JudyG's Blog

Judy has spent much of her life both personally and professionally as student and teacher. She wrote a weekly column on education for the local newspaper for 28 years and currently writes a monthly opinion piece for the newspaper's magazine section. She has alo published a non-fiction book in 1990, and a novel. Clearly, her passion is writing, no matter what form it takes.

TAKING THE STAIRS

While sending an encouraging e-mail to a friend about his difficulty in climbing a flight of stairs to go to bed, I sympathized but was privately happy not to feel his pain.

My husband and I originally built a split-level home on a sloping lot that required two short sets of stairs. Some years later, when a suddenly favorite aunt left us some cash, we added an extension on top of the house. I wanted a room of my own where I could put my computer and write in complete privacy. My husband, after all, had had his "den" since we built the house.

I had done my typing on a desk in our bedroom where the bed at my back provided a place to put my papers and things for "works in progress." However, that required my scooping things up whenever the bed had to be returned to its originally intended use. In addition, the desk was the "family" desk, with all drawers taken up with important papers, bills, and the like. My typewriter, by the way, was a portable.

This addition where I sit now at my laptop (my desktop computer sits idle on my desk) proved so perfect and perfectly inviting that we dubbed it the "Serenity Room." It also serves as a "spill-over" room for stay-over family visits, especially for my oldest grandson who commandeers it for his personal use for the length of his stay.

Obviously, the Serenity Room required a new full flight of stairs to and from the main part of the house. I comforted my sense of guilt at the luxury of it all by noting that the open wooden staircase provides a very nice visual, architectural note to the living-dining area below.

When we first moved into our new home, we brought along two young sons. All of us relished the much-needed space after living in a 4-room half of a double house. By the time we built the extension, however, both sons were through college and just married, leaving the entire house and my new workspace just for my husband and me. I could now work as long as I liked and leave papers strewn around, books lying open, and so forth. Further, separate rooms at different ends of the house left open space between us, a necessity for people thrown together 24/7 after retirement. Climbing all the stairs several times a day was still effortless exercise.

After I sent off the e-mail to my unhappy, hurting friend, I gazed out the window at the lovely towering pine tree my husband planted as a mere sapling when we moved in. At that moment, I realized that when we built our house and the upstairs extension, it never occurred to us that we would age here together. The planning and building were all done based on what we needed-and could afford!-at the moment, just like any other young couple.

When my husband retired from teaching a number of years ago (I quit substitute teaching in the local high school at the same time), friends asked when we planned to leave for Florida or other warmer climes than this beautiful but sometimes bitterly cold spot in northeastern Pennsylvania. We proudly said we were staying put. We loved our roomy house now that the "boys" were married and on their own, and leaving the truly-named Serenity Room would have been wrenching.

Hindsight indicates that perhaps that would have been an ideal time to leave, when we were both vigorously young (?) enough still to enjoy the physicality of life. Not too many years later, the infirmities of true aging began, along with a calendar filled with doctor visits. My husband and I, however, are far from decrepit. We enjoy even more than before the room to move around in all this familiar space filled with the decades of lives lived here, including the visits of relatives, especially parents, now long gone. Our children and their families have the space they need to visit for longer periods without having to resort to a hotel or motel.

My husband and I didn't anticipate growing old here; we just did. I, for one, looking out at that lovely pine tree and all the other trees we and our neighbors never cut down, marvel at the beauty of it all. Further, I never cease to wonder how (why?) we were so lucky to drive by one day decades ago and see this scruffy lot and turn it into a wonderful home for our children, and now, ourselves.

However, there are all those stairs. But as the good doctor said, "Adaptation equals success." We take those stairs one at a time, carefully, up and down, and hold firmly to the railings. Also, all shoes have rubber soles! My e-mail friend isn't so fortunate. His suffering extends beyond climbing his stairs, but he, too, will not leave his house, which has been home to three or four generations of his family.

If there is a moral to the story, it is that a house can be only a way station in all the changes of life that will inevitably occur. However, at the risk of sounding terribly corny, it takes a heap of living in a house by lots of folks over a long time to make it a home.

AGE EQUALS WISDOM?

We like to think that age equals wisdom. We like to believe that we'll be smarter when we're older because we will have supposedly learned so much more and experienced so much more through the decades. Theoretically, at least, people who have been there, done that, with the leisure to think about it, know a lot more about life than someone caught up in it, minute by minute, without any time to try to make some sense out of what's happening and may happen.

