Brother, Can You Spare Some Change?

Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009.

Every year in my Life Skills class, I show the film Pleasantville to my new 9th graders. Kids that were a few weeks ago in middle school, now are in 9th grade as a compilation of all their habits, good and bad. Pleasantville is a fantasy in which two modern day people are transported back in time, about 40 years, to a time when things were simpler and well, pleasant. The disease the people have in Pleasantville is that they are stuck in a routine. Now that might not sound like an illness, stuck in a routine, but when that happens, progress and growth is not made, only stagnation.

Even by the start of 9th grade, at the age of 13-14, many students appear incapable of change. Even if their circumstances are bad, they are familiar, a routine, they are use to the conditions. Change as they said is easier said than done. Think about even your own life as an adult. How easy is it to begin a new behavior, a new habit, or change or drop a bad habit?

Obama's inauguration speech-- though I have only seen/heard it once, seems to me to have been a "call to arms", a need for those-us-everyone- to get off our butts and start doing the hard work of fixing things. His reference to Biblical scripture-- Corinthians, about "time to put away childish things" I understand may have been also quoted by Roosevelt at his own inauguration speech, during hard economic times(1933 during the Depression). So even though it's use wasn't original, it was timely again and well chosen for this moment in time. Or as a pop music artist (Elvis Costello) sang about 25 years ago, clowntime is over. The hard work begins now to solve this nations problems.