It is not Friday nor the 17th but Friday the 13th of last week is usually translated as Friday the 17th in Italy when news about it is printed. That is because Italy finds Friday the 17th a scary day. \u201cScare\u201d is a guiding reality in many of our operations. <\/p>\n
\u201cScare\u201d is imbedded in the U.S. psyche that uses the market crash of \u201829 and the Depression as its sob story. It is the perennial story of Wall Market itself; anxiety of making sure the market index stays stable and on upward trend, until the next crash, is expected irrespective of what measures are put in place to avoid it. <\/p>\n
It is the ethos that guides our public school system. With an alleged allegiance to what is \u201creal and authentic\u201d, our children are taught early on to be #1 (was the theme of Yale and Harvard of the \u201880s), using awards in the old carrot-and-stick mode to motivate children. Awards, plaque of recognition, and the gold medal are dangled to quicken motivation.<\/p>\n
The Olympic Games still gives out medals at the end of an event but the Games since \u201868 promoted the notion that one competes vs. one\u2019s record rather than try to \u201cbest\u201d others. <\/p>\n
Lining up to enter the classroom, or head for the dining room, my first graders compete on who is the \u201cleader\u201d of the line. I \u2018ve printed a numbered sequence of my roster so that person(s) in front today takes the back end the next day. Most assigned individuals get into a \u201cbarking Sarge\u201d mode to line up and \u201cdiscipline\u201d the children. Thus, I put a wrench on the design once in a while simply on the \u201cteachers say-so.\u201d Tyrants like their roles! <\/p>\n
Historically, the elliptic plane of the solar system has us looking up to the constellations. I explained to my first graders, while we were studying the days of the week that they were derived from the planets of our familiar. <\/p>\n
First day, of course, is Sunday followed by Monday, obviously the days of the sun and the moon. Continuing with the names of solar bodies, the Latin based calendars refers to Iberian names, Tuesday for Martes, that of Mars. Wednesday is Miercoles, Mercury; Thursday is Jueves, Jove (Jupiter); Friday is Viernes, Venus of the bright star; and Saturday is Saturn. <\/p>\n
To the Jews, YHWH rested on the 7th day, which is the Sabbath, thus, Sabado to the Christian community, and Subalu to the Marianas. <\/p>\n
Of the English, four were derived from the Germanic terms that honored gods of the Teutons, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, were Tiu (Twia), Woden, Thor, and Freya (Fria), respectively. We look up to the gods. But the association Friday the 13th as a \u201cbad luck\u201d day is a modern superstition of the last two centuries, \u201cwithout god.\u201d Earlier, the Romans and the Greeks avoided Tuesday the 13th, and Friday the 17th is a \u201cno-no\u201d day in Italy. <\/p>\n
Friday the 13th that is the pervasive modern superstition that alarms the CoC for the business transactions on the sheer refusal of the public to engage in commerce and trade on a day of bad luck. We write after the 17th and do not share the superstitious bias by virtue of day and number that lottery crowds follow when choosing their jueteng bets, but we are cognizant of the \u201cscare\u201d the day carries. <\/p>\n
We wonder how we develop scary biases. \u201cI choose love\u201d by Shawn Galloway is a song a couple of my students\u2019 mothers play, or have heard play in their parent\u2019s radio, so when we started playing it in class, I was not surprised at the number of children who can mimic the words. It is a choice between \u201cfear and love\u201d that the song wails, and since we \u201cdecide and choose\u201d is big in our class theme, it got an airing. <\/p>\n
A word on how we increased the use of songs in our pedagogy. At least two methods guide teaching on making children literate. One is the traditional way of making them to recognize sounds (phonemes) associated with the alphabet. Thus, they read by making the standard sounds. <\/p>\n
The second is applied to dyslexics and other students challenged by the inability to be literary phonetic. We ask them to repeat what they hear, and songs come into this category because students repeat what they hear. <\/p>\n
Either way\u2014letters into phonics, or phonics into the alphabet\u2014the children are led to read. Unfortunately, because of a bias toward the first group, we lump the second group as needing \u201cspecial education\u201d rather than accept the reality that every person learns differently, and the so-called \u201chandicapped\u201d are just differently abled! <\/p>\n
The matter of choice is a normal human activity. Some choose to start at defensive \u201cfear\u201d rather than the welcoming arms of \u201clove,\u201d a choice either intentionally done, or learned behavior from a social contest. It is tragic when our milieu teaches us to fear. <\/p>\n
The Peace Builders Pledge discourages \u201cput-downs\u201d but we award children for striving to be ahead of their peers, measured on the shaky grounds of written and oral tests. In grade 1, telltale-ing replaces put-downs, and they are just as vicious. <\/p>\n
Friday the 13th, or the 17th, the choice of \u201cfear\u201d remains a choice we make!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is not Friday nor the 17th but Friday the 13th of last week is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[361,11578,11579,2184],"class_list":["post-228065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-italy","tag-shawn-galloway","tag-wall-market","tag-yhwh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}