Afraid of Hard Work?

Here is what our founding fathers said: Frequent traveler John Adams in a letter to his wife Abigal, "The education of our children is never out of my mind..Fire them to be useful and make them disdain to be destitute of any useful or ornamental knowledge or accomplishment. Fix their ambitions upon great and solid objects."

The Founding Fathers were not inclined, as today's parents are, to lavish their students with praise. "Good job" was not in their vocabulary. Nor did they leave it up to their children to "make good choices". Instead, they moralized endlessly on the perils of indolence, time-wasting and thriftlessness. Jefferson reproved his daughter Nancy, "If at any moment , my dear, you catch yourself in idleness, start from it as you would a precipice of a gulph. Be assured that it gives you much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article which we may seem to want."

The Founding Fathers would be twisting in their graves if they could see how we are producing a greater Welfare State than the one created by Lyndon Johnson. We are creating a nation of wimps (See my blog "Safe Fat Kids With Wimp Supervision". And certainly not just overweight kids. Also, "Opinion" in the Times-Observer on 8/20/08, "Employers want people with a healthy work ethic. Employers complain they see young people coming to them totally unprepared for the world of work."

Too many young people are growing up without the slightest perception of what the term "hard work" means unless of course they are learning from watching MTV.

Sorry, the "wrong" skills that may require "hard work" are being taught on that TV Station. Maybe they are learning more by text messaging at all hours of the night. So now these "so chic" kids are also worn out by lack of sleep or both.

So sad.

Another article written by Leo M. Murray of Belvidere, NJ who writes about times in 1933-36 and beyond, that "families in my working-class neighborhood reduced their trips to local merchants and started buying only the absolute necessary necessities". Those working-class workers would have taken ANY job, not today's products of computer games, text-messaging, welfare families and schools whose teachers mistakenly or are forced to "teach for the test".

On 1/20/10, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council in D.C., wrote in the WSJ "No Role Model", "I fully support what Barack Obama's election means to my fellow Americans of African descent, I totally dissent from his policies. The Obama administration is presently working to undo welfare reform-the most important bipartisan achievement of the past 20 years. That reform stressed marriage and WORK over single parenthood and dependency.

It is not only black people who often shun hard work, it is also a large culture of white people who seek government largees, welfare and entitlements.

Some in Peoria, think all kids should go to college. I disagree, especially right after many of them have been partly "socially promoted" (75% of the kids going to "college" at ICC through Peoria Promise need to take remedial reading) but I do agree that the "college" experience is often a waste of parental and taxpayer dollars and are similar to our prisons where "inmates" come out more unprepared to be a society contributor than when they entered. Most parents have no idea what some of their kids are doing in either place. And the "elite" in Peoria, of which there appear to be many, do not wants kids and especially their kids to take Vocational training when their friends at the "clubs" brag that THEIR kids are graduating with a law or business degree.

Unfortunately for a lot of people, they are now forced to learn how to work and now perhaps harder work than they have previously done.

Some wonder why so many of the Tea Party types are upset with the way the country in descending into welfare Socialism. Perhaps, even worse if the public new all the subtle changes this administration is making or trying to make. Some Democrats are also seeing that the "change" promised may not get them re-elected.