Public Education or Governmental Brainwashing?

I was just sitting here in the gorgeous spring northwest sun, listening to Pandora on my phone while it charged on my solar panel. All of a sudden, the peace was disturbed by an ad (no, I do not pay for "ad-free Pandora"). This particular advertisement stated, "every child has a RIGHT to a FREE and public education." What I heard in my brain was, "every child has a right to a free governmental brainwashing."

Public education, as a concept, was a fairly decent one. At the beginning. Making it possible to help achieve literacy for those families who did not have the time nor the ability to teach their children how to read and write and compute.

Unfortunately, the major source of that computing, now, is that of statistics and "full time equivalents" as that is how our children are measured in relationship to the funds that our schools and local governments receive from the federal government, in the guise of education.

Rather than care about the literacy and intelligence of our people, government funded schools have devolved into a competition for numbers. Our children are only numbers to our government, numbers that equal money to them.

But I say our children should be more than statistics.

My daughter was in the infamous class of 2008 when the Washington State's WASL was implemented. I was a staunch opponent. Even though both of my children in school at the time excelled at that particular standardized test, I was horrified at the devolution of their education as SOON as it was implemented in our schools.

EVERY class's curriculum CHANGED to ONLY focus on passing THAT PARTICULAR test.

It is an ABOMINATION. This country's education system is a JOKE.  It has devolved from inspired teachings of creative instructors to the rote memorization of alleged facts that are meant to answer standardized tests in the manner in which will net the school the most amount of cash from the government.

IS THAT EDUCATION????

I am so incredibly fortunate to have given birth to brilliant and creative children. IN SPITE of the standard educational environment offered to them within our public school system, each one of them sought out supplemental educational interactions due to their own personal needs and desires.

I DO applaud the educational system in our state and the area of Tumwater for making many of those opportunities available. However, even years later, many families do not know that such programs even exist.

During my daughter's Junior and Senior years of high school, as well as participating in her high school orchestra and color guard team, she attended both the local Community College AND the vocational skills center.

This was NOT an easy task: My daughter did not drive, and I was severely disabled at the time. She had to take many public buses in the pouring rain and cold wind, but I heard very little complaints from her.

In fact, what I DID hear were stories of what she had learned each day, whether it be in one of her many classes, or at her job in the math center at the college, where she as a 17 year old was tutoring people of all ages (most her parent's ages or older). She was full of excitement for each day of learning. She was driven by her own curiosities.

The college classes were funded by our state's Running Start program, and we asked for assistance through the college for her books. She also attended New Market Skills Center for two years, completing near the top of her class, their Robotics Engineering program, and having her first experience with politics having been voted her class president in her class.

I am exquisitely proud to report that she graduated with her Associates of Arts degree from the college the day BEFORE she received her high school diploma.

Unfortunately, my daughter is the exception. Most children don't seek out their own educational opportunities. That is OUR job as parents and extended families. It is OUR job to research and offer creative and PERSONALIZED educational experiences to our children.

It is OUR job to LEARN about our children and KNOW what they are interested in. It is a perversion of that job to sit them in front of an LCD screen full of animation or any unsupervised content and expect them to be entertained or educated.

It is pure unadulterated LAZINESS to put them on a bus to send them off to a governmental institution to be brainwashed into whatever the current fad of our government decides that they desire, in regards to their statistics.
Don't EVEN get me started on the "United States Government and THEIR current version of world history".

Talk to your children. Your little ones, be they grandchildren, nieces, nephews or friends. Get to know their interests and TEACH them what YOU know. They will surprise you.

Our little ones are full of ideas and inventions. They are BURSTING with curiosity. TEACH them what they WANT to learn. NOT what is in some handbook that says what our government decides they should know.

Teach your children your family history (yes, you have to learn it first, to teach it :) )

Someone a long time ago taught me something that has stuck with me all my days. A friend, not too long ago vehemently denied she had the ability to teach anyone anything ... and it came back to my mind:

You don't really know something, until you have taught it. Learn one, teach one, KNOW one.

Natural Life Living in a Toxic World

First, allow me to say this: I am a self-proclaimed HIPPIE. A natural nut, a person who believes that everything that can be done, can be done SAFER and more healthy if it is done NATURALLY. God's method vs man's.

This goes for my medicine, my eating, and my pet care. This DEFINITELY goes for my "pest" care as well.
However, I get hesitant to open my mouth around other people. I try not to criticize their personal methods of these things and usually I am successful, unless it impacts me.

One of the things I have noticed, is a preponderance of people coming back at me with the reaction, "well, I and everyone I know has been doing X for decades (forever, as long as i can remember....etc) and no one I know has EVER been adversely effected!"

