Reading your opinion on teen suicide saddened me. It grossly missed the mark. Then reading the article an ASIST training being proposed to prevent suicides saddened me even more. It does not do the job.
The one true solution to prevent suicides is to train the students to think rightly, be fair to others, to have courage, and to maintain self-control. These are four key values of character.
About me. I taught character building, using the four key character values in the pre-employment classes for the Boeing Company. Later, I taught pre-employment classes for Health Techna in Bellingham. Students were elated in what they learned about the four key values and management exalted in the quality employees that they became.
With the success in the quality of character-building achieved for the above companies, I volunteered to teach the same classes to high and middle school students, recovering alcoholics and drug users, social groups and others, which were equally successful.
The class counselor and I taught students in an alternative school. The effectiveness of providing the students understanding in the four key character values changed the students 180 degrees. The students in this class, that took 10 hours to teach, called the training “real stuff.” Three teenage mothers in the alternative school eagerly pursued the training. When questioned “why”, they responded, “to give to our children that what we were not taught.”
While teaching a group of recovering alcoholics, a young woman jumped and shouted, “this is the funnest class I’ve attended.” A man with long-term sobriety said, “I came here to check up on you, but received quite a work package.
During one of the pre-employment classes, a 40-year-old man said, “I’ve been using the material on character you taught at home, I’m the only one changing, but my family is having fun and peace now.”
There were many more similar experiences. I shared the character building class outline with the director of the community college where I taught the pre-employment classes. We came to a page with the word virtue on it, he firmly said, “we can not use that word.” Therein is the bottom line tragedy of what we are doing to our students in our educational systems--keeping them humanly-lame, due to educator ignorance and fear. Our nation is exhibiting turmoil politically, socially, and in business. The virtues are missing. And for honesty, we replaced sophism--art of lying.
Virtue is a habit of good living. The four key virtues of character are prudence, (think right), justice (Be fair to others), fortitude, (have courage), and moderation (maintain self-control). These virtues require education and training. A common retort is “parents need to teach their children,” however the parents can’t give away that which they were not taught. Virtue training has not been taught in our schools for almost a century. This condition evolved by the influences of modernism and the Ongoing Culture.
The four virtues prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation are man’s greatest discovery concerning life. This discovery goes back to Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Hebrew people. Aristotle and Plato are a few verifying sources. A Hebrew author wrote, “nothing in life (the virtues) is more useful for men than these.”
There are natural virtues and spiritual virtuals. To teach the natural virtues in public schools is not religion; it is something every student needs to know. For the parents who were neglected over the decades, we ought to open the schools evenings to teach them, and other adults, especially seniors.
The above is almost double the word limit established for letters to the editor, but I feel this true solution in helping our children ought to be published.
Antone Symanski
Woodland
