The problems that I blogged about last week has no one definite solution. Well, it might be safer to say that the solutions are not only difficult to express, but more difficult to implement. But putting the plan into action will be the most important part of the plan. Before I go into the specifics of the problem I will try to assist in solving, I will talk (write) about some things that I think will be very important in terms of my project.
Firstly, although it is in no wrong to want to help the community one ‘grew up’ in, I feel that the project will be more effective if it can eventually go beyond the limits of a single community. For the most part, the problems I mentioned last week exist in every community. Meaning that I can not allow myself to limit myself to a single race, and I must reach out to different classes of people.
Secondly, sometime in my life, I have to actually get up and do what I can to see this project go through. The Bible says that ‘Faith without works is dead,’ and the same applies to words. I can sit and blog about how I would plan to change the world for the rest of my life, but until I put action to the plan it is has no life.
With that said, the problem I would like to face is apathy. This probably the hardest of my listed problems because being apathetic is a state of mind, it is then manifested in certain actions. That is why I consider apathy a source of many problems. To at least assist in ‘curing’ apathy, I would have to do so indirectly. My reasoning is that, by the time people reach their teens, they are becoming set in their ways. Therefore apathy must begin to be dealt with when the person is relatively young. As I was told repeatedly by my high school Spanish teachers, if you want to teach one something, in this context a foreign language, it is best to teach them when they are young. At a younger age, people seem to be more receptive to new ideas. For example, do you remember how excited you were on your first day of school? That excitement probably stemmed from entering a new experience. Not only that, but it was what you saw your older sibling/ relative doing, so it had to be cool.
So, I think to solve this problem, since one can not really take apathy head on, this project must go through the educational system. For one, the educational system is probably the largest (healthy/ useful) non-television outlet to children and teens. To solve this problem through the schools, in my opinion, can tackle two problems, the decline in education, and of course apathy.
In an age of declining attention spans, the program can not be implemented as a long drawn out daily task. So I will go with something a little different. Rather than the daily lecture type thing, a weekly or biweekly discussion would probably work best. I say discussion because it would encourage that the students actively involve themselves, rather than silently sitting back, or just totally ignoring the issue. The ‘program’ will encourage the token rules many of us likely heard in grade school, but are very integral to this project. The respect of others will be greatly encouraged, as it should be. Helping the students to understand what it is to respect others is important because if he/ she could learn to respect or care about someone beyond himself, he/ she could be a less selfish person in the long run, which is the key. It would also be necessary to make to students part of the classroom experience. From what I remember from being in elementary school, I was indifferent at times because it would seem like teachers had their favorites. It would seem only a select few student were rewarded for they achieved, while it seemed others were treated as ‘your reward is your grade, be happy.’ I think that the classroom experience just needs to be livened up just a bit. If children could associate fun with learning, instead of adjectives like dreadful, I believe they would be more ‘teachable’ in the long run.
I will provide a step by step overview of my plan to at least somewhat resolve the problem of apathy.
To start the solution of a problem with children entails that parents must have some involvement in what is going on. But before doing so, the program must be approved by the school board. To encourage parental involvement, let the parents know what’s going on with the program.
As I stated last week, apathy is a cause of many of the problems in the world today. Although this assignment only calls for one project to solve this problem, I am sure that I can think of many others that would go hand in hand with this project. It would be very important and significantly harder to aid the removal of apathy in adults. But it would be very important to at least try.
If I am unable to reach out to anyone else through this project, I hope to at least find it within myself to care about society more. At times, it is very easy to see someone struggling and not care because you feel that your situation is bad enough or that it is too good for you to care about anyone else’s struggle. Through the time I’ve had to reflect, I have decided that whenever possible I will do what I can to help those in need. What good would it do me to attempt to solve the problem of apathy when I, at times, display enough apathy for two or three people? Seeing that one apathetic person is not good, allowing myself to be that apathetic probably can and will denote the whole purpose of this project, and possibly Dr. Homan’s purpose for writing these blogs. The author’s of the books of the Bible did not succumb to apathy, they got up spoke what they believed was necessary for the good of their people.
I think I have said all that I can say for the day, so until next time bloggers.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 30th, 2005 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Project Progress, Week 03: Your Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.