[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker B: You're listening to casual talk radio where common sense is still the norm whether you're a new or long time listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit [email protected] and now here's your host. Ler. [00:00:21] Speaker A: I'm curious for those that are fathers, mothers, parents, I'm curious who is aware of the Gentlemen of Quality mentorship program sponsored by many middle schools across the nation. If you're not familiar with what it is, I'll tell a story. But if you are familiar, I'd be curious if your kids are enrolled and what you thought of the experience. CasualTalkRadio.net, hit us up, let us know. For those that don't know. And just to caveat, the GQ Gentleman of Quality mentorship again is nationwide. It's not just any one school. Primarily middle schools. Not just, but primarily middle schools. And the mission of this program was to help men become gentlemen. That was the thought. Now, I think there were some flaws in some of that strategy because it makes a lot of assumptions. I think they had the right idea. I just think there were some flaws. So I'll tell my story. Now. I don't remember every single thing about my tour of duty in the Gentleman of Quality program. I was in there in middle school and I don't know if I was, I think I was signed up for it, if I recall because I don't recall asking for it. I just, it was on my card and I figured, okay, fine. And then I went, but I don't remember everything. I remember the teacher, the instructor, the mentor, Mr. Harley and I had some not so good interactions with Mr. Harley. Nothing salacious. He just was basically a scummy individual. I would learn the, the program, though. That's where I they taught things. We didn't learn about being gentlemen. We didn't learn about how to carry ourselves. I mean, there was kind of this image that we were supposed to project that I don't know that we fully did. I don't know if that was ever part of it at all. But I remember we were learning about some actors and I can't remember her name. The face escapes me. I can't remember who it was. Not Hilary Swank for sure. It was somebody else. There was a different actress that we were learning about. There was things like that. Like it wasn't what I expected is my point. I didn't really get much out of this program. Now to get back to why I feel like Mr. Harley was just a scummy individual. So after all of this happens, there was I. After I started driving Mr. Harley, who I kept in touch with, he had asked me to show up at some little. It was a little shady little office in downtown. And he was talking about what he had this vision for and he was praising it like a job, but there was no money. But he was telling stories about how what he wanted to do, he wanted to, in summary, kind of prop me up as a face. Think of like Greta Thunberg and what she's basically been done done to her, right? They. They propped her up as the voice and they used her to appeal to a bunch of people. That's what he was talking about doing, is he wanted to create this business and he wanted to create all this stuff and he wanted to have me kind of be the front of this. And I remember thinking, like, where's this coming from? How come you don't do it? Why are you having me do it again? Nothing salacious. It was just. He just wanted to. It wasn't. Grooming. That's the wrong word. It was just, I want you to be the face of this business that I'm going to be putting out. Because, you know, I kind of had a style about me and the way I carried myself and, you know, I was. The presentment was unique and I think he saw that. Now, obviously, if it was anybody other than him, I might have been intrigued and I might have thought it been a good idea and I might have thought it was a really good something. But I. I didn't, you know, he just, I don't know, rubbed me the wrong way. The reason I was telling about gentlemen equality and asked the question, if you have kids in Gentlemen of quality, the one thing. So I live, where I live, there's four schools directly across the street. So I see kids all the time, male, female, young, older. And I'm constantly. I can only describe it as appalled at how today's kids dress, the men dress, even some of the girls. But the dress is absolutely disgusting, frankly. And obviously the parents are buying this. I don't know if the kids are asking for this stuff or they're just buying what's available. Because I know a lot of the shops are selling garbage clothes, so I get it, but they're just. They're terrible clothes. I mean, I. In middle school, I certainly was not dressing that bummy. I wasn't dressing like a. Like a G. But I wasn't dressing like a bum either, not that I can recall. And when I went to high school, I mean, that's when I started wearing like guests and I was, I was dressed to it to the nines. I always wanted to look nice, smell nice. I, I might not have always done every single thing to prep, you know, hair shaving, but in terms of the clothes that I wore, I thought, I thought I did a pretty good job most times. So when I see what today's kids are wearing, it's just disgusting. And the reason that matters, you might think it doesn't. It does because it's all about presentment. People are going to be terrified of somebody that looks like they're about to rob something or they look like they, you know, they're going to be desperate and try to attack you or they may not, they may be the nicest kid walking. But it's all about presentment. And the one thing I thought about recently about this whole gentleman of quality, my recalling the program. It'd be nice to see a resurgence of that program for a modern era. When I see a modern era again, I didn't get much out of my tour of duty back when I went through it. But I do think that we should focus on things that emphasize gentlemen. And I'm not even specifically referring to anything that is, you know, forced, let's say. But as an example, I would like to see programs that emphasize because if all these other kids are just dressed like bums because that's what they're doing, I would love to see men in this group set the standard for a well dressed man. They don't have to wear suits, but something where they stand out amongst all the other ones as just extremely well dressed, well