In addition to the problems that I cited in my earlier post, the law also forbids teachers who also happen to be parents from communicating privately with their own children.

While I fully understand the desire to protect children, and the desire to create legislation which will forge a safe society, the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act perfectly exemplifies a failing attempt to use a law to solve a problem which cannot be solved by government. The government can, and already has, made it illegal for adults and children to have inappropriate sexual contact. The government cannot force adults and children to only communicate “safely.” We adults, parents, teachers, etc., bear the responsibility to teach our children how to communicate safely. We teach our kids about secrets, safe and dangerous; about telling a trusted adult if another adult does or says anything suspicious; etc. Most importantly, we teach our children how to build appropriate relationships with other adults. Teachers, in addition to teaching academics, play a vitally important role in helping children learn how to interact with adults.

Here is a typical comment on implementation:

The Fort Zumwalt School District revised its electronic communications policy in June. “Basically our policy says that our teachers cannot have private conversations on a social network site,” said Superintendent Bernard DuBray. “You can have students on Facebook and other sites, but you don’t have a private conversation on them.”

Any communications between students and teachers has to be open and available to parents and administrators, he said.

From: http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/stcharles/education/article_d45b61a8-b87b-5bb6-a641-9f143f6f4b3d.html#ixzz1Ud4qVBIn

The law prohibits social networking contact between students, past and present, and teachers. Here are just a few reasons why it is a bad law.

Teachers play a critically important role in the lives of many students. Often, kids will talk to teachers about things that they will not discuss with their parents. For instance, one of my high school friends trusted one of her teachers enough to have frank dialogs about sexual identity and pre-marital sex. These conversations happen in ways that are comfortable for the student. Most important, these conversations take place in private. If a student is comfortable talking on Facebook or via text messages, blocking that channel discourages the communication. I know a family of children suffering in an abusive home situation. (Yes, the local authorities are aware.) Can you imagine any of these kids talking to a teacher about it if the conversation was also open to the parents?

This law sends a whole host of bad messages to students. It tells them that, as a group, teachers are untrustworthy. It tells students that they are not skillful enough to judge safe versus unsafe private communication with teachers. It tells kids that they cannot learn about safe social networking with their teachers, though other adults are OK. It tells them that lawmakers and school districts can protect them in their on-line activities. None of these messages are true.

The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act overreaches any bounds of sanity. It forbids me, as a grey-bearded computer engineer, from having a private conversation on LinkedIn, a social networking site geared towards professional careers, with my high school physics teacher. It forbids a student from sending a text message to a teacher, even one saying, “Caught in traffic. Will be 5 minutes late. Don’t let the field trip bus leave.” It forbids a teacher from responding via text message, “OK.”

As adults, we certainly need to keep our kids safe. We do that by teaching them good judgement and empowering them to practice that judgement in reasonably safe venues. We encourage our children to grow into independent adults who can protect themselves. We fail completely with bad laws like the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act.

My greatest cheerleader never stopped believing.

Mom’s love and food cure all.

TV excites. The news makes our blood boil. It cranks us up, inflames our passions, gets the adrenaline pumping.

Talk radio excites. We tune in to shows that align with our own beliefs and listen to the callers who are most fired up, most opinionated.

It is all too easy to carry this excitement into our conversations. I have played scenes like this all too frequently:

I meet up with you and we start talking about the news of the day. I heard some great story on the radio and it confirmed my opinions. I know what should be done so I tell you all about it. You know what should be done, too, and you tell me about your ideas. Trouble is, we do not agree. Since time is short, I cut to the chase to convince you that my ideas are right. I struggle to find the words that will change your mind. Eventually, we part ways. I am wired and whipped. The conversation was hard work, frustratingly so because I could not convince you. If only you would see it my way!

Sound familiar? I know that I can easily drop into that mode. I know that I have done so when I leave a conversation feeling somewhere between mildly annoyed and thoroughly angered because yet again I failed to convince. When we do that, we get caught between exhaustion and urgency. We tire of trying yet we cannot abandon the effort because so much is at stake.

I have found another way to converse which inevitably leaves me feeling good about my interactions. It is a little more work at the front-end of a dialog because I often tend toward my convince-you mode and I need to catch myself and change my pattern. Here is the trick: When I start a conversation with you, I consciously ask myself, How can I delight you today? That simple question changes my focus from me to you. Though I may enter the dialog with an idea in mind, an idea that I want to convey, I open myself to what you want to take away from our conversation. Maybe you have something that you need to get off your chest. Maybe you need to vent before you can hear my idea. Maybe you are so consumed with something else that my concerns pale in comparison. Maybe your mind is made up and we can agree to disagree before moving on to a more rewarding topic. Whatever it is, if I can delight you in our conversation then I will always leave the conversation invigorated and cheered rather than battle weary. Smiles are infectious. One of the best ways that I know to make myself smile is to see a smile on your face.

After I ask, How can I delight you today?, my immediate task is to find the answer. I have to know the how. When I was growing up, I tuned my E.S.P. to help with my interpersonal interactions. You probably did this, too. Have you ever wanted something particular for Christmas but been banned from asking for it because asking just is not right? Have you ever wondered what to get someone for his birthday but not asked what he wants because asking is just plain wrong? Trouble is, try as I might, I never got very good at the E.S.P. thing. One bad example came in junior high school when I got my dad a really cool atlas for Father’s Day. He received it graciously but I do not think he ever opened the book. I was such a sensitive, loving son.