We have to be careful, however, about the different parts of the equation. Are we talking about people who can benefit from experience, or are we talking about the essential nature of an individual? For example, will the pessimists in their younger years who thought the glass was always half-empty suddely do an about face and think, in age, that the glass is half-full? Will people with consistently sunny natures since childhood, barring some catastrophe, view the world and its inhabitants as a frightening place full of danger as they grow older?

In reality, if Charles Dickens hadn't interfered, would Scrooge have suddenly sprouted wings after a harrowing night revisiting his past and contemplating the future? Or would he have gone back to being Scrooge after getting over his fright and reassuring himself that it was only a dream? Can a leopord indeed change its spots?

My own experience has shown me that the people I've known from early youth to full maturity are essentially just what they were at the very beginning. The woman who tended to be negative in virtually all she thought, said, and did is today the same whiner she was back when I met her as a young girl. She presents a situation with an air of "What can I do about it?" I offer several suggestions, but she finds deep flaws in each and waits for me to take charge and change things for her. Instead of taking her hand and leading her, I want to grab her by the scruff of the neck and... MY nature hasn't changed either!!!

People who have been kind, decent, and generous to those less fortunate than themselves also have not changed. They have moved beyond the infirmities of age that restrict them and have found different ways to carry on as before. Certainly, those independent souls who insisted on figuring things out for themselves in the sand box are very much now in the same mode.

There's not a sliver of a doubt that our outward appearance will change--most of us believe not for the better!!!--as we grow older. I believe, however, that the seeds we plant in ourselves, or are planted by others in our earliest youth will not wither and die as we age. The question is whether we grow a field of weeds or a garden of blooms.

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A RAINY DAY

Many of us have these odd thoughts throughout the day as we go about our business, and we attach little importance to them. Sometimes, when we read something that excites us, we may actually start composing a letter to the editor of the newspaper, or wherever else we came upon the idea that seemed so important. Unfortunately, we forget it in the next breath or sentence and go on with our lives.

I've read many times that some professional writers carry little notebooks with them to jot down an idea they think too important to forget. Today, of course, there is the Blackberry or whatever latest gadget is on the market to catch our random thoughts with which we so impress ourselves. And kids, mostly, snap endless "pictures" with their latest cell phone gadgetry, even if it's only of a friend making a face at them. Other times, these pictures, snapped instantly and sent e-mail to TV stations and newspapers, actually do have momentary value.

Well, I tried it recently and decided to write down "stuff" in the midst of breakfast as I read the morning paper. I don't remember the context of the column, or who wrote it, but I wrote down: "Language is the light of the mind." The sentence is from the famous (?) John Stuart Mill. I have a vague recollection of him from school. Be that as it may, the article dealt with the importance of language skills. I have some other notes on the same little piece of paper: " Key--to think and feel and express what we think and feel, we need language." "Too much compartmentalization and generalization." "Seniors should make a prison break!" That last, if I remember, was to encourage seniors to break out of their "prisons" of talking of nothing more than their aches and pains.

Well, I suppose I could make a coherent piece out of all that by using as the centerpiece what followed John Stuart Mill and probably came as a summary of the article: "Lanugage not meaningless; words define and express our inner selves; words are the fundamentals of cultural and social identity." Wow! Now that's a biggie. I could get a whole essay out of that one--and maybe I will--someday. Right now, the afternoon light disappears and the kitchen beckons. I think I also ought to look up John Stuart Mill. He'll have lots of stuff about which I can write myself little notes--maybe!

GO WITH THE FLOW

Being old is no fun, the elderly woman said to me. I watched her inch her way out of the booth at the fast-food place and gradually unfold herself to an upright position, all the while leaning heavily on her cane. I doubt whether she was even close to being 80 years old.

I had watched her equally elderly husband go back to make some changes in the food which apparently didn't please her. His voice was loud, angry, but I didn't hear the actual conversation. She simply sat there, head bent. They were obviously married a long time.

I then recalled a print ad I had seen which said something about "embracing getting older." I further discovered that there is now a new age category: "Boomers and Beyond."

