IGNORED: old people and young people

Old people in nursing homes are bored, I mean, they seem to be bored- and cranky. Kids in public schools are also bored and cranky. No one has time to listen to anyone anymore and the very act of honest conversation is going down the toilet. To remedy this, I think old people in nursing homes should be bused in periodically and assigned to kids in public schools.

I have friends who are teachers for Davidson Metro and they are now responsible for case-working a few kids. This is a new responsibility on top of all the stuff they already have to do. They work ALL THE TIME. They arrive at work at 6 am and don’t leave until 4 or 5 in the afternoon, there is paper grading to be done at home and they have to be available to answer emails from students, evenings of Parent/Teacher meetings, school assembly, all kinds of weird stuff. They work ALL THE TIME and now they are basically responsible for the well-being of a few “troubled” students as well. Way to overwork the overworked.

Old people have mostly gotten over themselves enough to be able to give good advice so I think this would be a win-win situation. The kids would get some much needed attention and the old people would have someone to tell their life lessons to. The only real downfall I can think of is a kid’s assigned old person kicking the bucket or being a secret molester. I think this would be supervised though, maybe like Study Hall.

So old people would sign up for this, it would be advertised in newspapers (old people still read those) and in nursing homes. PUBLIC SCHOOLS LOOKING FOR MENTORS! 65+ and explain it was on a volunteer basis, maybe provide a free lunch or something. The mentors would be screened and the kids would be given a self-assessment, then matched according to their interests. It would probably be expensive to begin it but once it got started I think it would work really well.

Parents would have to sign a waver that stated if you wanted your kid to attend public school you have to agree to this because it would be the freaky parents who would feel their “privacy” being violated or whatever over this that would cause a stink. Man, I wish Americans weren’t such assholes and suing each other all the time. We’d be less afraid of everything.