There are certain things EVERY child must know before leaving the house...

and it's a lot more than "don't take candy from strangers".

When you put together large groups of children, many of whom lack “home schooling” you get chaos.

Home schooling—I’m not talking about teaching reading writing and arithmetic (although that’s part of it), I'm talking about the basics—things every child needs to know before leaving the house..

Manners. Civility. Kindness.

Since we appear to have so many students who lack these basics, how about doing a little “home schooling” at school. Sure, that’s not the school’s job—that’s the parent's job. But I think we can all agree—a lot of parents ain’t doin' their job...

Wow... jaded much people?

I was reading a local blog a minute ago, when I just couldn't take how nasty everybody was being. Up to 133 comments of snapping on each other. I started to post my comment there, but decided to post it here, because I would really like to open up a dialogue about what is happening with civility, not just on that blog, but here in Peoria.

At what point did it become okay to be so mean spirited? The attacks, the biting, belittling people, just generally talking down and bullying folks on a regular basis. Our words are literally bullets flying through the blogosphere and believe it or not, people are being wounded. Words hurt too.

The conversation illustrated on that particular blog post is not meaningful dialogue that is going to move the conversation forward. We are literally verbally stoning each other.

Frightening to think that folks might carry this level of vitriol for diversity in opinion with them as they go throughout their day; or maybe this type of behavior is reserved just for the blogosphere.

What happened to the basic concept of respect for our fellow man?