My kick-off article

I am in somewhat of a quandary as to what topic to kick-off this program.  So many things keep popping into my head I wish I could put them out all at once.  But I know that isn’t possible.  So I think I will start on the subject of education.  That has always been a big item to me.  But I took a bunch of years for me to realize how important.  Most older folks think they should be exempted for taxes for education since they and their children are finished with school.  But my take is that I have benefited from education every day of my life – beginning with my mother’s first trip to the doctor when she was carrying me in her belly.  There are new things discovered every day that we benefit from.  If it wasn’t for education, we would probably be wearing home-made sandals and riding whatever 4-legged creature that could carry us.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t like paying taxes, but some of them are for our good.

My education started in 1941 and I finished high school in 1954.  Back then there was no Federal Department of Education until 1953.  Then, it was actually the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.  And I thank God that the Feds were out of the schooling business most of that time.  In those days, many Alabamans were grateful to Mississippi for keeping us off the bottom of the educational ladder.  And that was mostly rated on money spent on education.  But I couldn’t have asked for a better education.  What we got back then was probably equivalent to a first year’s college education today.  Maybe more than that.  Plus, we had good teachers and staff who actually cared for us.

High school and elementary  school administrators and faculty in most locales seen to have completely gone insane.  On certain matters there is no rationale to their thinking.  If two kids get into a fight,  which will happen occasionally with growing up kids, they end up with a police record and expulsion.  If a student has anything on his person or vehicle that could be construed as a weapon, he is expelled.  This could even be fingernail clippers or even worse, he shapes his fingers like a handgun.  Innocent kids have been expelled because they drove their dad’s car to school and it may have a knife or gun inside, even in the trunk.  When I went to school, I occasionally would wear a hunting knife on my belt the whole school day.  But we rarely fought on campus.  We usually waited until after school to fight somewhere off campus.  And these fights usually drew a crowd.  Nobody got shot or stabbed,  maybe a bloody nose or a black eye.  If we fought on campus, our teacher would quite often make us finish it in the gym with gloves on.  Then we would have to stay after school for a number of days.

This day and time, the schools are grooming the youth to grow up to be a bunch of wimps.  We liked to do macho things back then.  When one of my grand-daughters was about 10, I bought her a child’s fishing kit and we went fishing.  There was a little toy knife in the kit and she was afraid to touch it.  But thanks to her dad, by the age of 13, she brought down her first deer.  As adult wimps, if these kids get into a life-threatening situation,  they will be sunk.  They may play action type games in the arcades or on their phones, but that expertise will be no help to them in a real life situation.  Plus, their muscles are all in their fingers.

I began to suspect, and with good reason, that our education quality was on a downhill slide before my kids started to school.  After they started to school, they began saying ‘thuh’ for ‘the’ and ‘gots’ for ‘got’.  When they argued with me that they were right, I knew my suspicions were true.   This was 40 years ago.   Next, I began to suspect that the newer college teachers in the education curriculum were less well-educated than their predecessors.  Therefore, we ended up with a problem that the teachers of future teachers were less qualified.  This results in even less qualified teachers.  But government was continually fixing the problems by throwing more money to the teaching bureaucracy.   How has that worked out over the years?  Also government has thrown testing at the schools which have one significant effect on education:  it detracts from classroom time with no increase in teaching quality.  But thank goodness there are still some truly dedicated teachers around.

Education has really taken a down-slide over the last several years.  I see examples of it almost every day.  People can’t spell.  Grammar is atrocious.  People can’t make change unless the cash register gives them the amount.  I find errors on signs and menus very often.  The sign might read grill shrimp instead of grilled shrimp.  Or it may smoke turkey instead of smoked turkey.  On top of that, your and you’re misuse is rampant.  And misspelled words are rampant.  I also see this in newspapers.  I usually consider printed errors as typos until I see it repeated later which frequently happens.

It’s miraculous that the young adults learn as much in college as they do.  It seems that your science majors generally come out much better.  Your other non-technical majors appear to have more of a handicap.  The liberal and socialistic bent instructors seem to have infiltrated these areas more heavily.  I read or hear  stories fairly frequently where these instructors often teach their own agendas more than the course they were hired to teach.  And quite often the student has to go along with these teachings or flunk the course.  I also often hear of instructors hired to teach courses concerning and promoting homosexuality, bestiality and other weird sex styles.  This is just damned stupid.

This is all I’m going to say on this subject, at least for now.  There’s much more to say, but I don’t want to put you in too deep a sleep on my first article.  Rather, I hope I may have stirred up your adrenaline a little bit , at least.  Thanks for dropping by.

Herb