A Lady Gaga Coming to a City Near You.

I need to start off by saying I am definitely not a huge music fan. The c.d. part of my car radio has been broken for years and I have hardly missed it. The car radio dial(is it still considered a dial?) time is split between talk radio and National Public Radio (NPR). However, I did take time to watch a bit of the Grammys tonight and like it or not I have a few thoughts about that I am going to share.

Many people seem to have a strong negative towards Lady Gaga. For those of you totally out of the loop, she is a singer who prides herself in wearing some of the oddest outfits known to man. I never thought that someone could make the shoulder pads worn by Linda Evans seem miniscule. While I don't know a lot of Gaga's songs (or should I call her Lady) I do respect her individuality. In a culture and society where we are pushed to keep up with the Jones's and buy what others say is best, it is refreshing for someone to go out on a limb. That is even if that limb is fuschia and made of cheese.

I guess these thoughts bounce around in my head for a variety of reasons. One is that during high school I was a closet punker. My wildest outfit was a black and yellow shirt that others mocked. I was too afraid to stand out so instead I walked around with my head down and thought of myself as the biggest geek in the world. I was a geek, but so were many others and really who cares? Could I ever imagine dressing anything close to Lady Gaga? Hell no! This is not because she is a woman, but because it takes guts to be different. It is also important to our society for people to think differently. Innovations only occur when someone is willing to think outside the box as it is said and try something different. If Bill Gates listened to other's opinions then I don't think we have a lot of the innovations we have today.

When I went into teaching I had this odd idea that I was supposed to teach kids how to think for themselves. Yes, we did encourage them to give their opinions in papers, but only if they supported their argument in a certain way. State standards indicated what was supposed to be taught throughout the year. During each year students were graded against standards that all were expected to meet. Some people learn at a different pace than others. That doesn't seem like a revolutionary concept, but it goes against the expectations nowadays. I have to teach my kids that when they graduate they can be whatever they want to be, but while they are in school they have to limit their thinking to the essays given out and the standards politicians create.

Basically we are telling these kids not to think too differently through high school, but then suddenly open their minds in college. Sounds like educational schizophrenia to me. The school I was at was so into keeping things simple for those running things to keep others "accountable" that students were forced to wear uniforms. So we can't trust kids to think differently, learn differently, and now we can't allow them to dress differently! Oh my gosh they may find that some kids are able to have nicer clothes than others. This would mean that maybe teachers and/or parents would have to explain to kids that clothes don't define them. They might have to have a discussion where students could talk about feelings that don't fit in with the standards of their particular grade.

Do I think we need more Lady Gagas out there? Yes, in a way I do. I don't want them to all dress or act like her because that defeats the idea of individuality. However, having the only difference between singers being a dress and a hairstyle then that isn't very fun. Our world is much more interesting when we have Lady Gaga, Cindy Lauper, Twisted Sister, etc. to keep us entertained.