#parents

“n – a Buddist guardian of children and travellers or statues of him. Usually in the form of じぞうさま. These statues are found in temples and all over Japan at roadside or on paths.” – Oxford Japanese Minidictoinary, © Jonathan Bunt 2000, 2001, pg 103.

The Jizo / Ojizousama is one of Japans most loved Japanese divinities, as he is affiliated with protection and the saving of “lost” souls. More commonly the souls of children who have passed before ‘their time’.  It is said that Ojizousama helps babies, still borns and children’s souls to pass onto the afterlife, saving them from an eternity of piling stones on the banks of the Sanzu River (a river which is believed to have to be crossed in order to reach the afterlife). In doing so he hides the young souls in his cloak, protecting them from demons and carrying them across.

It is quite common to find these statues in cemeteries, temples and on roadsides/paths and sometimes accompanied with little stones, pebbles and/or coins. These little offerings are given as thanks for saving/protecting someone or in hopes that this divinity with aid someone lost.  
Ojizousama is also believed to be the protector of travellers, or dousojin, and Firefighters.

Me: *relaxed on my bed*

Partent: *enters my room*

Parent: *condemns every decision I ever made and leave*

Me: *unrelaxed on my bed*

gothhabiba:

gothhabiba:

not to sound bitter but why are parents literally so clueless

I’m sending out a mass e-mail to all parents and it says “the way that you treat your children while they are growing up impacts them somewhat”

by George Joseph

March 4th in Albany felt like a massive field trip gone wrong. On the same day that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio rallied over a thousand students, parents, and labor activists to the capital in support of his signature campaign promise - universal pre-school - about seven thousand school kids, parents, and teachers, bussed in by Success Academy charter school CEO Eva Moskowitz, marched in opposition protesting De Blasio’s decision to charge affluent charter schoolsrent for the spaces they collocate from public schools and for his administration’s decision to approve “only” five of Moskowitz’s eight proposed colocations for next school year.

A disturbing trademark of “education reform” protests is that the corporations who fund and manage them cannot even entertain the notion that political rallies ought to be democratic. Not only were thousands of charter students pushed out of school to promote Moskowitz’ expansion agenda, Success Academy parents likewise, as has beendocumented in pastrallies, were told that such rallies were “mandatory” - an order that would obviously be illegal if these charter schools were public institutions as they so often claim. Nonetheless, given that hundreds of parents did choose to leave work and were actively taking part in the protest, it would be dishonest to write the whole spectacle off as coerced.

Though some writers have stressed the rally’s use of students and parents aslobbying props, the reality apparent to those present was much more complicated. Many students and parents seemed excited to be there, chanting, carrying signs, and speaking out. Thus, for public school advocates, interested in building a truly grassroots movement to reinvigorate community schools, the hundreds of city parents who made the trip up to Albany, cannot simply be written off as victims of “false consciousness.” It is only by taking their actions and words seriously that we can understand these parents’ attitude towards charter schools, which undoubtedly represent the views of a significant percentage of the city’s working class parents. In fact, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 40% of New Yorkers supported charter school expansion while only 11% favored a decrease in the number of charters schools.

Within the charter ranks at Albany, there was a clear ideological distinction between parents and the officials who had summoned them. According to Izzy Kopis, a Success Academy math curriculum director, the key to her school’s popularity is its union-free campus, “We’re independently run and free from a lot of union rules, so we have a lot of flexibility to choose our curriculum, our school hours, and our quality teachers.” Following the Waiting for Superman template, Kopis attributed her school’s popularity with parents to its ability to bypass teachers’ unions, neoliberalism’s boogeyman for every failure in the public education.      

On the other hand, parents, who were willing to speak off the record, commended their kids’ charter schools, though for altogether different reasons. Their comments were not focused on charter schools’ ability to break off from union contracts or freedom to dip into some mystical source of market efficiency; instead, their praise was focused on the extra attention their children received, the smaller class sizes, the higher funding per pupil, the refurbished facilities, and the cutting-edge classroom technology - all needs which policy makers consistently exacerbate in public schools. As Brian Jones, a former teacher and public school advocate explained:

“Parents are doing what they’re supposed to do, fighting for what they think is best for their own kids and who can blame them? We’ve been fighting for these school quality issues for decades, yet today policy makers force parents with the Faustian bargain, ‘Oh, you want arts programing, classroom technology, smaller class sizes? Well then you have to go to charters.’”

