Who can talk the bestest?

Dribble, pass, sprint, spike, serve, swing! American pastimes. Who doesn't enjoy watching a basketball player running up the court or feel the adrenaline when one of the baseball players hits a grand slam? How about the enjoyment when a humorous duo takes first place at a competitive speech meet?
Where does this take us? Where exactly is our society heading when people are idolized for being in sports and yet, those who partake in the arts, are criticized. For example, why is it that students who want to better themselves by speaking in public vicinities are not as good as sports stars because they don’t actually do anything.
For the longest time while I was in school, I was told that speech was not actually a sport because no work was ever done. “How hard is it to speak in public?” Well, I always wanted to ask them back, “How hard is it too—” Fill in the blank…
The thing is, in sports, the player – and every player – is a part of a team. They have someone else to help them play their game. There is another person on the court to assist the game. In the arts, such as speech, theater, and choir, the person is on their own in front of the judge. Therefore, the student has to be able to act on their own. This makes the arts harder than people often give credit for.
Now, I don’t mean to sit here and rant on about this, but, when I was at work a couple weeks ago at BCN, there was a huge uproar because of basketball. The head speech coach and I were planning around the basketball team, and then, we find out that they planned against us. Since the district is two schools, we have to drive back and forth 20 miles to get to practice. This creates issues because not all students are allowed to drive on their own.
Now, in other schools, this same thing occurs. Sports stars are idolized and anyone who participates in the arts is looked at as people that are talentless. So, where does that put us? Why is it that we have to divide our students into these two groups: Sports and arts?
Tina Bryn, my head coach, said something that really interested me a couple weeks ago. “My kids are going to pick what they want to be in, yes, but I am going to encourage them to try both sports and arts. It is important to have an understanding of what each activity takes.”
I don’t know where we are heading. As I walked through BCN last week and heard people referencing speech as a waste-of-time activity, I almost wanted to turn and ask, “And where is basketball going to take you?” Of course, there is not forcing people to change their minds. That is what makes our country so special: We all get to decide for ourselves.

If you want more information, look to the experts. Americans for the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts are both websites that place emphasis on how important the arts are for schools and in general.

Child father brings about culture shock!

So, as I perused the internet on Monday night at work, I came across a link that said that a man in Saudi Arabia ate 22 live scorpions. Another link shows a boy of 13 living in Britain whose girlfriend just gave birth to a baby. A father at age 13. Another link shows a video of a woman doing something called funny face yoga. What do all these links have in common? They are all the news that is taking over. This is what is being broadcast online for people to observe and to comprehend. Now, the real question: Why should I care? Why should anyone care? News in our culture and our society has been changing. This is evident in the different blogs that we are all posting. There is so much out there to learn about, that people tend to write about stuff we don’t care about and leave the actual information for us to discover on our own.

Is this what our society is leading us to? If we look at the 13-year-old father from London, would it really make any difference if we lived a few hundred years ago? Back then, 13-year-old boys were often turning into fathers, so why is it that today's age is so shocked at this development.

It is evident that we are changing: Look at the WHITE HOUSE for example. Barack Obama would never have gotten to the White House even 50 years ago. So why did he? Because, our culture is teaching us to follow our own minds instead of giving into what history has taught us. Obama is president because we made it so. The people who live in the United States. And he gained it because he wanted it.
That is something that our country has always believed in: Choice. If one chooses to become a doctor, they can. A lawyer, they can. A teacher, they can. There is nothing stopping any of us from reaching our goals as long as we are determined and willing to do the work that comes with it.
Isn’t that an act of culture? What exactly is culture? According to dictionary.com, culture is a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period. That is one of the 12 definitions. So, is the United States a culture? Is North Dakota a culture? Is Valley City?
The thing that surprises me is the attitudes people have to one another. I was observing at Barnes County North on Monday, in the 6th grade classroom, and I have to say, I have never seen so many kids have so little respect for their teacher. Shut up was a common phrase used during the day when the kids did not like what the teacher had to say.
Honestly, only one word came to my head when I saw their lack of disciple: Their parents. Not that their parents had done a bad job, but these kids were not taught to value their elders .To listen to what their elders say and know what they were in the same position once upon a time. It is all a matter of perception. These kids do not perceive anything wrong out of their treatment.
It also comes down to the fact that parents are getting younger and younger. Students are having kids in school, and the children grow up in an unstable environment. Just think, now there are 13-year-old dads: What’s next? 15-year-old grandpas. Who knows?