The baby-boom generation is supposedly on the cusp of leaving babyhood behind and entering the land of maturity. The oldest boomers, based on having been conceived immediately after WW II, have now turned 60. Those who married are almost certainly grandparents by now, and they probably see their own parents differently; sort of up front and close for the first time. They realize they are no longer separated from the older generations by eons of time but are actually just around the corner from those old folks who brought them into this world!

They must be scared silly about growing old. There are several multi-billion-dollar industries that have sprung up dedicated to helping the boomers think they're still back in the old days. The cosmetics industry alone is raking in billions on creams and lotions guaranteed to hide those wrinkles and age spots and fill in all those facial gullies from nose to chin. And having a pot belly hanging over your belt must be very common. Is it my imagination that more men currently wear shirts that hang loosely over the tummy?

Clearly, a lot of elderly don't walk around doubled over while hanging on to a cane for dear life. The woman in the fast-food place, however, was right in saying that getting older is no fun, despite all the jokes that continue to fly over the Internet that begin: "You know you're getting old when..." After a few hundred such jokes, you realize the e-mailers are looking for a laugh to keep from crying.

I have yet to meet an older person who has "embraced" being an older person. In my time we were urged to grow old gracefully, which is another way of saying, "Let it all hang out." That's okay of you've been blessed with wonderful genes. But if your face is as cratered as the moon, and your body is giving you the Bronx cheer, then growing older is no fun.

Those who have joined the aging generation ought to face the fact that trying to fool with Mother Nature doesn't work. She is forgiving-- up to a point. Then she gives up on us. If we have abused our bodies since childhood, and if we have treated our minds as if they were trash bins, then we can't expect to age gracefully, or embrace getting old. Age also doesn't go away just by wishing, or by using creams and youth potions.

The Mayo Clinic has a new book that advertises we don't have to grow older. We can just as easily make up our minds to remain age 50 for the rest of our lives. Frankly, that's where I am--in my own mind. My body, however, keeps yelling at me, even when I'm just lying there, thinking beautiful thoughts. Must be something I ate.

ONE WISH

I finally sat down and watched the clouds roll by after completing necessary but tiring chores. At that momement, I very much wanted a magic lantern with a genie in it to ease the soreness and weariness to grant me something happy or pleasant. Well, I wondered, what would I wish for after health and long life for my entire family?

If I had one wish, I decided, I would be in trouble. At the moment, I was very tired, so the natural thing to wish for would be to loll on some sandy beach while the sun pounded me into the sand as I listened to the soothing waves. However, I'd probably fall asleep in two ticks, and that I could do by lying down on my bed in my own bedroom.

Would I wish to be climbing a mountain instead of sitting and staring at the clouds, or rounding up cattle? The thought only increased my tiredness. I could wish for someone to help with the housework, laundry, cooking, and all the other stuff that needs taking care of in a house that is a home. However, I had already done most of that work, which had made me so tired in the first place. That's like wishing for the rain to stop when the sun is shining. This wishing business was getting a little out of hand.

How about wishing for a pile of greenbacks in high denominations that would fund the whole kit and caboodle and then some? That would solve everything. Well, where would I put the stuff? Bury it like Spanish treasure? The squirrels would probably dig it up, or the deer would munch it to shreds, thinking it was a luscious new plant. Stocks? Bonds? Savings bank? Heck, I'd need a financial advisor and start worrying about all the money going into government pockets with huge holes in them. Worse, I'd become as greedy as the rest of this greedy world. Forget it. More bucks would probably complicate my life too much.

I'd need a new house or fancy apartment. But how would I make all the new stuff feel like home? I look around at all the things that have been been in the same place for over 30 years. Certain spots can't be rubbed out, particularly their stories. If someone now puts a foot on a coffee table, I remind him of his manners. In a new place, with new stuff, I'd probably scream something unpleasant. And I wouldn't need that little plaque with the printed sentiment about a house being a home that has covered a hole in a door for umpteen years. I think I'd miss it if I didn't see it and recall how it--and the hole--got there.

Would I wish to become young again? What, and go through life all over again? Not on your life! Would I want the vitality of youth? My gray hair would look silly at the Olympics. Did that cloud stick out its tongue at me?

Of course, I fell asleep, wondering and wishing. When I woke up, however, the answer was clear. What about that sense of wonder and excitement at my own and the world's possibilities that filled me when I was young? Reality had yet to replace expectation with cynicism about good things happening. I still believed!

