They're all over, those video "tributes and disses" of 2004. So here's one in print...

Writing should have organization, put forth a point, tell a story—have some structure beyond the muddle of thoughts flowing from brain to hand. But who doesn’t watch those “best of” or “end of” year shows, and react on a personal level to the collage of images, impressions, and miscellany? This then, this essay, for lack of a better term, is a collage of things I meant to say—meant to write—about the year, and just didn’t.

A year of firsts on a personal level—my first holidays without my mother, who passed away a year ago last Thanksgiving, my granddaughter’s first birthday—was a year of dubious “not agains” as well.

Testing in the public schools, especially Texas, threatens so many—children, educators, parents who want their kids to learn more than “test-taking strategies.” Big money supports the testing companies, the scoring companies—and educational institutions, told to do better or lose that holy grail, federal funding, will virtually kill to achieve results—even when the results may be meaningless.

Disjointed is one thing, and rambling another, so I’ll leave for a separate piece an explanation of my first graders’ first five weeks of this school year—due to testing. Leave, too, the political shenanigans that seem to go on in every district, where administrators get the big bucks, create the whimsical new jobs and titles—and devour those trying to teach. January to May is pretty much all testing, anyway, and the opportunity to revolt, or “vent,” will present itself.

Sales of my “Teachers, not Testers” bumper stickers to educators from a number of states lead me to believe that dissatisfaction is widespread. According to an AP report, Texas schools are cheating on state-mandated tests. The report doesn’t surprise me, and I doubt it’s Texas-specific. When education becomes a business, rather than a service, children, educators—everyone suffers. There can’t be assembly lines for education, but when ill-informed, non-classroom types decide how education can be “individualized,” the result is chaotic at best and catastrophic at worst.

A well-meaning but clueless young special education strategist suggested rewarding children previous to bad behavior to head off classroom disruption. In retrospect, that attitude may be exactly the problem affecting not only the children in our homes and classrooms, but our whole country. Problems? Avoid them at any cost.

Don’t have a Christmas party—someone will sue. Even if your entire school goes to the next door church, have a winter break party, because that will satisfy those with easy access to lawyers and complete disrespect for what real tolerance and freedom of speech entail. The church next door to my classroom, literally—well, okay—the church across the parking lot—is a part of my students’ lives. If someone tells me of studying for First Communion, or mentions a church activity, I’ll be hanged if I’ll refuse to discuss it—just as I would discuss other subjects of concern the kids bring in with them.

One of the frequently mentioned concerns is that many of my kids have parents in jail. Drugs, almost exclusively. First graders have had both fathers and mothers locked up, sometimes at the same time. Many of the students have brand new brothers or sisters although their own fathers are incarcerated, and have been for some time. One such situation resulted in a pickup truck being fire-bombed when the jailed parent was released. Drugs don’t affect anyone but the user? Please.

Many drug users and their families blame the legal system for their problems, rather than blaming themselves. While I disagree that the legal system forces anyone into illegal substance abuse, I do believe that the legal system and its misuse is one of the greatest problems facing Americans today. Parents sue school districts for breathing. The bully I’ve written about so often, now in middle school, was recently beaten up. No surprise there; bullies eventually meet bigger bullies. But his parents are once again suing a district that gave them way too much and should have taken them to court, claiming that from Kinder to middle school, every teacher and principal at every level acted in conspiracy to deprive the child of an education. No court should hear the case, given the documentation of steps taken trying to help the child, and of the parents’ continued, criminal attacks against educators; but a lawyer will present the case, a court will hear it, and in all probability, the district will give the parents money to go away. Problems? Reward the trouble-makers, and buy peace. Of course that never works, but somehow, it’s still solution one.

Related to legal system failings, I noticed an article I had a title for but didn’t write—“Hunters and Hoops.” I’d planned on making observations about buying off problems, forgiving them, excusing them—a la hunting incident in Wisconsin and the brawl between basketball players and fans in Detroit. No matter what racial epithets may or may not have been hurled at the H’mong hunter, no matter what the fans did to Ron Artest and others—there is no excuse for the resultant behavior. Granted, killing people—hunting them down and shooting them in cold blood—is infinitely more severe than just beating them up. Still, the underlying attitude-“my dad never did this,” “people shouldn’t judge me on my past”—is the same. No sense of self-blame, because problems are solved in courts anyway, and society has become the perpetrator of all crimes, rather than the individuals who attack social values and norms through acts of violence.

Listening to defense lawyers during the Scott Peterson case completely disillusioned me, although I once wanted—and was encouraged by school counselors—to go into law. Some defense lawyers, as tv "analysts" concede that clients—criminals—may be guilty. But no matter what the evidence, or how hideous the crime, there are others who defend any client publicly. Yeah, so there’s a videotape and forensic evidence. Yeah, there’s a confession and a body. But gee, the prosecutors rushed to judgment, and you know, cops often frame the innocent…. I understand that our Constitution guarantees due process, and I’ve heard enough of other countries’ “justice” not to know that in spite of its failings, our legal system probably is as good as it gets.

Still to endlessly excuse those who are clearly guilty, those who have been seen committing murder, or who have left irrefutable evidence of their guilt, seems almost inhuman to me. Imagine the callousness of people who can know where a child’s body is, as David Westerfield’s attorneys reportedly did, and still proclaim their client’s innocence.

Given the circumstantial case against him, I expected Scott Peterson to be freed, not because I believe for a minute he’s innocent, but because I expected legal leaps of fantasy to prevail, as they have in other cases. As he awaited sentencing, one defense attorney after another pointed out that these were his first murders, and suggested that with no previous record, he shouldn’t receive the death penalty. But why is a first murder any more defensible than a second or third?

Sometimes I wonder how defense attorneys who defend the really vile criminals—the child killers and rapists, the people without conscience or concern for life—sleep. How they face themselves in a mirror. If some of the top echelon of defense attorneys refused to defend killers and rapists, refused to take taxpayer money to represent the remorseless and the brutal, maybe would-be perpetrators would think a little more about the outcome of their actions. When I think of defense lawyers and the indefensible, I always wonder who will defend Samantha Runnion’s killer—and why.

Another legal concern is the fascination with taking election results to court. I can see defending every citizen’s legal right to vote—if the person is in fact a citizen, and attempts to comply with voting requirements. When I moved to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, then returned to Laredo, PRI was the ruling party in Mexico. If a PRI candidate lost an election, the soldiers simply moved in and put the PRI candidate in place anyway. Not something we’d do here, right? Yet both of the recent presidential elections, as well as a host of other elections, have been contested in court.

No voting system is perfect. If there are clear issues of voters being intimidated or disenfranchised, then action should be taken. But how sad that the United States democracy is being abused by one frivolous lawsuit after another. In the absence of clear instances of deliberate fraud, let the results speak for themselves. It bothers me that votes that are cast late or improperly are counted, frankly, because it seems another instance of making the responsible majority pay penalties for those who don’t follow rules.

Court challenges and recounts are expensive, and eat up money that could be better spent correcting voting systems or funding education. Political intrigue should be the subject of dinner conversation, literature, and newscasts, and its outcome should be decided by the public, not by the courts.

Education and the legal system structure much of our lives, and are in turn, the product of individual lives over time. Neither praise nor condemnation should be absolute, and in thinking back over the year—it’s time, too, to think ahead. In hope.

To the victims of the Asian earthquake and tsunami, hopes that 2005 will assuage in some tiny measure the torment and the horror of these last few days.

To those of us blessed with more than we sometimes realize we have, a renewed vision that lets us see clearly.

And for all, a year to be treasured, not lamented, when 2006 draws near.