Muck in America—My Former Student and Sanity

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People label others so quickly sometimes, don’t they? I mean if someone’s poor, so many people think of them as being lazy or stupid and even more so, if someone’s rich; many, if not most people think of them as being entitled, selfish or snobs. If it wasn’t for this age old judgmental conundrum I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to hear quite a profound statement come from one of my former college students.

Once while discussing life, success and people, my former student who is a working, married, middle class African American said something to this effect: I don’t judge or label a rich person as some do. In fact, I want to get to know his past struggles and hardships and see how he became what he is. Now, for some people this may not sound like much of an epiphany or any big deal, but to me, it meant a bundle.

You see, while teaching, I always worked hard toward getting my students to think on their own. I didn’t want them to think and have my opinions. Facts of course are different, but in the big picture, I strived to get students to weigh the facts that I presented to them and then, for them to form their own opinions.

When I heard this former student basically say that he wants to see, feel and understand the why of something that’s been prejudicially labeled for eons, told me that he’s free and open in his thinking and will decipher life’s issues without letting others cloudy up the water. This type of thinking helps people make sound decisions in their own lives and in turn, the lives of others.

I’m not saying I even had an infinitesimal influence on my former student thinking in this wonderfully open way but what I am saying is that it’s fantastic to see a younger person thinking straight, solid and without judgments. Wow! If we could have more leaders thinking like this! Or more media! Or perhaps, more so, if we would have had more of this thinking in our recent past, we wouldn’t be in the present mess in America where differing groups draw lines in the sand and go to verbal war with each other.

I personally believe that young people will pull America out of the muck it finds itself in. But I have to admit that I seem to be pretty much alone in that type of thinking as most people I know say that our young people are getting worse and things will just get uglier. I don’t thinks so. I think America needed a slap in its face to bring it back to reality and every day more and more people will start consistently thinking with the freedom and sanity of my former student.

Steve’s latest book:

https://www.amazon.com/Protect-Simple-Childrens-Safety-Survival/dp/1530765854

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Steve Kovacs

About Steve Kovacs

Steve's the bestselling author of 'Protect Your Kids! The Simple Keys to Children's Safety and Survival'. He's written many articles on a wide variety of topics and has three published books. Steve's a three-time survivor of violence in his youth, a former police supervisor and a graduate of The Police Executive Leadership College (PELC) and was also an award winning part-time college Criminal Justice instructor. For several years, Steve did written and radio political and current event commentary and was the former host of the long running 'The Kovacs Perspective' Internet radio and TV talk show. Steve presently owns a small businesses in Ohio--The Mayfield Academy of Self-Defense.

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