Hence, it makes perfect sense that parents seek “choices” to help their kids escape schools with impossible learning environments. What public school advocates must make clear, then, is that the forces behind charter schools are not a response to “failing public schools,” but rather the very cause of them.

“During Bloomberg’s years, our schools faced constant cuts not only to funding but also to space from other public and charter schools,” said parent Miriam Aristy-Farer at the rally. “Our school in Washington Heights went from an A to C rating after getting two colocations we didn’t want. Of course when you gut public schools, people are going to look for alternatives.” Indeed, as Diane Ravitch and Leonie Haimson, founder of Class Size Matters, outline in The Nation, the Bloomberg era was devastating to school quality:

“the size of classes in the early grades are now the largest in fourteen years, and about half of middle and high school students are in classes of thirty or more. Many teachers have 150 students, making it all but impossible for them to look students ‘in the eye’ and give them the individual attention they need—especially students who are disadvantaged.”

It is no coincidence that charter advocates like former New York City Mayor Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, and education secretary Arne Duncan have gone significant lengths to destroy the public school system, cynically promoting rapid charter expansion in the wake of massive school closings or natural disasters. As Jones noted, “Charters don’t have a market if public schools aren’t failing. If public schools can provide the same resources and funding, who’s going to wait for a lottery? Their whole model is to feed off the destruction of the public school system.”

Charter schools cannot be neutral. Their very existence is antithetical to the public school system. Charters cannot expand their market share without creating demand; their growth model directly depends on the liquidation of the public school system. Consequently, as Diane Ravitch explained in an email, parents’ demands for quality schools would be “better served by fighting to improve their neighborhood schools rather than promoting academic apartheid.”

Yet as supporters of public education, we must take the concerns of parents considering charter schools seriously, making a good faith effort to provide a positive alternative vision. The 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike and last year’s community mobilization on the part of the Portland Association of Teachers prove that when the connections between inadequate public services and “education reform” are unabashedlyarticulated entire communities can band together in defense of their students, teachers, and schools. But as the confusing rally in Albany demonstrates, as long as parents remain divided, clashing over issues as basic as universal pre-K, the struggle to save our community schools will remain at a standstill.

Me: im trans

My parents:

Me: how did you say that out loud

Introducing my mom, who has fibromyalgia, to chronic pain memes. This should be fun

I don’t know who needs to hear this but…

To anyone else who has ever felt the heartache of a toxic relationship with their mother or father, please know you’re not alone. Remember, you don’t have to have a relationship with anyone—even with family, should you choose not to.

I know what it feels like to be unwanted and unloved. I know the pain of wishing your parents thought you were enough and that they loved you enough to acknowledge your pain. I know the guilt that comes with walking away and the weight it puts on you. I know how it feels to blame yourself for all of it.

It’s okay to put yourself first…especially if your parents couldn’t. It’s okay to let them go. You are not alone and are worthy of more than they are capable of giving you.

You will find acceptance, love, and family. And let me tell you from personal experience, a chosen family that you create can always be stronger than blood. Let in those who see you, respect you, and love you as you are. If it hasn’t happened yet and you are still looking for them, hold on—they’re looking for you too.

(AKA Letters to my Mother)

Dear Mum,

When I think about you, I think of a young woman lying in the dark in a narrow, thin-mattressed bed in the hospital psychiatric ward with a cot beside you. I think about your eyes opening in the darkness, watching a baby breathe. I think that you could have been a good mother if you had been given the chance, and I think, most days, that it’s a blessing you may not remember those nights very well.

Ever since you told me how the nurses wheedled and begged and made arrangements - they turned the world a few times so a 25-year-old woman, forcibly sectioned, could have her baby beside her while she healed - I think about you like that. I think about you and wonder what you thought about, because I can’t imagine this is what you imagined for us. Did you think your baby would grow up to be something special, or were you worried we would be the same? Did you fear I would become like him? You’ve never told me anything about your relationship with dad, never blamed him for anything, but at 28 I can read between the lines of how he treats his girlfriends, his mother… me. I can see through the gaps. I know, or think I know, what your life was like. I can take a sharp stab at what drove you deeper into the pit, and it wasn’t self-indulgence. We’ll leave it there. That’s all I can say. Read More

Nurses showing a set of newly born triplets to a surprised father in a New York City hospital, 1946. Photograph by Keystone-France