In the Statistics Class discussion on March 14, we considered the dilemma in the measurement of accountability. Several of us who work in the helping professions were feeling discouraged over the loss of caring values in society. We were commiserating with each other that our parents would simply have not tolerated such attitudes of disrespect, unconcern, refused opportunity as we are seeing in today's youth.

I listened as the others reassured each other that we had lost our values. I felt dismay. But I wasn't really thinking. I just let myself listen and feel. I didn't even feel that I had to think. Just be there. That was enough.

Then suddenly I perked up and demanded center stage. I had something to say, and I badly wanted to say it. We were looking at the scene all wrong. We were judging instead of loving, expecting instead of supporting. Not because we meant to, but because we were measuring the variables from the wrong perspective.

Years ago I wrote of "listening to the stillness." I meant by that just taking the time to let the words run over me, without struggling with them, without trying to make sense of them, just allowing them to be. In that stillness, I could hear the patterns, and begin to sort out what was really happening. I could hear the anger and frustration. I could hear the helplessness. I could feel the pain. And then I was no longer fooled by the words. I didn't believe anymore that the arguments, the seductions, the disappointments were about the pile of clothes thrown on the floor, the small unnecessary, really unwanted small items taken without payment or from another, the stubborn refusal to settle into serious study of computer skills.

It's a scary world. We can't know why we're here, who we are, where we're going. Yet time refuses to stop, even when we need to get off and rest a while. I want to know that I count. I want to know that I make a difference; that I'm not a fungible speck of dust. I want to know that someone will know I've been here. Remember the "Kilroy was here" signs of World War II and thereabouts? I'd rather you know and respect me for who I am, but, if I can't have that, I'll settle for rocking the boat any way I can. You will know I was here.

We used to talk in Transactional Analysis (way back in the 60s) of "I'm OK, you're OK." We recognized the need to be "OK." We recognized that that need was so strong that negative strokes are better than no strokes at all. To be ignored; not to count; not to be of any significance seems to be the greatest fear we have.

Accountability - one on one correspondence not possible. Here goes the story on minority scholarships and payback. If structural violence is committed in the process of accountability, more harm than help can be done. We need to separate the giving from the process of accountability, and to look particularly at accountability through the ecological process.

Sow love. You may not see the return, but it is there.

Yes, Jesse. I think we do need to incoroporate love into that equation.

At 01:06 PM 3/14/2000 -0700, you wrote: in an article from l.a. times dated 3-13-00, i quote the author "many of California students in spec. ed. classes are there because they were never taught to read properly, not because of a serious or emotional handicap." Learning disabilitiy has become a sociological sponge to wipe the spills of general ed."(G.Reid Lyon, fed. gov't research effort into reading & learning disabilities.

This seems to be a variable that if love could be incorporated into the equation, this would change. Love after all is an unchanging variable, don't you think?

Jesse, I couldn't find the article. Do you have a title? jeanne