I have learned that the best way to answer, How can I delight you today? is to pay careful attention to what you say. When you are talking, I listen. Instead of trying to formulate my next sentence, instead of thinking about what I will say next, I pay attention to what you are saying. The downside is that there might be lulls in our conversation. After you stop speaking, there might be a little silence while I digest what I heard and come up with a reply. That’s OK; if it moves me from convincing-you mode to conversing-with-you mode, the lull is a small price to pay.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion

Many of these ideas come from Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion by Marshall B. Rosenberg. His writing is kind of dry but his ideas are golden. When we talk or write with the goal of simply understanding each other we grow closer together and avoid violence. At least in my life, I have found him to be right. For instance, I found myself arguing less frequently with my sons after I switched from telling them stuff to consciously trying to delight them. That did not mean that I gave up parenting them, that I tried to always give them what they wanted instead of what I thought they needed. I just climbed down off my high horse.

At the beginning of this blog posting, I worried that I would put you off. I hope that, instead, I have brought a little delight into your day. Please let me know how I did.

Here are a few photos. (Click to see them larger.)

I hope that you, too, find the love of your life.

My wife and her siblings have created a web site as a publishing platform for his sermons and talks. Please visit Lester Start’s Works.

Last month, I wrote to Harold Zemon, my first cousin once removed, and asked for information about his branch of the Zemons. He replied with a wealth of data which I did not have. Most exciting was this brief note about Moses Zemon, Harold’s father:

Moses Zemon… was very close with his brother Isaac a/k/a Joe a/k/a Uncle Ike…. My father & Uncle Ike were wonderful sons to our grandmother Rose Zemon.

This is the first first-hand information that I have about Isaac, my grandfather. I never met him since he passed away when my father was a child. For reasons that my father never explained, he never told me anything at all about Isaac.

I have also swapped a bunch of email with my second cousin once removed, Wayne Zemon. He filled in his branch of the Zemon tree, all the way down to Robert and Alison Wiseman. My son, David, noticed that Robert and Alison are about his age and zipped right over to Facebook to contact everybody by those names. He was able to, in surprisingly short order, talk on the phone with the right Robert who was tickled pink to find any connection to the Zemon name. Until I began corresponding with Wayne, my branch of the Zemon’s had had no contact whatsoever with Wayne and his sister Ruth (Robert and Alison’s grandmother). In case you are wondering, Robert and Alison are David’s fourth cousins.

Jule Turnoy, another second cousin once removed, has been sharing her knowledge of the Freiler line. Believe it or not, she and I were introduced by the Steve and Laura Stroud of Elgin, Illinois, who live in (and have beautifully restored) Philip Freiler’s home.

While the “right to choose” vs. “right to life” debate is certainly a worthy one, I think a more interesting issue is that of helping teenagers avoid pregnancy in the first place. Equally interesting is how to break the cycle of premarital pregnancy which seems to run in families. I.e., a child conceived out of wedlock is more likely to conceive more children out of wedlock. How do we reach, and teach, those teens?

Sarah Palin may have been one of those teens. According to this article in AMERICAblog.com, Palin’s son Track was born just eight months after Palin married. Regardless of whether the boy was conceived before the wedding or born prematurely, this does give us all a good reason to think hard about teenage pregnancy.

Palin, by the way, does not impress me as a good person to have in the White House. I love this poem by my friend jsg:

The News

I am in Wasilla, Alaska
Tracking the orbit of Governor Sarah Palin
Whose pick for VP has energized Republicans everywhere
And independents like myself
Who are moved to the center
By this most courageous appointment
By such smart politicians.

I hope the photos I am attaching
Complement the text.

Here I am in front of the field
Where the Governor got smooched by her future husband
They will marry and eight months later
Her first child will be born
Which no doubt is the basis for the philosophy
behind her later lack of commitment
To sex education and support for unwed mothers in her state.

Her second child, by the way,
Will go to this high school
Here I am standing in front of it
Where she too will smooch her boyfriend
Get pregnant
And whose pregnancy will be announced to the world
By her mother
Whose willingness to sacrifice the privacy of her daughter
To her ambitions for the vice Presidency is only exceeded
By her willingness to rear her own special needs child
In a fishbowl with staff
Hillary Clinton’s identification with ambition is over forever
Since the Republican Sarah Palin
Has demonstrated to what lengths true ambition
Will take a person
And how clever Republicans must be to jettison all their values
To support her.

Here I am in front of the State House
Where not one person who served with Sarah Palin
Was called during the so-called vetting
They are clever the Republicans
And John McCain is some maverick reformer
To have made such a careful decision.

Here’s the road where Governor Palin’s husband
earned a DUI
and was taken to jail.

Here’s the law office of the lawyers just hired
To run interference for Governor Palin over the firing
Of her ex brother-in-law
Who left his employment
Under suspicious conditions
But of course John McCain’s people knew all that
And were courageous and reformers nevertheless.

Here’s an empty room
Where Sarah Palin has avoided
Speaking with the Press.

Here’s a picture of me in the
MIDDLE OF THE ROAD
Both the Republicans and Democrats are courting me
The future belongs to me
I am delighted to be here
And from where I stand -

The Republicans are doing a really bang-up job
Of earning my loyalty.

Your friend in the center,
jsg, usa