Why?

Some people call me crazy. Hmmm I won’t deny that I’m a little crazy; the question that begs to be answered is WHY am I crazy? Rather than look inward I blame my knucklehead employees for driving me crazy.

One example is a water pipe and valve that is located dead center in the middle of the entrance to the huge construction area of our Plantation Conference Center. Instead of using some God given intelligence and moving the valve to a less frequented area, and/or burying it underground in an enclosed protective case, they just leave it where it will get run over by the huge trucks that deliver supplies almost daily. One truck backs over it and breaks it and a leak develops; they repair it and two days later another truck hits it; they repair it again, and the next day another truck hits it, and on and on and on until I am stark raving mad and yelling cusswords like the most foul mouthed sailor walking the streets of San Diego.

The same is true for erosion. A road or one of our soybean fields will begin to wash out in the incessant rain and instead of analyzing it and trying to determine how to permanently fix it, they merely grade it a little and patch it. And then it rains and washes their cheesy patch away again, and again, and again, until…. you guessed it, I go absolutely bonkers and start yelling and screaming like – well like a crazy person.

I was doing some research on kids dropping out of school the other day and was disheartened to see that one out of three kids in the United States drops out of school and never graduates. The figures are worse in Georgia where 42% of kids dropout and even worse in Nevada where 58% drop out; however as I looked at some other states I saw it was much lower dropping down as low as 19%. The question begs to be answered why?

I am helping one of my sons develop a new software company that utilizes business intelligence, data warehousing and data mining to rapidly sift through millions of pieces of data to instantly determine the answer to that question. Until we get it finished we can only guess, but it is a serious question. I mean what are all of those kids without so much as a high school education going to do for a living?

These high school dropouts remind me of my knucklehead employees and the water pipe. It is like being able to foresee a truck backing over the pipe and not being able to do anything about it but watch when it happens and water starts gushing, spewing, and gurgling four feet high. I foresee that these kids won’t have a chance of making it in our modern world without an education. They need to stay in school and then go to college in order to have a fighting chance. Instead they are dropping out in record numbers and any thinking person knows that it is a disaster in the making.

Where are these kid’s parents, teachers, and mentors? Are they not getting good advice from anyone, or is it a case of they are getting good advice from them, but the kids are choosing to ignore it? One thing certain, in just a few years when all of these uneducated kids enter an economy with limited menial jobs available. There will not be enough jobs for high school dropouts and it makes you wonder if there are no jobs available for them, where will all these kids live? How will they pay their bills? How will they pay for health care? What will happen to their kids?

YIKES! It is a very scary proposition. My son and I are determined to find out why so many kids score higher on tests than others, why some dropout and others graduate with honors, why some go on to college and others do not. We will take an analytical look at it and I will report our findings to you about a year from now.

Okay if you are interested in my personal belief as to what is going awry, I believe it is a breakdown of the family unit. Yes school uniforms, excellent qualified teachers, good textbooks, small classrooms, more disciplined study, and a host of other factors no doubt contribute, but the family unit is what really has an impact.

Parents are working two and three jobs just to make ends meet with no time to devote to their kids, or they are spending their time sucking on a crack pipe or a bottle of wine and don’t care about their kids. Either way I don’t think a large segment of our kids are getting the support at home from their families.

How do we fix it?

It begins at home. How do you know what is right if you are never taught right from wrong? There is a right way to make a bed. There is a right way to study. There is a right way to wash and dry the dishes. Kids also need to be taught respect and to say yes sir and yes ma’am and not yeah and naw to adults. The way we learn, is someone should teach us and it ain’t the government that should be responsible for that; it is the parent’s responsibility.

When we are young, we might ask, is this the only way? We might wonder why it couldn’t be done this way but education answers these questions so we know why the right way is right.

A good place to start would be teaching kids the 10 commandments. Every house has its own rules, and so we should teach that these rules apply for this house. The good thing about the 10 commandments is that they are universal. They apply to everyone. They apply in every age. Everywhere, the rule is the same. And so they should be taught, everywhere to everyone. (I have them on display in my plantation office.)

After all, how do you learn, if you are not taught? We need to turn to God.

Isaiah 45:22
“Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”