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  For better or worse, I am an American, raised by Americans raised by Americans, back and back.  When people ask me what my cultural background is, I tell them that I am American, and their inevitable question is, “Yeah, but where is your family from?”  Ask my grandmother and she’ll tell you that I have ancestors that came over on the Mayflower.  Aside from being a Native American, that’s about as American as it gets.

  I say this not out of sense of pride for my background.  Quite the contrary.  I say it only to establish that my culture is the American one.  I am a dissident in many ways, and much of what I see in my culture appalls me.  If I mentioned all that does, I would be writing a novel of a post.

  Instead, I will focus upon the attitude that my culture has about product over process.

  What I mean is this: rather than focusing upon the process of completing a goal, we tend to focus upon the end result, mostly ignoring what it took to get this result.

  I am a teacher.  There are plenty of examples of this pervasive attitude reflected in our education system.  Many kids are so focused upon grades–since that is what will help get them into college–that they will do whatever it takes to get the grades they desire.  Parents are no better.  Most often, they ask about their children’s’ grades and not their work ethic.  As a nation, we favor standardized tests as the assessment tool to give us an idea about our students’ educational ability.  But tests are a poor judge of how successful our students will be.  They require little work and a child can do fairly well with little preparation.

  This attitude is also evident in our medical system.  Doctors are quick to prescribe medicines as a quick fix.  Our medical industry is primarily diagnostic rather than preventative.  That is, we treat health problems rather than stressing preventing the problems before they arise.  I can’t say I entirely blame doctors.  People wait until there is something evidently wrong before seeking help.  I see plenty of billboards advertising gastric bypass procedures and the like.  This is a prime example.  People weight–I meanwait–until they are morbidly obese to attack the problem.  Diet pills and expensive procedures could be entirely avoided by not gaining the weight in the first place.  It seems small, but gaining five pounds a year over twenty years equals a weight gain of one hundred pounds!

  I see this attitude represented in many more areas of our society; the list is a long one.

  It’s well beyond time for us to begin stressing the process of things rather than only the product.  It is the process that makes us strong, that allows us to hone our skills and grow.  If we fail to teach our children this, we will have a lot of pretty buildings that will collapse under the slightest pressure. 

  Let’s work on our foundations.