I Will Give Thanks For the Day ...
Well, I went over to my daughter Margaret's house for Thanksgiving, giving thanks that on this day at least I would be able to count on propriety having everything well in hand, but was I wrong. Oh sure, everything went well enough until after the meal, when Margaret felt compelled to invite her next door neighbor over, a school teacher, making sure she had first read my last little diatribe on our mythical reader of yore. It would seem that my modest attempt to point out that most in my time were not readers of the classics, in the mind of this expert test giver, had been gussied up into a full fledged attempt to undermine Western Civilization, as if such a goal would require any help from me. I told her that I couldn't be bothered to waste my time on a done deal.
So my good old grandson, the test designer (as opposed to giver), looked it up and found that when I would have gone to college, had I not headed down to New York, New York upon my escape from the Lyman School for Boys (that glorious attempt at reformation via combining the liberal usage of a rattan cane with the habitation of every back-street hood), I would have been amongst a full 4% of my fellow Americans in that glorious status of the over educated. Imagine that, Western Civilization in the early thirties rested on the knowledge acquired by an earth shattering 4% of intellectual over achievers, which could be reduced by roughly 20% a decade prior to then, and after that increased by roughly 20% a decade to this very day where it is about 30% of the population.
So I tried to explain to this woman on a mission that educational reform was misguided in looking back to a time that never was, instead of looking ahead to a time that it has to become. She was too spitting mad for her eyes to glaze over, so I tried a different tack that had the side benefit of allowing me to get spitting mad. I told her the true story of one of her very own students I have the pleasure of knowing from hanging around the park, and had a rather insightful conversation with a few weeks back before the cold emptied the place out for the season.
Over the period of the last couple of years I was aware that this young man had the ambition of going into law enforcement, and fully intended to go to the local community college after high school graduation. He always struck me as a bright eyed, responsible young man with his own ambition. It had always been a pleasure talking with him. All through the last school year he told me of his taking and retaking, and studying and restudying for these state tests you have to pass to get a diploma in this high minded state of ours. The last three times he took the test he failed the math part by two points. Did he give up. No sirree. He stayed after school and took all the help that was offered, but in the end he just always fell short by two points. So this young man who was never in trouble, worked hard in school and earning money for his mother who kept house and home together without a man around, barely ever missed school, did all that was expected, with the single exception of two pathetic points on these so called MCAS tests. His reward for his efforts was the denial of a diploma. He is still a good kid, but the spirit has been kicked out of him. He is now a good kid with no particular reason to be ambitious, because he had given it the old "college" try and he had simply failed. That's all.
Would somebody explain to me what two points in math has to do with a good young man someday helping out a woman who is being abused by some lout, or directing traffic, or talking to some first graders about how it would be a good idea not to use drugs, or maybe saving the life of some poor fool in an accident he comes upon because he knows CPR? What does 2 points in math have to do with it? The teacher actually told me that she was thankful that my kind were dieing off. I told her that I will be ever so grateful the day just a few of the folks with her sanctimonious intellect know just a little about something called shame.
I'm a former law enforcement officer and I can tell you that beyond a
knowledge of basic common sense math, you don't need to be a math whiz to
be a cop.
Thanks for your comment. It would seem to be just common sense that would
be true, but of course the real issue here is the fact that they denied him
a diploma, preventing him from going on to the community college with a
goal that requires very little math as you say. I tried to tell him to
shrug it off, go get his GED and go from there. We can say it is all just
attitude on his part that he has shutdown, but if the kick is hard enough,
attitude is all it takes
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