Why can people not pick up after themselves?

It bothers me to no end when people do not pick up after themselves. I am not talking about my husband and his sloppy habits, after almost 9 years I have gotten used to that. I am talking about people out in public places leaving messes for others to clean up.
I have seen people leave their trays full of garbage sitting on the table at fast food restaurants. I have seen used paper towel on the floor in the women's bathroom, right next to the garbage can. At the Children's Above and Beyond Museum I have more than once seen the destruction a parent has let their child leave behind. These are usually things I see after the fact, after the person has left. However, this past Friday when I was at the museum I witnessed a father move his daughter from location to location through out the museum, and not once did he make her pick up before they moved on.
Now, I always give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that was the way they found it so that was the way they left it or maybe he thought because other kids were around that they did not need to pick up. Since we were at the museum for a play date, I didn't let myself dwell on it. As we went around the museum the mother of my daughter's friend and myself made sure the two girls cleaned up each area as we went along. We are both members of the museum and we like to keep it looking nice for others to enjoy, and for the most part we made it a game so the girls were mostly cooperative.
When we reached the third and final floor at the museum, the father and his daughter were up there also. We spent a great deal of time up there and eventually found ourselves at the arts and crafts table. We ended up sitting by a nice old lady who is a paid volunteer through a program that helps find senior citizens jobs. As we were sitting there chatting we watched as the daughter took off the play clothes she was wearing and leave them in a pile on the floor. The father asked her if she wanted to go downstairs, she said yes and he walked over the pile of clothes and continued down the stairs with her. The old lady at our table told us that he is at the museum on a regular basis and he never has his child pick up nor does he pick up after her.
By this time I am highly irritated with the whole thing, not only because I find it rude to let your child make a mess and leave, but these are habits that my child is seeing. Children are little sponges and they notice everything and they mimic what they see, that is called modeling. As hard as I try, I can not seem to make cleaning up after ourselves a fun activity every time it needs to be done, but normally we get it done and my daughter know that is the way we treat the museum. This Friday when she said to me, "well that other little girl did not have to put away her toys" I was stunned. My friend Deb is the volunteer coordinator for the museum, and I told my daughter that the little girl who did not pick up her toys was being mean to Deb. Deb is an awesome woman, who is great with children and whom my daughter simply adores. This worked well for an explanation and I got no more grief from her. I was thinking to myself, if I ever seen that father again I was going to give him a piece of my mind.
Soon it was time to go, and as we made our way back down to the first floor to let the girls have a couple more turns down the slide, there was the father and daughter getting ready to leave. And guess what I did? Yup, that's right, nothing. I am not a confrontational person, and I know the museum has volunteers to help keep the place tidy in case they have customers like this father and daughter. But I vowed to myself if I ever seen them at the museum again I would find a way to be subtle and let them know they are expected to pick up after themselves.

Change in education

I always try to write about something that interests me, something I can connect with, something that I care about. I am aspiring to be an elementary teacher, in fact, I should have been student teaching this semester had UWO not messed up my progress report. So, I am invested in what is going on in the world of education, both personally and professionally. I have written numerous papers over the last three years and a great number of these have focused on the Bush administration and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
NCLB had the best of intentions, to make sure that every student received a good education and that teachers worked at providing this education (accountability). However, there are many many pitfalls of this act. Just a brief and rough look at NCLB. NCLB is based on improvement and proficiency of students based on standardized test, tests which are only provided in English and which no help is allowed to be given. The tests focus on English and Mathematics, not taking in to account that students possess a vast amount of knowledge, talent and skills (see Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences for a little more info http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html this is a great overview site) Schools are required to make annual progress, and this progress is based on the results of the standardized tests. If annual progress is not met, schools can lose valuable funding (usually after so many years on non-progress). Some category's such as those of English Language Learners (ELL) never show improvement because as a student becomes fluent in English they are removed from the category, creating a never improving category.
I was extremely happy this morning when searching through Yahoo highlights I came upon an article for the associate press titled "Obama promise: Focus on getting kids to college". Myself and many other have been waiting for this. Some positives of the reform are taking other subjects into consideration during testing, provide rewards for performing schools (especially in the areas of ELL), and focusing on preparing students for either college or a career. This is going to take a lot of pressure off the teachers to teach to the test and provide students with a well rounded education.
I am not saying that this reform is perfect, nothing ever is, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Is it really ok?

For some reason I recently started getting Glamour magazine in the mail. I did not order it, and have not received a bill for it, but regardless I have received two issues so far. It seems to me that they should name it Ad magazine because it seems that over half the magazine is ads and at least 1/4 of those are ads for prescription medicines of some sort.
So I just flip through it quick and then put it in a pile to send home with my mom next time she visits. As I was flipping through the recent issue, April 2010, a one page article caught my eye, it is titled Hey, its Ok! and appears in the Men,Love & Life section and is the 100% guilt free page. I believe the point is to provide some comic relief. Two of the entries are "Hey, its ok to dress all in black on opening day because Derek Jeter get engaged" and "Hey, its ok if your mom still gets you an Easter basket-because you ask her to." Funny, but realistically harmless. However, one particular entry that caught my attention, it was "Hey, its ok to despise a name because some girl who tortured you way back when had it." My question is, is it really?
I don't know how many of us have heard someone say "I would never name my child ( ) because there was a kid in my class with that name and I hated them." I know I have. Or better yet, have you ever heard someone put everyone with the same name in the same category. Such as "All Greg's are assholes. I dated one when I was 18 and he turned out to be the biggest jerk ever." Is this fair to the Greg that lives down the street and is hard working, nice and generous. I do not think so.
I know the article is meant to be funny, a little satire on the authors part, trying to point out how immature and prejudicial such a notion can be, but unfortunately it is all to real. Hopefully soon we can come together as a nation to end prejudice and stereotypes for all.