Thought for the day: The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you've every had.
Editorial of the day: Prevention or Treatment?Chemical Dependency. The root of many of the problems that our society must deal with today. Self-medication of young people with emotional or mental disorders is the 1st step toward chemical addiction, gangs, premature pregnancies, drop-outs, and youth crime. Drunken driving, by adults who don't know how much is enough, has frequently led to a tragic loss of life...sometimes the person under the influence and sometimes innocent bystanders. Crimes committed to support chemical dependency, or while under the influence of intoxicants, are common. Billions of dollars, from our economy, are being drained by futile attempts to prevent the import, distribution, and sale of controlled substances. Although our society spends enormous ammounts of money attempting to address the EFFECTS of chemical dependency, there is pathetically little being done to PREVENT it! It is well known, in law enforcement circles, that the proportion of children who have academic problems as early as the 3rd grade is equal to the proportion of adults who will need institutionalization when they grow up! Yes, even at this early age, children are falling behind in school (for various reasons including simply not learning at the same rate as their peers), being advanced to the next grade in spite of their diminished knowledge, and then losing their self-esteem when they become stereotyped as 'failures' because they can't get caught up and school becomes a place of torment rather than tutoring! Low self-esteem and self-image are the chief cause of seeking acceptance and escape with drugs, sexual laisons, and gangs. Since there is a trend to place victims of mental and emotional illnesses in penal institutions, there are fewer and fewer mental facilities being constructed. This means that a possible scenario could be a third grader who falls behind in class, can't get caught up before going on to the 4th grade. In the 4th grade this person falls further behind and even gets held back. They're study habits suffer because their peers are moving ahead without them and they are acquiring a reputation as a failure and behavior problem. By the 7th grade they have begun to experiment with drugs and find acceptance with gangs of people like themselves. By high school they have already acquired a criminal record and will probably drop out of school and/or run away from home. From there they acquire behaviors which will become their lifestyle and place them as a burden on society for the rest of their unhappy life! The solution is for the school system and society to work together to show our youth that adults CAN cooperate rather than conflict and compete! We CAN find solutions to these problems if we dedicate our vast resources of knowledge and talent to putting the UNITY back into our commUNITY!
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