Teaching Students...And Learning as a Teacher

Teaching Students
And Learning as a Teacher

Do you know how many times that I have written to my online classes like this in the past couple of decades: Dear Class…? It is a greeting that I post at least weekly as a means to convey pertinent information to the class. That relevant material could be about how the class did with various tests. In that circumstance, I’d write, “Dear Class, most of you did very well….” Sometimes, it would be additional information about term papers or field trips.

However, this was my recent Dear Class….

Dear Class,

I have ranted on and on about racism, xenophobia, sexism, etc., and we are only beginning week 5 of 17 weeks. Having said that, go to https://wolverton-mountain.com/articles/index.html and scroll down to a fairly recent essay about a Noble Person…. That essay was about noble people. Sundas Jabeen, aka Sandy, is my new web administrator. She was born in Pakistan, moved to California, and has been working in Stockholm, Sweden. There is much that I admire about her. Mostly, I admire her guts mixed with an equal amount of caring.

She is setting up the tech side of Natural Cycles, which is a Swedish company that deals with reproductive issues for women. I posted a picture of the company in my essay. Half of that company isn’t old enough to drink a beer in the States. As someone in his twilight years, I see in that picture hope for women in particular and for the world in general.

I’m happy with my noble web administrator; so what difference does that make to you…especially the women in this class?

This is an example to you about how to live your lives. Sandy should be a role model and a mentor for you. If a Pakistani female can break the chains of sexism, etc., man, I would think about what you can do.

When I was Sandy’s age, back in the 60s, it was a time of change. The civil rights movement and then the anti-war movement were front and center. It was an exciting time. Sure, there were the George Wallaces, but that didn’t matter. We knew that we would overcome racism and bigotry.

Granted, that was a half century ago. What about today? Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Your generation can push our present time into a better time….

In addition, a half a century from now, you can write about the exciting times you had making your mark on the world in your 20s.

Look at where we are today. We have men telling women how to control their bodies. Many religious and secular groups are telling women when to have sex and the purpose of it, the pill, abortion, and other reproductive issues. Let’s look first at the religious mindset.

Name a religion in America or the world, for that matter, that isn’t administered by men at the top. Name one religion where women have parity with males throughout the entire organization. Think about that. That is sexism. Many believe that women aren’t capable of governing and are less than men. It is blatant sexism, or God told men that he wants women to be in a subservient position in his religion. Note that God is a male.

At the secular level, we find an exact parallel to the religious community. At the federal, state, and local level, men control nearly everything. Men are attempting to control Planned Parenthood. At the federal level, 21 of 100 senators are women, and 84 of 535 representatives are women. The percentage of Members of Congress is 19%.

Donald the Dumb parallels this issue of sexism. In the Atlantic, there is this essay entitled, The Very Male Trump Administration. The article charted the number of Trump appointees, which is 2,475.

The White House has named twice as many men as women to administration positions. This gender skew is both broad and deep: In no department do female appointees outnumber male appointees, and in some cases men outnumber women four or five to one. Moreover, men significantly outnumber women in low-level positions as well as in high-level ones, with Trump’s Cabinet currently composed of 19 men and five women. Overall, 33 percent of Trump’s appointees are women, compared to 47 percent of the national workforce and 43 percent of the 2 million workers across the executive branch.

Now, that is obviously sexism also. While this is blatant sexism, there is a much deeper form of sexism facing women. Our fake president has been accused by at least 16 women of sexual assault. Prior to his election, he promised that he would sue those women, which apparently he forgot to do.

Donald the Dumb supported Roy Moore, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and Rob Porter claiming that he believed them. He supported them in spite multiple charges of women against all of them.

Enter Brett Kavanaugh who is against the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe vs. Wade and the entire abortion issue. Additionally, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford accused him of a sexual attack. In spite of the sexual controversy, Trump still supports Kavanaugh.

Does anyone see a pattern?

This is from Fox News.

While in the process of writing this email, I had a routine appointment with my dentist. My dentist’s assistant knows all about Ginger and asked about how she was doing. While I love Ginger, I apparently was still dealing with this essay. I vented about the issue of sexism in Washington.

To be honest with you, I thought that I understood sexism. While I had my teeth cleaned and checked, I listened to the dental assistant talk to me about what it was like while she was in college. Here as a young gal telling me about going to parties and having guys attempting nearly everything. What I gained from her honesty was that sexual misconduct and all that entails was considered just the way things were while attending college. She told me about various situations that she and her friends faced. I left my dental appointment having gotten my teeth checked and more importantly I learned about sexism not from books or articles. I learned from a young woman’s recounting incidences of male sexual misconduct that were as common as having a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I learned a great deal.