REALLY?!?!? NO one you know has CANCER? No one you know is on half a million prescription medications just to stay alive due to something? No one you know has been effected by clinical depression, autism, ADD, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, diabetes???

It is almost as if people assume that if THEY are effected by the chemicals SOOO prevalent in our world, that there will be a NEW disease and it will have a NEON MARKER on it that says: "I WAS CAUSED BY A GMO" or "I gave you cancer from the pesticides you sprayed every year on your lawn".
GUESS WHAT: they DON'T!!!!

YOU may not think that all the toxins in your life have had any effect....but LOOK AROUND YOU!!!! They have on our ENTIRE human population!!!!

People are suffering and dying DAILY!!!  So, maybe you have been personally blessed not to have any current physical or psychological maladies (the brain IS an organ in the body, in SPITE of insurance companies that categorize differently). But how many of our population can say that???

Personally, I have made a wealth of changes in my behaviors, and I will be making more as it is possible. MY personal desire is to live as healthily as possible. I am currently only responsible for the care of myself and my companion, my service animal, Athena. For US, I choose a more natural way and I have been rewarded with blessings beyond compare.

I can only encourage and enlighten others about the blessings of being a "hippie" in a modern world... it feels good, very good, to my body. I take that as a SERIOUS sign from God that I am on the right track.

George Ronald Slighte

While I was pregnant with my first child, in 1983, at the Golden Gate National Cemetary, I first saw his name in stone:

Slighte, George Ronald,
b. 06/27/1915, d. 06/05/1949,
PVT CANNON CO 128 INFTY 32 DIV
WW II

I had never seen his face, but he was my grandfather. My father was four years old when he passed. All my life I remember hearing that my brother would have been named "George," but he wasn't a man you would name a child after.

THIS, is my personal testimony to say that George was a man who many thought was a hero. Just the kind of man you name a child after.



George Ronald Slighte enlisted in the United State's Army Infantry five days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
He was born in Port Hope, Ontario, to Thomas and Margaret Slighte (Nana and Papa Slighte to me). The family moved to California when he and his two older brothers Thomas and Ray where children.
This "short little Canadian" was VERY passionate about his adopted country. 

He met my grandmother, Margaret Florence Clara Foley, while in high school. 



Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was bombed on December 7, 1941. It took George only five days to get his affairs in order, and sign up to serve his country. 

While he went to war, my grandmother awaited his return.

The 32nd was his division in the Army. They are called the Red Arrows.

George was paralyzed from an injury incurred at the hands of a Japanese rifle butt to the back of his head in New Guinea. Four Natives carried him for 8 days over the Owen Stanley Mountains to safety.
He spent three months in a hospital in Australia before being returned to the states where he spent more time in a hospital in San Diego before being released to his wife.

My father, Ronald George Slighte was born February 8, 1945, his younger sister was born in February 1947.

By June 1949, the horrendous pain from his head injury finally got the better of him.

He gave his watch to my four year old father, closed the door to his home office, and removed the offending object with his service revolver.

That last part was the only thing I had known about my grandfather when I was a child.
They could have left that part out, it was the part that has injured the delicate sensibilities of many in our family for generations.

George R. Slighte was a war hero. He was injured horridly in World War II; but four New Guinea natives carried him for EIGHT days so that he may see his dear family again. When he returned to the states, my father and aunt were conceived.

Without those four men, who the records tell me were called "Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels" by our army, who carried my grandfather to safety, my grandchildren and so many people that I love, including me, wouldn't be here.

Thank God for Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels.

Thank God also for distant cousins.
After I sent out an inquiring email to a distant cousin who had posted part of our family tree online; I was rewarded and blessed with emails and photos of the family I had never seen.

Thanks to my cousin Kathy, here is a photo of my grandfather, George Ronald Slighte, my grandmother, Margaret Florence Clara Slighte (nee Foley), his mother, my great-grandma "Nana" ("Maggie") Margaret Thornhill Slighte (nee Walsh) and  his father, my great-grandfather, Thomas A. Slighte




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32nd_Infantry_Division_%28United_States%29

A Peek into My Spiritual Journey

This is about me. Well, many things I write, and have written, have been about me. About my journey though this life. This is probably the most intimate glimpse I have ever given anyone.

I am giving it to anyone who wants to know.

For those who want to know why, Margaret Ellen Slighte, came to the decision to embrace The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as her "church home."

I'm forty six years old.

I have tasted of any sin I may have desired, and many I never thought I could even stomach.

I am done. Done with sin. Done with living in any manner that is disrespectful to myself, my relationship with Jesus Christ, or that of God, the Creator.

I desire to begin to live in a righteous manner. In a manner which is respectful of the relationship of my soul with the Godhead. With Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit, which I pray that I will be able to acknowledge how each have touched my life in every moment.

When do I remember my relationship with God, and Christ, beginning? What is my first "spiritual memory?" (What is YOURS? What do YOU remember?)