Roses....I don't have time to smell Roses

I woke up this morning to a shrilling sound from somewhere in my room. I checked my alarm clock, nothing; my other alarm clock, nothing; my cell phone, nothing. My ears hurt from the unwanted sound. My mind finally made me look out the window to see what the commotion was all about. Outside my window, I watched as several people skated around on the pavement around a car which had smoke rolling from the hood. The car went down Boss hill! In this weather! The driver locked their brakes early on, and skidded all the way down, smashing head on into a parked car, which hit another car, and the chain reaction continued.
Okay people; let's just look at a couple clear facts:

*We live in North Dakota
*North Dakota experiences snow and ice
*Ice causes roads to be very slick
*Slick roads can cause crashes

That's just it! Our people have learned to go....go....go....without any concern. It is an absolute fact that people no longer worry about conditions as long as they can get in their car and drive. Basically, as people hurry themselves to finish everything in a short amount of time, the work is not done as sufficiently.
For instance, a homework assignment meets procrastination! A large paper is due at midnight, and the author does not begin to write until eleven. Now, if the writer is good enough to create a five page masterpiece within an hour, than more power to them, but that are not most people. For the rest of us, the work should take more than the allotted amount of time. Therefore, when the writer is given their paper back with a low or failing grade, should they be mad at the professor or themselves.
It is critical that people slow down. Europeans have embraced this ideal long before us in the states. People need to slow themselves down in order to understand exactly what is going on around them.
Take for example, this situation with a 22-year-old male grad student. His academic life is going well, but there is no time for a social life. Read the article from Go Ask Alice to see what she suggests. People need to slow down. As someone always tells us when we are younger: “Stop and smell the roses.”
That is just it.
People don’t listen.
People don’t want to listen.
And in turn, things such as easily avoided car accident occur. What happened to smelling the roses? What happened to appreciating everything that lay in front of you?
Until recently, I have taken life for granted, and I know I am not alone. It is funny what small events can change one’s perspective on something as important as life.
There are easy ways to slow down and enjoy everything that is in front of us every day. People are in too much of a hurry to really understand that every day is a gift, not a right. We have the privilege of living as we do: Why would someone try to mess it up by moving just a little too fast?

That's Our Culture

A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll on a highway in Connecticut. He lays motionless on the ground, bleeding, and alone. That is to say, except for the dozens of citizens driving right past him. One man on a scooter circled around the body, taking pictures on his mobile phone. No one bothered to call for help, and by the time help did arrive, it was far too late. The man had already died.
What does this story tell us? Old men should watch where they are walking? Men on scooters have great hand-eye coordination? Or that people did not care enough to use their cell phone (which most everyone has nowadays) to call the police and get this man help? He died, not because of his clumsiness, but because people did not help him.
On Saturday, January 31, my car rolled three times on my way to Finley, North Dakota, for a speech competition. I was able to get myself out, but was without help. I figured the best thing for me to do would be walk to Oriska, which was four miles south. A kind family arrived, and allowed me to use their phone and sit in their truck for warmth.
However, this is not what shocked me. While my car remained upside down as it had landed, dozens of vehicles stopped to rescue me. I never expected to watch people rush to my car to help. I had been helping a student out at BCN write a speech on the Bystander Effect, and proving that it did in fact occur. After my incident, I could no longer help her.
The Bystander Effect is when people will not help someone in trouble because of another person around the same vicinity. If there are several people around, then many will choose not to help. It is not their problem: It is the way we have been raised. Our culture has taught us to watch out for Number One. Keeping ourselves safe has been programmed into our brains from the time we are toddlers until the time we are 78.
Why is this? Why do we choose not to help someone in need? Is it just country folks that help? This phenomenon started in 1964, with Kitty Genovese. She was walking home one day and was viciously stabbed outside her apartment. The killer flocked off when people showed up, but no one called the police or tried to help Genovese. The killer returned and stabbed her once again, until she was officially dead.
People seem to sit back and watch as people die. All around us; we are all guilty. There is something wrong with the way our society is being raised. We no longer care enough for our neighbor and this is going to create a mess load of problems in the future. Think of it this way: If a 78-year-old man was tossed and you drove by, would you stop to help? What if that person was you?