Reach for Your Flower Power

The Flower Within is a late winter/early spring poem that will lift your spirits.

This poem is one of a handful of poems being released for the spring season on Undawnted's YouTube Channel for review. Read it for yourself and leave a comment. 

If you would like to read other nature poems, try Effloresce.

Have a great and wonderful day. 

______

 

Undawnted's YouTube Channel offers poetry shorts to full-fledged poetry feature films in our Poetry Slam section. This new playlist will give you more of the rhymes you crave.

Subscribe for more award-level poems written by DL Mullan.

 

 

Can We Get Back to a Classical Education Now?

Tired of young adults running around in the streets rioting, looting, murdering, and burning?

You are not alone.

A K-12 curriculum based on the United Nation's Agenda 21, Common Core, and Social Justice has destroyed our educational system. Young minds now believe in the opposite of sanity, which has led to having adults who have no idea which way is up. Chaos has become the norm.

Some say that corruption was by design. Some do not know anything about such insinuations. Nonetheless, Americans can see the results.

It is time for us to have a conversation about what Americans value in public education. Do Americans value social justice, revisionist history, comprehensive sexual education, and activism? Not really. Most of these topics are age inappropriate to childrens' ability to absorb, weigh, and analyze them.

Would you give your kindergartner a bottle of booze, a cartoon of cigarettes, and the keys to your car? How about your eight year old? Or, a ten year old? A twelve year old? Most people would not even give their licensed sixteen year old that combination.

Yet, educators have decided to "adult" children with mature content in their classrooms. Anyone who is thrust into adulthood without an adult mind would be piles of dry timber ready to combust. And boy, are these fire starters on a rampage. That is educators' fault.

Children view adults as authority figures. When these authority figures betray young minds, how would those children know the difference? Most adults cannot; so we cannot ask it of our younglings.

We need a counterbalance to negate the irresponsible education Americans are seeing in our public education system. We need to lay down some common sense and agreed upon tenets for pedagogy:

-Mathematics
-Physical Education, Health
-Science
-Social Science
-Foreign Languages, Culture
-Geography
-History
-Art
-Music, Band, Orchestra, Choir
-English, Literature

With an outline of what curriculum should not present to students:

-morality
-religion
-activism
-social justice
-criticism
-sexuality

Educators have overstepped their bounds and decided to become other people's children's parents, religious advisors, and life coaches. Instead of education, our children were indoctrinated by authoritarians. 

Life is our morality play. Each day with each interaction, we learn what is acceptable in our society and what is not. For most people morality is based on their religious upbringing. That is where parental guidance in such matters is of the upmost importance. 

Social justice and activism have been brought into the classroom. Why? Children are unable to vote. Until eighteen, children are in studying and learning mode, not direct action. Action is what is being modeled by teachers. Students are taken to the side of the road in order to protest. That is irresponsible and out of bounds. Children have no business being taught this behavior or modeling it for adults. Hate is a learned behavior and we have young people who are executing this behavior as programmed drones setting fires. 

Dissection of a subject is an advanced skill. This coursework is usually taught in graduate studies. Critical analysis is for the seasoned student. Yet we have children learning critical theories without the knowledge base to scrutinize and assess such complex topics. This skill is age inappropriate for its intended young audience. 

Comprehensive sexual education is also inappropriate in K-12 education. First, children's bodies are immature and their undeveloped brains are unable to make much sense out of this subject. If a child is too young to go to a PG-13, or rated R movie by themselves, then why are educators pushing NC-17 on them? Some mature knowledge is just that: for mature audiences only. Children do not have context for what is being displayed to them and has become the grounds of pedophilic-type grooming behavior by teachers.

The underlying issue is that we have an educational system geared toward "adulting" children. That in itself is morally and ethically abhorrent. The educational system is not the parent. Teachers are not the parent. The child's mother and father are the parents. It is about time America reconciles this notion and snap back to reality. 

American exceptionalism is not about egotism. This educational path is about knowledge and the application thereof. Americans learn the combustion engine: we build cars and highways. Americans learn the filament: we have lighting in all our houses. Americans learn science: we go to the Moon. That is how knowledge coupled with imagination and integrity works. 

The United Nation's interpretation of education has led American children to become incompetent, ignorant, and incompatible with reality. Arson anyone? 

Americans should be setting the example of what humans can do if we set our minds to it. 

Speaking of which, Americans should demand that our National Curriculum should be based around a Classical Education that gives age appropriate knowledge, real world application, and fosters the imagination. 

Children should learn the classics: Latin, Greek, as well as literature, history, and mathematics. These items are missing in education in order to promote over-emotionalism. Empathy has to be balanced with knowledge and ability or the emotive qualities of altruism becomes magnified and distorted as we are seeing today. 

Our individual skills, abilities, talents, and accomplishments should be highlighted and encouraged over group work and group think. A classical education that is reminiscent of Socrates and other great philosophers and educators would propel American ingenuity forward by leaps and bounds. 

So now the question becomes: who wanted to stifle American exceptionalism? 

And parents should ask: why did our educators follow this downward spiral without question? How have the standards plummeted math and reading scores? Just where should the blame be placed? 

Then how can America clean up our academic standards to promote American exceptionalism and eliminate American nihilism from our educational system? 

"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant" -Harlan Ellison

The answer: getting America's educational system back to the classics and leave the indoctrination to authoritarian regimes where free thought is frowned upon.  

Because learning from the greats should be fearless.

 

It's Still Rock'n'Roll to Me

In the article, Grammy Ratings Steady With 2018 In Early Results For Music’s Biggest Night, Deadline again chronicles the unpopularity of the music industry.

Big wigs sit in offices and have new artists sign their lives away for fame and fortune, but the industry is out of touch. Rap. Social Justice. Politics. Over-sexualization. Repetitive beats and words that just go nowhere. Much like the music industry has.

So I get out my 45's, 33's and maybe a 78 or two. Just kidding. I have compact discs.

My technology is up-to-date, but my taste in music has not changed. I like a variety of music from big band, jazz, 60's, 70's, 80's and some 90's. From opera to Broadway musicals, classical overtures to hair bands. My music repertoire is as dynamic and eclectic as I am.

In high school, rock'n'roll was all the rage. I was not into mosh pits or mohawks; I liked fun rock songs and ballads. The hard rock and metal music were just beyond my taste. When grunge and rap took over the airwaves, I pretty much bought the compact discs from the decades past and turned off the radio.

Isn't that the issue with the music industry?

A whole bunch of no name suits have tried to change the way we feel. These faceless creatures would like us to be whores, gang bangers, and low life thugs. Aren't those the images they sell us at the Grammy's and on the music shelves?

I want my Rock'n'Roll. Not scuzzy, disreputable crap, but real honest fun loving rock music that has meaning and value.

Give me guitars, drums, and bass any day of the week. I am tired of "sampling" and nonsense word play. I do not want to sing lyrics of a spell casting drudgery to make somebody money.

I want the dream of harmony and chords. I want to feel life and love and loss. I want to feel the music.

Instead humanity is offered a marketing image with no substance.

Where is me reflected in the music today? I haven't found me and by the looks of the downward spiral of profits and viewership, most people do not see themselves reflected in the industry that is supposed to sell them that reflection.

Have a great and wonderful day. 

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