Education, Government and the Law

Today's subject? Education

In case the majority of you have forgotten?  I'm an old dude.  I'm a product of the 60's and early 70's; and this is when most of my education happened.

And as I remember, I didn't enjoy a whole lot of it.

During my first years, I attended a private baptist school, in Los Angeles, I imagine somewhere around Inglewood, CA, where we lived.  I remember it very well.  I remember what the classrooms looked like even.  I also remember being whooped a lot by a ping pong paddle in the principal's office.  This went on for quite a while, until one day I went home with some serious welts on my butt, and my mother freaked out and removed me from that school.  I believe from there, we went to Iowa.

I won't go into the number of schools I attended back then, but it was quite a few.  Some were public, and some were private Christian schools.  The Christian ones were pretty nice.  I didn't fare so very well in the public types. In High School, I attended at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa.  I went for a year and a half there, then dropped out in the middle of my junior year, because I decided to move out of my mother's place and take care of myself.  Note:  Rules about kids and jobs and how many hours they were allowed to work didn't exist at this time.  I remember not doing well at all in high school.  I got grades from B to D, and a lot of them in 10th and 11th grade were more towards the lower C to lower D category.

Anyhow, I didn't finish high school.  I did return to a drop-in type school for a while, and then I quit that too.  No one was too terribly upset about that, with the obvious exception of my mother.  I didn't return to school again until 1984.  I wanted to get my GED.  I hadn't stepped into a classroom in 7 years.  I tested out without attending any refresher classes.  I passed with flying colors.  I remember the math portion of the test the most.  I remember freaking about whether I would be able to handle the algebraic portion.  I think there were all of 2 questions about it.

Years later, my wife graduated the same high school in 1998.  She got C's and B's all through high school.  In 2010, her and I decided to attend college together, to improve our situations.  For me it was to just get a diploma of some kind.  For her, it was all about getting a better job and better pay.  I went for an associates in Liberal Arts.  She did the same.  I was able to take whatever classes I wished to.  Her counselor however, decided my wife would have to take some college preparatory classes before she moved on to getting a degree.  I finished my semester with some A's B's and C's.  My wife, however, managed to get a .34 grade average.  Don't judge...she does have a learning disability.

Oh, but wait.  Didn't she have B's and C's in high school?  Plus she graduated....right?  OK, then how did she manage that .34 grade average??

Here's what I truly love though.  I remember stuff they taught me in 2nd grade.  Math comes easy for me.  I can usually add numbers up in my head.  I'm no genius, mind you.  I believe my IQ is somewhere around the average. My wife?  She has trouble with 3x3.  5-20.  4 divided by 2.  If you ask her for change for a dollar, and there's no register to tell her how?  Count that drawer as short.  How then, did this woman graduate high school?

I got just short of the associates I was after, then returned again to study law for a paralegal degree.  I zipped through the first semester only having to drop one course, and got an incomplete (which translated to a C-) in another.  The second semester presented no issues for me whatsoever.  The third semester however, brought trouble to me.  I had to re-take the one course I had gotten a C- in (I was supposed to keep a 2.0 or better grade point, or I would lose my financial aid, and I had to have a C or better in all of my law classes, or I wouldn't get the certificate or the degree I was trying for at the time).  I had a female instructor in my Intro to Law class, in which I received a C.  She was easily the most inane person, and the lousiest instructor I had had to that date.  I learned pretty much nothing.  In my 3rd semester, I had her for 2 more classes (the selection of instructors for this program were extremely limited.)  I learned a lot less.  I was so stressed out about having her as an instructor for half of the classes I chose to take, that I systematically re-failed the C- class, and totally failed the fourth course.  The 2 that I took with that same instructor that I was so stressed over?  She passed me with a C...for both.  WHAT???  I was certain I had managed to fail all four.  And this female instructor?  She was the head of the department of the paralegal program.  Wow.

The thing I remember most about school when I was attending was that there were an awful lot of Civics, Government, and Law classes, as well as references to our infrastructure, and the way government and the law worked.  These days?  There's almost none.  Remember when I stated, in my blogs about The Law Itself, that if you asked people how our hierarchy of the courts was, or how the law works, or what the Constitution says, that a lot of people wouldn't be able to tell you?  This is why.  We have lessened, almost to extinction, anything to do with how our systems work, where the law and government are concerned.  Why?  As I mentioned before, the need to keep Americans in the dark as far as government is concerned:  What they're doing up there on Capital Hill, as well as how the law works, how laws are passed, and what you can do about it...these things are not considered important to teach any more, because if we know what's going on, then we might want to bring about change, something our Government does NOT WANT.  No, the only way you'll get that kind of Education is if you attend college, or take Law.  But it seems pretty obvious to me that they don't care too much for you learning much there either, especially with the head of the legal department shoving you through with passing grades, when you know damn good and well you learned NOTHING, failed all your tests, and didn't complete or did very poorly on any of the assignments given to you.

It's sad enough that we have a poor education system anyway...but when the national averages dropped and people began to complain that the standards in the education of our children were not sufficient, we changed a few things...but obviously those things are not helping.  Children currently graduating can't read, can't write, and can't speak.  And math?  Fahget about it.  If there's no calculator or cell phone or computer available, they'll be lucky to get the multiplication tables right.  Somewhere along the line, children that weren't able to pass grades were pushed through.  No child left behind.  I remember when that one came into existence.  Does that mean we pass them regardless of the grades they get, or if they really didn't understand a thing they just learned, just so we can up the averages and continue to get grants and funding available?  Is anyone really monitoring what our children are ACTUALLY learning?

If any of you actually know how, I would suggest, strongly, looking up what our national standards are, and what happens if someone doesn't quite meet those standards.  Find out what your college tuition, which is currently getting more and more expensive, really pays for.  Most of all, I'd really want to know, if my child decided to not attend college, and I take away all the technology that they have now, could they still survive in the world, say, if the internet went down?  Scary thought, right?