Del Rio News Herald

For many years I have spent countless of hours and hours evaluating the status of the Hispanic American and the culture here along the Borderlands of Texas. The same questions are always foremost on my mind:

What will motivate the Hispanic American to improve their self-concept so that as a group will have more self-confidence to encourage children to aspire to succeed?

What motivated our ancestors to survive against all odds and in spite of their negative social environment, they succeeded in building an educational system that produced many accomplished people of today?

When or why did we lose the enthusiasm toward education? Has our enthusiasm diminished because we have begun to expect this country to give us “freebies” or are we also victims of the fatal tentacles of electronic devices? Could there be several other factors that are less obvious?

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that “freebies” destroys desire and destroys feeling good toward accomplishments. Are the culprits found in the free breakfast, the free lunch and the free everything? Do children and parents take these meals for granted and lack gratitude?

Have we lost our enthusiasm because we do not have the role models that we used to have? Could it be that the modern parent spends their days and evenings planted in front of the TV watching those corruptible “novelas” that teach infidelity, immorality, distrust, subversion, cruelty etc. instead of monitoring their children?

When we had two school districts, the majority of the students graduated from high school. “Dropping out” was a scarcity! Today it is a common factor! Why? If this continues, we as a cultural group will deteriorate as contributors! We will escalate into more of takers rather than givers!! Societies of givers flourish while a society of takers weaken!

Did we curse ourselves when many local people “predicted” that consolidation of the two school districts would destroy our educational system? If you do not believe that this could have been possible then you have not read or heard about the contents of the Bible! We curse ourselves when we focus on the negative.

We know we have a problem in Del Rio! What can we do as a community to encourage our children to further their education? We must do it together and it must be now, not tomorrow or later!

I believe that a renewed adult mind is the answer! I believe that the deterioration of a child’s enthusiasm for school begins in the first grade. Enthusiasm for school appears to be destroyed by parents, teachers, video games, television, iPods, and most significantly by the cell phone and texting.

By the time they reach seventh grade, the child has been contemplating dropping out of school after the eighth grade or ninth grade. Why? I suspect that the child wants the school environment to entertain them with no responsibility in exchange.

I believe that parents are not expecting their children to succeed so they do not. I believe that parents are focusing on obtaining material goods and are not focusing on their child’s educational excellence!

Educational excellence was the focal attitude of our ancestor’s dreams for their children. They united to build an educational environment which focused on obedience, respect for authority and deep aspirations for success. When did all of this disappear? Today my heart weeps when I hear that several hundred children drop out every year. I know that this is a national epidemic, but I don’t care about the rest of the world. I care about Del Rio and our future prosperity.

Many parents expect children to stay out of the way and be entertained by electronic elements or machines! Many families are struggling to make ends meet, but their children all have cell phones! Hello, people, where in the world are our priorities?

I believe that if parents would come together as a unit and as a whole and really, really care about their children, things would change for the good of all children going to school today. The first thing that must happen is that parents must change their thinking.

Love and gratitude can dissolve this horrible epidemic!

For decades, I believe that we, the Hispanic American was made to believe that we needed to put ourselves last. I believe that as a consequence we attracted feelings of being unworthy and undeserving. As those feelings lodged within us as a group, we continued to attract more life situations that had us feel more unworthy. Children can feel, too.

Negative messages are all over about how “bad children are doing in school.” I have heard comments like “The Hispanic and Latino children are dropping out of school como chanclas viejas!”

Local and national news medias are daily cutting down the teacher, principals, and all educators in general. I believe that the media is responsible for the lack of love and gratitude towards our educators. They help the young people and their parents to disrespect the teacher, the rules and regulations of the educational institution.

I wonder what would happen if we began to distribute positive messages just as the law of attraction or the law of faith dictates?

Is it possible that we have brought about this calamity to ourselves by our unified subconscious belief that we are an undeserving group of people? As a result of this unified thinking, we have brought this monster to live and lurk in our midst.

We are a favored group of people and we need to start focusing on those things that will show us more great things about our people, and our culture and our beautiful and prosperous community of Del Rio.

We must claim our favor by asking God, then we must believe it. If we believe it then it will be manifested. What is manifested will become true! We must speak positively about the children and their successful future that will come to pass through our educational environment here in Del Rio.

I wonder what would happen if we began to make positive statements about the success of children in school? What if the local paper, our local radio stations, and our billboards would unite to change the thinking of the school children and their parents by utilizing the power of positive talking and thinking? I wonder what would happen if we as a community would make positive statements about the future of the children that stay and finish high school?

You must love yourself before you can love your children. Parents must daily claim gratitude for having children. Children must hear from parents that they are loved and that their job is to stay in school and that they are not a burden either financially or physically!

Children will need your help. How? I believe that there should be no electronic involvement between a school child and a school day until chores are done and homework is complete. If we all remove these distractions from the young, we will get our children back. I believe that adults have helped destroyed the core of children’s experiences by the easy access to electronic devices without any restrictions. Parents are the facilitators of these electronic monsters!!! You buy them!

Children can feel, “Out of sight, out of mind.” What is wrong with just having one television set for a family with small children? What is wrong with sitting down for a few minutes to watch what your child is watching? Let’s get back to basics!

The more that your child sits in front of the T.V. the more he will be attracted to more and more electronic elements that will eventually swallow him up. The human element or body will no longer attract his attention. Look around you.Children as young as six are walking like zombies at the mall and other places talking on the cell phone and even some are already texting. They smile into a box and are not responsive to humans walking by them. I find this so very scary! I believe that parents are responsible for this deterioration. If parents do not pay for these items, the children would not have them!

I believe that we can change the educational environment if we all agree to believe that we can change things by focusing on the positive elements of all of our collective actions.

The City of Del Rio must take the lead. The City should invest in making some large public signs that make an encouraging statement about young people. Val Verde County fathers should do the same and place them in strategic places. All of the Christian Churches must talk about the young people of Del Rio and encourage their “flock” to monitor the “electronic monsters” that live in their home.

The radio stations should have public announcements to encourage young people to stay in school and invest in themselves. Private citizens can get together and pool their money to pay for television ads that would give our Del Rio children hope for a successful year in school.

The local businesses can invest in signs and flyers encouraging the young to make better grades. La Casa de la Cultura could hold motivational conferences that would teach the values that need to be

encouraged in the Hispanic American homes. Monetary prizes could be given out to encourage attendance. I believe that we can come together and bombard Del Rio with the belief that our children will not be thrown out of society “como chanclas viejas!!”

PEOPLE OF DEL RIO, WHAT HAVE WE GOT TO LOSE? WHAT HAVE WE GOT TO GAIN? WHAT CAN LOVE, GRATITUDE AND RESPECT DO FOR ALL OF US?

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Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County since 1929

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