While Lodge rules may forbid me discussing politics or religion, they DO NOT stop me from speaking about education, and what the issue is with it. The schools do not need more money thrown at them, the kids who go to these schools need to want to learn. Dropout rates are high, and that is because mostly kids on welfare are dropping out; kids whose families are doing well financially don't drop out because their parents taught them the value of honest work. The kids on welfare? They want something for nothing, and their parents (inadvertently, I'm sure) have shown them how to do it. The welfare kids' mindset is "Why do I need a job and an education? The Government will give me free money!", so they leave high school the first chance they get, so they can draw from a system they will give nothing back to. Having been fresh out of high school, I know half of my class who wouldn't have gone to high school if they'd had a choice.
You can always be a MASON and try to leave the world a better place than you found it. Volunteer, as a teaching aide, as a volunteer reader ...or as a mentor. Maybe as a Big Brother. Habitat for Humanity (the home recipient MUST provide sweat equity and make mortgage payments) You CAN make a difference. S&F
I've tried to get some of the young men who live in projects to join DeMolay, but it seems that I'm old-fashioned because I believe in the Seven Cardinal Virtues, or that I believe in and virtues at all! I'll talk about DeMolay, and what I'll hear is "Sounds gay, no thank you." Or they'll look it up on urbandictionary.com, and look up a most unflattering definition of DeMolay, just to make fun of me. If I ask them about joining, after giving them a petition they'll conveniently "lose it". No body seems to take it seriously.
Quite a few years ago, I worked at MIT and was asked to help out at an after school learning center in the projects in Cambridge. At the time, the schools that served the projects were so bad they were about to lose their accreditation. I agreed and as any teacher will tell you, I learned a lot more from those kids than they did from me. The first thing they taught me is if it's optional, it had better be fun or they have no time for it. Now, the seven virtues are all well and good for a grown man and Mason, but for a 15 year old, not so much. After many failures, I finally realized that if I wanted kids to get excited about math and science, I had better find a way to make it exciting. My first successful project was tossing a bunch of wires, bulbs, batteries, tinfoil, and various "junk" on a table and asking the kids to build a flashlight. This allowed them to come to me with questions and I explained voltage, amps, ohm's law, circuit diagrams, and all the math and jargon of basic electricity. The results blew me away! One kid used two foil covered tubes as the switch so all he had to do was pick up his flashlight and it turned on. When he put it down on end, it turned off. I was eventually asked to join the Board of the learning center and became something of a rabble rouser at school committee meetings. The schools turned around. The kids got involved and eventually, there was no need for the center as the schools picked up that responsibility. We worked ourselves out of a job and were quite proud of it I'm absolutely sure that some of the kids I learned so much from would have made great DeMolay members, but that wasn't what they needed at the time. Now, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to be sitting in Lodge with a lot of "my" kids from back then.