When I lived in Shelton (the first time), after my parent's divorce, my mother sent me to Sunday School against my father's wishes (he was an atheist, a LOUD one). I believe I was six or seven years old. I feel I was about six when this happened.

During one of the Sunday School lessons, we were singing the song "This Little Light of Mine" ( LIGHTE :) ) and I immediately felt a warm sunny feeling, but much brighter, around my "soul". It was my first conscious feeling of having a "soul". I knew there was a Christ. I also knew there were two other separate energies I felt: One of God, the Creator as well as The Holy Spirit.

I have always known that we were all connected. I have always known that "good" or "holy" deeds brought more reward to my soul, than did "selfish" or "hedonistic" deeds.

During these nearly four years since the explosive destruction of my family, and my marriage on Father's Day 2009, I continued my disastrous and self-destructive behavior in a manner that was not only disrespectful to myself, it was also extremely public.

I have had times that the Lord has given me a glimpse of His comfort and glory. My travels across the country have been blessed with not only support of my friends, but also my Savior. My prayers have not gone unanswered. I have been given many gifts. I received them not with the grace I could, and should have.

Having displayed my sins so publicly, and with less than shameful appearances; I prayed whether, as part of my transformation, I should let go of any public exposure (social media). My prayers were answered that my contrition and apologies; my guilt and repentance be as public as I was with my sinful behavior.
Once my period of contrition is over, I will pray and re-evaluate which sites and accounts to retain, and which to discontinue.

When I speak of my sins, one of my most public and my latest, was that of adultery.

I learned the hard way that there is an adversary.

Evil has worked it's way into my family since I was a very small child.

I have had agents of evil, and when I say evil, I mean the darkest of the dark, at work within my family for generations.

From the time my father's father submitted to the demons that haunted him, and ended his own life; our family has been haunted by evil.

My own father committed suicide around my birthday in 1999, 15 years after I last saw him. The abuse I sustained at his hands, as a small child can only be termed as evil. Then, as a young teenager, he made certain he instilled his lack of morality into my ideas. His constant guidance was down the wrong path. When I was becoming a mother, I KNEW I needed to distance myself from him.  I knew enough to keep my children from that piece of evil in my life. Unfortunately, I did not give them the gift of a righteous home to be raised in. For this I am very sorry.

In the last year, I discovered that the adversary will tempt us with that which we THINK we desire the most when we are at our lowest.

My teenage nephew committed suicide last summer, shortly thereafter I again went astray from a righteous path. I sought love and comfort from the evil that danced in front of me and begged me to join it.

I was to receive what I thought I desired, and instead of joy and elation that would be with truth and love, I felt instead the true stink and disgust of the sin, as a layer of scum, upon my soul.

Hedonism: self-love. I believe that we are divine. In the way that our Creator would not create anything LESS than divine. How I have treated myself and others around me has been so much less than divine.

The commandments are CLEAR, however, thou shall not worship anyone or anything except the one TRUE God. It may feel good for a little while, but the scum upon my soul is deep now.
I am in need of a baptism, a TRUE baptism and to exercise my own agency to choose righteous behavior which is respectful of myself and my relationship with Christ, and His Father, our Creator 

Throughout my life, whatever evils that I endured, and enjoyed; I KNEW right from wrong. 
I felt shame and disgust at some of my own behavior. What I DIDN'T understand, was how to change. I didn't respect myself enough, I didn't honor that I was a daughter of God.
Most of my life I allowed myself to be used in any way that the males around me desired to use me. I was disposable, right? WRONG.
I am a daughter of God. I deserve to begin to honor that.

My daughter, and my sons and my granddaughters and grandson deserve to be honored by me being a person who respects herself and who does her best to be righteous and respectful of our Father in Heaven.

I will continue to grow, and to learn, on my spiritual journey. I will expand and expound upon this, my journal of my relationship with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I invite anyone interested to do as I did, and look up the Book of Mormon, another Testament of Jesus Christ. It's online. Read it. Pray. Decide for yourself. I did.

If you want to know more about MY journey to embracing my love of Christ and the change of my religious views, I invite you to come read my other blog: Slightely Mormon What can I say, everything I do, I do "Slightely" :)

Love and Lighte

(this blog entry was copied to SlightelyMormon.blogspot.com when that blog was created)

Airplane Mode, Amen

Sometimes, as my new friend with the old soul said, it is just time to go on "airplane mode" referring to the mode in which we switch our cell phones so that we may listen to music, but we can not receive phone calls or web-based correspondence.
That is the mode in which I operate most of the time, nowadays.

During my religious conversion. During my time of introspection and prayer. Listening to God.

I know, I have heard the revelation from God. This is where I belong.

Airplane mode, Amen.