Special Education

As more and more low-income families move into neighborhoods that once catered to the middle or upper class, one must be on the lookout for his own personal safety and report any criminal activity going on in their surroundings. Crime is everywhere in these neighborhoods where kids find too much time on their hands after school hours or after the school year lets out.

What also contributes to the crime rate in such places? Is it just the lack of money for low income families? Sometimes, crime can be attributed to the lack of education on the part of the perpetrator or their families.

It is a statistical fact that the crime rate is inversely proportional to the education level of the culprit. Kids who grow up in families that do not stress the importance of getting an education are more likely to be living out on the streets, doing drugs, joining gangs, or ending up in prison.

Sometimes parents who raise such kids were raised in similar conditions when they were youngsters. Nothing has changed. An education should be foremost on parents’ minds when rearing their kids. In fact, an education is the key out of poverty. As the old saying goes, “The way out of the gutter is with a book and not a basketball.”

Kids who do not have a good education in school are more likely to have difficulty with finding jobs, getting into college, or staying out of trouble with the law. Many times they have family issues that are attributed to the loss of a parent at a young age due to a death or an incarceration.

Kids from single-parent homes run that risk of growing up as an “at-risk” child. This is due to the fact that the parent must work to provide food and shelter for the child, and the absence of the other parent fails to provide leadership and guidance for a growing mind. A parent who is incarcerated will definitely not be around to guide the child to getting good grades in school.

What kind of message does an incarcerated parent send to a child? Is it okay to be dumb and stupid and end up in prison like their daddy? Like father, like son. Right? Is it okay to skip school and join a gang like their daddy once did?

The truth of the matter is that kids who drop out of school will face hardship in their lives as they grow older. Lack of education on their part means lack of money to support a family. Lack of money translates into robbing a bank or convenience store.

We hear in the news every day a robbery that occurs in our city or elsewhere. Or perhaps a shooting on the part of the perpetrator that caused an innocent life come to an abrupt halt.

What are kids doing nowadays? How can we prevent our own kids from becoming troubled kids? For one, a parent must be a good role model and stress the importance of a good education. That means the parents must take an active role in their child’s education by monitoring how much television the child is allowed to watch and taking charge of knowing the kinds of friends that his child associates with. Furthermore, this means maintaining communication with his teachers at school and looking over his report card regularly.

A child with poor academic performance may indicate something wrong at school. Perhaps he does not like school due to external influences; i.e. bullying, difficult teachers, taunting by other students, or peer pressure.

It is better to catch the child’s problem as early as possible before it comes to the point that the child is truant from school, or worse, acts out his frustration that is reflected in another Virginia Tech-like massacre.

A child should like his studies and should show interest in his schoolwork. He should be taught that good grades will help him get a good education so that he can get a good paying job and be a productive member of society after he graduates.

Teach your child that involvement in gangs, violence, drugs, and/or extortion will not get him anywhere but prison. Once a person ends up doing life in prison, there IS no second chance. There is no freedom for him. There is no TV, no video games, no music, nothing! Not even a chance to get an education behind bars. If there is school in prison, the education is very limited.

If you are raising a child, question your child as to what is going on in school if he/she displays academic difficulty. Spend some quality time with him/her. Help them with their homework if possible. Remember, you are not just his/her friend, you are their parents. You are the first role model that a child looks toward from infancy. So be a good one and teach him/her what is right by staying in school.

There is a story in Austin, Texas a few years ago. It involved a troubled 17-year-old kid, Manuel Cortez, a high school dropout, who went out with his friends in a stolen car one sunny afternoon, and shot another student, Christopher Briseno, whom he did not even know because Briseno allegedly was teasing the sister of Manuel’s friend. Manuel Cortez is now serving life in prison because he made a stupid decision. Now families of the victim and the perpetrator are suffering two losses from society. All for what? Because Mr. Cortez chose to drop out of school and associate with gangs and/or violence? He chose to give up the possibility of an education so that he can run around gang banging? Or did he not have the proper support and guidance from his parents?

By: Fabiola Castillo

Christianity has been of the greatest importance to the USA since the time when the first settlers stepped on the Plymouth Rock. Ever since the USA has upheld the Christian values teaching them as mandatory in schools and even conducting witch hunts. At present the church is separated from the State to assure the normal functioning of other religions, while being no longer mandatory, but rather optional for studying. In the following essay I am going to speak about the Christian education as always being the option for the citizens of the USA and to explain the importance of Christian education and the role it plays in our society.

