Our tires got slashed a few nights ago. Well, one tire. A "gang" was out on a Tuesday night slashing tires (many of the victims were teachers at the high school). They also did a bit of graffiti that night. I'd be more mad if I didn't think it was so LAME! One of the gangs here calls themselves the "White Picket Fence" gang. I just want to mock them till they understand how stupid their gang is. These kids here are just bored out of their minds. Today in church one of the speakers talked about how we need to engage ourselves in uplifting activities to keep away from the adversary. That's exactly these kid's problems. There isn't a whole lot offered here in the way of after school activities. No dance or violin lessons. No roller skating rink. They are idle and not engaged in anything good, so the bad stuff finds them. And alot of them come from messed up homes with parents who are on drugs or gamblers or adulterers, etc. The parents don't value education either, so that makes it hard. There is alot working against them.
Thurm & I were discussing the other day how we have taught kids in two very different cultures. Our experience in Taiwan was completely different from here. In Taiwan, school is their whole life. They go to school all day everyday except Sunday. And when they aren't in Chinese or English school, they take music lessons or some other kind of extra curricular activity. Alot of the kids don't get home till 9 o'clock at night, just enough time to do homework before bed. They got excited when they had a few hours on Sunday to watch TV or play video games. However, alot of these kids are under so much pressure to perform that the suicide rate is pretty high.
On the extreme opposite are the students here in Wendover, a 90% Hispanic population. They could care less about school. They go because they aren't old enough to work and its a social activity. And when they go home at 3pm they have nothing else to do for the rest of the day BUT watch TV and play video games and get in trouble. School is not valued at all here and even the smart kids are not challenged enough to keep their interest, so they are lazy students as well.
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