coiffed as it is well spoken, you know, less slang. So I don't know if there are, you know, maybe there's families that have kids where you can tell your son has that potential and you don't know, you don't know how to get him paired up with peers. Also, there never has been a ladies of quality type of situation. And of course the boy Scouts went woke, so you can't really turn to that. The Girl Scouts went somewhat woke so you can't turn to that. I would like to see these focus on traditional things. I want to see where there is emphasis on learning to cook. I think that's important specifically for girls. Men can also learn how to cook too. But I think for girls it's important. Why do I think it's more important arguably for girls, Girls are the ones who can have kids and sometimes those girls may end up single parents. So in my case I personally think it's more important for a girl to really know how to cook because as a mother that you might end up being. It's important that you understand how to self sustain your family, even if it's a family of one. Personal opinion doesn't mean that a guy cannot learn how to cook. In fact, I used to joke around with the various women that I dated that I would never let them cook because none of them knew how compared to me. But that's me. I did it because I understood you're not going to be able to beat me in the kitchen. I proved this on multiple occasions. There are people out there who can attest to, to again, IHOP can't touch me. This is just fact. I speak. So I would like to see those programs emphasize the importance and the value of learning how to cook for girls. I don't know that learning how to knit is necessarily as important as it used to be, but there is a value, I think in creating so crafts, arts and crafts where you might be able to turn that into a business someday. You don't know. So I think, my point is, I think we've lost a lot of these values and we choose not to teach them like we used to. I don't know why that happened, but I would like to see a return to it. And then on the gentleman side again, I would like to see standard bearers with respect to how you walk, you know, not walking like some thug, how you dress, not dressing like a bum, how you speak, not speaking like you're not educated, walking along the school, right? It's not even about academics even because I think academics is best left to others. But I still never saw an evolution of these programs for the modern era and a return to at least some of the sanity. I mean, geez, I think back, I can't remember of all the friends I grew up with, I can't remember any of them really dressing like a bum. Except when we were like really young kids, right, and we didn't know any better. But I'm talking like in the teen years, none of us really, none of us. I mean a couple of them just because they chose to. But even, even their level of bum was superior to the kids I see today. And I'm not saying that to trash them. I wish there was a return to just a desire to dress better. I'm not asking for suits, I just to me, I'm disgusted frankly at what I see out, what I hear out. And I would love to see something. And I thought about this mentoring program to hopefully encourage and inspire. Well, then it got to thinking, is that really about the mentor, and is the mentor inspiring the kid? Well, to some degree, but it also inspires the parents because a lot of what we see in the kids is because the parents have declined in some way of carrying themselves, especially after they have kids. There's less of a desire to fix themselves up and go out and, you know, be. Be that person, stand out in the crowd. And a lot of it is, you know, this rush to everything. Everybody has the same phone, everybody has the same clothes. Everybody's saying cologne, everybody's saying all the cars look the same. It drives me absolutely nuts because that's not the world I grew up in. I grew up in a world where you wanted to stand out, not because you were trying to draw attention per se, simply because you didn't want to be exactly like somebody else. Because if everybody is the same, what value are you individually? That doesn't mean that you don't have value. It means it's not obvious value anymore. And I think that having your own singular value and something you can be proud of elevates you, but it also elevates people around you. It inspires people. It pushes people to want to be their own person as well. All I'm saying is I wish. It's just a wish. I wish there was a way for schools to truly embrace, not just the academics, though important to some degree. I'm not dismissing academics and value. I'm saying that I wish there was a way to do more to where there was no longer, you know, some of these girls walking around with blankets draped around themselves and, you know, house shoes. It's like. It's just. I'm not suggesting the extreme of uniforms, but maybe that's what you do. I just. I think it's extreme. I think it's really just you have some group, peer group that can inspire those kids that want to stand out and not want to just be the lowest rung. Once you get into the real world, once they grow up, they're going to have a hard time of it because they're. You're not going to be able to do that in the workplace. And if you're thinking that you're going to do that, you're going to always going to work in fast food. Maybe that's all you're caring to do, but that means you're not going to survive. And we should want our young people to survive long after we're gone. And, you know, if you're older, if you're my age or older, you know for sure how it is. You know, it's cutthroat. You know, that there's higher expectations and they're not going to go away early is the best time to start to set in those principles of carrying yourself and educating yourself and how you speak and how you present to other people and instilling that is not just a family, you know, father, mother situation. It also, I think the school has a part to play in that. And if we don't embrace that idea that a village is necessary to raise a child, we're leaving our children behind. We're setting them up to fail. And I don't think that's fair to them. I don't think it's fair to you. This is simply a suggestion. Anybody has any contradictory feedback, feel free to let us [email protected].