerns about our government. So if you love God, and this United states of America you need to get informed, and make a choice. Our way of life, our childrens security, and the moral future of this land depend on it.
Am I a happy camper around the Republican fire? Not always, to be honest. And we need to be honest. The morally reprehensible behavior of some men in our party is sickening, and undercuts the very foundations of its values. Unfortunately only dismissal and possibly incarceration are allowed by law. Have we become a governing elite that is to slow and preoccupied with glorifing its achievements to respond to the needs of its citizens in the face of disaster? To this shame we need to admit and repent. Is there a good reason why we drag our feet concerning the enforcement of established laws, and the secutity of our national borders? The usury of the desperate for the benefit of the wealthy has nothing to do with reason. And I feel sadly, that we were decieved by those in control of our party, about our military entry into Iraq. We as citizens of this country, did not need to be fed a story about alleged WMDs based on questionable, if not blatantly false intelligence. President Bush needed only to state the facts; that we had to level Saddams` regime because he was a tyrannical despot, and would continue to threaten regional and world stability, just as the Taliban would have. We desperately needed to establish a stand against the growing threat of radical Muslim Jihad, and without a doubt 9/11 gave us and the world all the reason we needed to do so. People, do not be swayed by the whining liberal media chatter, if Saddam as a political leader was not yet supporting Muslim extremest based terrorism, how long would it have been before he would have? Should we have waited for the inevitable ? We needed to wage war for the security of our nation then, and we need to be there now. Why did Democrats vote for the war option in the beginning , only to turn tail now? Why would anyone want to cheapen the price our military dead? Why would any group of Americans want to steer us further away from precepts of our Constitution or the Laws of God that our society was founded upon? who can be sure. But, where they would lead us today were they to gain power? This we can be sure about, if we think for one minute that it would be a better place than where we are now, we are sadly, and quite likely mortally, mistaken.
mkz.