Half Formed Thoughts

Do you ever hear or read something that makes thoughts start rolling around in your noggin? One thought leads to another and then you start to wonder what was so important about that little tidbit that got you to thinking so hard in the first place.

Well I ran across one of those tidbits of information the other day as I was scrolling through the minutes of one of our district school board meetings. I don't know why this item jumped out at me unless it was the fact that it was one thing stuck there in between Board Policies and Personnel Decisions.

"Mr. SoandSo discussed with the board the possibility of hiring a Mandarin Chinese teacher."

What??? There was no mention of the board's reaction to this little item on the agenda but I've been anxious to find out.

We're a rural district with, I'm guessing, 400 or so high school students in grades 7 through 12.
We're a mostly farming district in a mostly farming county; our 2000 census had our population at 26,445 (it wouldn't surprise me if this has dropped significantly). The percentage of persons of Asian decent in the county at that time was 0.32%. Over 59.04% of the population insist on speaking ebonics, another 39% is so tried and true redneck that their language sounds foreign, and they discuss the possibility of hiring someone to teach Chinese???

Hell, I'm thinking we need to hire a couple more English teachers cause I think in our English speaking country we should be making darn sure that everyone knows their country's native language. I know for a fact that we rednecks in the county would surely gain some benefit from additional English lessons.

I'm sure there are arguments that it might be a good idea to be able to communicate with one of the major rising powers in the world but I really don't think a rural high school that claims not to have the funds to cover all of the special education needs, or a bigger and better technology lab, should even consider hiring a Chinese teacher.

If there's money to spend on education buy computers, or something to benefit the entire student body for a change.

Ok, that's out of my system.


I've mentioned before that I pretty much dislike theaters because most of them smell like a musky, sweaty locker room, and I really don't care to be in a large, dark, room full of strangers. I much prefer to choose who sits near me when I'm laughing, or crying, or both. This is the reason that I love being able to buy or rent a movie on dvd and bring it home to watch. I also occasionally enjoy watching a good movie on one of the Direct TV Starz channels. This doesn't happen often because I swear Direct TV has more reruns than local TV ever thought about.

Anyway, when PopPop and Zach came home late Friday evening from a short fishing trip I was watching The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Pop grabbed the remote as he always does when he comes home from somewhere, because he's a man and it's like another body part, but I told him, "Turn that channel and you die!"

I happen to like many of the movies where they mix up real actors and animated characters. So after a bit of mumbling he settled down in his recliner and was soon snoring away (this is another man thing, grab the remote, turn the channel, go to sleep)

On Saturday when they returned from yet another fishing trip, I was watching Arthur And The Invisibles. I slapped his hand when he grabbed for the remote and told him I was watching something. He sat back in his recliner and said, "Jillian is starting to influence your television viewing choices."

Well, so?