Christianity has constantly played a great role in human education in Europe as well as in the USA. The first schools in both Europe were Catholic that taught high moral standards and compliance with the God’s rules. After the Protestant reformation, the role of Catholicism was drastically reduced. When the first settlers arrived to the USA, the religion they were teaching in schools was Protestantism. Christianity educated people in schools while placing certain limits on the human development. Unlike Catholic and Orthodox churches that highly believed in God’s dominance and written scrutiny and therefore rejected various sciences that are anti-religious (genetic engineering, nuclear sciences, etc.), protestant churches considered good deeds and helpful behavior to be of the ultimate importance to God. Protestant churches believed that God created any sciences possible; therefore it was a human duty to study as much as possible as well as proclaiming God and expressing God in all human achievements.

Christianity if taught at schools leaves a great stigma on the students. The statistics say that students who study Christianity and Christian values at school are much less likely to engage in illegal activities such as underage drinking, promiscuous sex, and carrying arms. In US schools from all students who engage in the illegal activities only 12% of them are students studying Christianity or are engaged in Christian schools.

On a more personal level I believe that Christian education is of great importance to the whole country. Students in their teens are only forming their future character and certainly need various people to take example from. It is no wonder that in poor schools and in what we call bad neighborhoods, the crime rates are much higher–children that grow up in violent environment are in my opinion are going to be violent. It is a common fact that boys that grew up in families where fathers beat up their wives are more likely to also beat up their future spouses like their fathers. All these examples indeed show us the importance of education in the early years of human life and make us understand that education should be of great value to the society. Christianity on the other hand discourages arms, sex before marriage, as well as drinking. When exposed to Christian morals, students are more likely to develop personal attitude that would allow them to resist the peer pressure, engage in profound studying and strong desire for excellence. This shows the important role of domestic security that the Christian education provides for the society that promulgates Christianity in schools.

At the same time, Christianity being only optional provides the necessary freedoms to students of other religions, or even atheists who do not want to be influenced by the religious thought. The freedom or choice, makes the Christian teachers compete for the students and therefore not to abuse the Christian moral as it happens in areas of the world where Christianity is dominant (e.g. in Serbia and Horvatia Christianity prompted the people to eradicate the Muslims from the Christian land).

In conclusion I would like to say that the Christian educational option in fact provides a wonderful complementary material to students in the USA. The statistics that show reduction in violence, loose behavior or engagement in illegal activities corroborate the practical importance of Christian education, while the separation of church and state assures that no single religious leader can take control of the political life in the USA. The role of being the crime reducer that the Christian education represents the true need of such education in the society.

By: Tim Johnson

Planning to take up medicine and get specialization in cancer cases and problems? Then, you want to be an oncologist because by studying this course you will be able to get extensive knowledge of the right treatment and pharmacology of cancer chemotherapy. Considering the complexities of cancer, the education oncologists have are integrated with studies of multidisciplinary fields because cancer requires the understanding of various health problems, its treatment and after which health maintenance also.

Before getting an education oncologist, there’s a need for you to understand the roles that an oncologist have to do. First, oncologists have to diagnose and treat cancer, meaning you must know to take care of a cancer patient in a continuum from the moment of the diagnosis throughout the course of the disease. And if there’s the need for chemotherapy and anti-cancer drugs you must not hesitate to offer it to the patient and do these immediately after his approval. The nest thing that you have to learn is how to explain the cancer diagnosis of the patient. Under this role you must have the ability to asses the stage of the disease of the patient and have the courage to communicate it to him although how serious it may be. Even though you will be the one to be actually telling the patient of the bad news, but you will also be the one to be telling them the remedy and cure. This is the third role of an oncologist to discuss the various treatment options to the patient. You have the task to relay to your patient all the possible treatment that could effect great improvement on his condition. The fifth role that an oncologist have is to give the best course of treatment, meaning after you have given the patients the options where he could choose from, you must also help him realized the best cure and apply it at once. On the treatment process, the oncologist has to show the fifth role which is to give and deliver optimal or maximum care to the patient during the treatment. After the treatment, the role of the oncologist does not end because of the sixth role. The oncologist is not only responsible in treating the cancer patient but also to improve the patient’s quality of life through curative care and palliative care, with pain and symptom management. Once you understand these roles and you willingly accept these, you deserve to get education on oncologist and be one of the professionals on the medical world.

With the actual education oncologists you will be trained to acquire the knowledge and skills to be able to give your best on your soon-to-be patients. You will be taught the basic of science of biology, chemistry, cell kinetics, endocrinology, immunology and pharmacology. Understanding these fields is vital to your education because the study all relates to neoplastic disease and their treatment. With regards to the skills, you should learn the ability to utilize clinical examination and investigation, ability to formulate treatment plans, ability to interact with other specialties in the determination of the optimal treatment plan, the ability to utilize the patient’s literature and consultation and of course the last the ability to deal with the psychosocial aspects of the patient care. Through the education on oncology, you will achieve all these and thereby excel in the profession of handling and treating cancer diseases.

By: Gary Pearson