A Series of All Too Real Events

There was a recent article I found on the web that really caught my eye. The title of the article was “In Praise of the Ordinary Child” The title alone intrigued me to a high degree, especially since I couldn’t remember the last time I had really seen an “ordinary child” in my school career. The majority of the people currently in my school either have high ambitions and aspirations to accomplish things that would be considered extraordinary to the “ordinary” child. The article then capitalized on my forgetfulness immediately by talking about how you always see students as overworked, stressed, and sometimes generally distraught human beings, with hardly anyone being 100% positive walking through the front door. The article then explains why this phenomenon happens: it’s because parents are continuously criticizing what their kids are doing in school based on their grades and extracurricular activities they participate in. Almost every parent, according to the article, strives for their kids to do their very best or better and it makes students into constantly anxious, depressed and/or all-around angry beings in school. After I finished the article I had to resonate for a minute, because everything the article said was true. Hardly anyone walks into school happy anymore like they did in middle or high school, and those that do are either on a sugar high or are dead on the inside but trying to lighten everyone else’s mood. Everyone constantly complains about their parents being too strict on them and not listening when they tell them so. Everyone’s constantly drained by the end of the day and expected to do a mountain of homework in order to keep their grades. Everyone looks ok at school but could have a mental break any second of the day. Lastly, most students usually end up being in an extracurricular activity they don’t want to be in but are pressured to stay. These points are all too true throughout America, with relatively few exceptions. It’s a vicious cycle that would end but only if parents would just let their children be ordinary and themselves instead of what they want them to be. Unfortunately for most it almost never will.

Surreal Smog

Recently I was given an article that told in great detail how China has been reacting to its massive smog/polluted air problem over the past few years. Quite frankly, I feel that the government’s actions to control the problem haven’t been enough even with the article’s talk of the new regulations that factories and coal plants in the country will face. My lack of faith in this motion is due to several key factors. The first factor is the fact that the businesses being regulated by the new sanctions are in practically complete control over politics and government legislation passage in the country. Unlike the U.S., China has only just recently been industrialized (compared with the rest of the world) and seem to have reached the major point in their country’s life over whether or not government should have power over companies in the country (effectively being the same question America faced and decided on during the first Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson era of presidents). However, unlike the American experience, it seems that the Chinese government has already given the businesses too much power and can’t do anything to retract that power ,at least for a long time. This will undoubtedly stall any and all things relating to governmental regulation of industrial jobs and businesses, which will only lead to the current problem of smog in China to get even worse. The second factor is the fact that this issue has been going on for way longer than it should have already, so much so that it’s becoming a new norm and has been capitalized on by other commercial businesses, such as those who sell facemasks. This will even further stall legislation since fixing the problem will eliminate what is now being seen as normal in China and, while it may receive praise from the people, will give the industrialists an even better reason to stall on bills: the possibility of recession without intense government action taking place (an amount of action it seems the Chinese government is not willing to use). These are just a few of the reasons why I think the change the people of China are looking for will not come for a while now, even with governmental and industrial compromise.