We know too much about reality when we grow up. Maybe it's time to forget enough to remember some of the hopes and dreams and possibilities that once filled us with joy and excitement.

I woke up refreshed. I had just rubbed the magic lantern in my mind and gotten my wish.

WASTING ELDERLY MINDS

Puttting "education" and "older folks" together in the same sentence often brings to mind something like basket weaving or some other modest activity that merely consumes time.

It's as if these folks, already having been exposed to a formal classroom education, may now stop learning anything and just keep their hands busy, or give that old rocking chair a workout.

When my mother-in-law went into a nursing home, I received several small decorative pillow she made in some class devoted to simple crafts. They were quite attractive, but they began to pile up and ended up in a closet; I couldn't--wouldn't--refuse to accept them.

However, I was too absorbed in raising a family at the time to appreciate the monotony she must have experienced in doing the same thing over and over, with no purpose other than to occupy time.I remember thinking that she at least was maintaining her considerable sewing skills. Then I saw how alike the pillows were in size and shape and realized that she had been given these colorful squares to work on. I never asked whether she had stuffed them herself or whether someone else did that after the sides had been sewn together.

She was active and independent all of her adult life. I never knew my father-in-law, who died just before I met my husband. My mother-in-law spent many years as a widow in complete charge of her life. She was active and vigorous and lived alone for a number of years, until she fell, broke her hip, and couldn't quite take care of herself anymore.

However, if her body was frail, her mind was as active and alert as it ever had been.

Those of us who are still very much involved in the "outside" world don't want to imagine what it's like to be treated like a child who needs to be taken care of. I think that's why so many older people fight to stay in their homes, on their own, as long as they can. What they appear to dread most is losing not only their physical independence, but also their mental independence--that inner flame of wanting to keep on knowing and understanding the world we live in despite all the aches, pains, and even physical disabilities.

Most of us who are still healthy fear having our brains and senses dulled not because of mental illness but because of a lack of mental stimulation. I've seen elderly people come to life just by sitting in a restaurant and watching all the comings and goings, especially of young children. There is life going on about them!

That is precisely the cue that many homes where people are confined of necessity need to remember. We can't force people to visit or pay attention. But the staff of any such place should start thinking of ways to stimulate the minds of those in their care, to challenge them into thinking rather than allowing them to become bored and listless to the point of submitting meekly to whatever is given them.

That's where education may come in, in the form of real classes, with pencils and papers for notes and questions for the "teacher."It's a shame to waste even an elderly mind. Boredom and a sense of uselessness are often the real killers as we age.

In contrast, I know a 94-year-old man who still takes university classes to keep his mind alert and to maintain an interest in life around him. Most of us couldn't find a better role model for living a fine life instead of waiting in dull weariness for the end.

IF ONLY WE KNEW

When Germany stood at the edge of complete disaster in World War I, the German Chancellor asked his predecessor how this catastrophe could have happened. He answered: "Ah, if only we knew."

In the summer of 2006, Sheik Hassan Nazrallah of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, said that he never would have ordered the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers if he had known that a fierce war would erupt between his forces and Israel. He said, in effect, "Ah, if only I knew."

In our personal lives, expressions of regret come in all sizes and degrees of importance. All of us could frame the statement, "Ah, if only I knew," and hang it where we could be reminded of some awful or unlooked-for consequences of past behavior. Still, nobody goes through life making the right decisions all the time.

To make a decision is, of course, to choose. Many times, once a choice has been made, it can't be undone. We often don't have the privilege of knowing what was behind Door B or Door C after opening Door A. We may also wonder what was down the road on the left after we chose the road on the right. Much of the time, however, we don't even know when we've reached a fork in the road, or a tunring point in our lives that requires us to make an important choice. Every day the need to make choices comes at us thick and fast. For example, should I smack the kid on the behind, or send him to his room for a time out? It's tough when, 20 years later, he reminds you that you took away his favorite toy because you said the castle he built was just a jumbled mess.

Obviously, with choices come consequences and, unfortunately, the choices are never as simple as choosing between chocolate and vanilla. We can't blame our inherited genes for the choices we make. We may have had a great-great grandfather out West who was hanged by the neck until dead because he stole a horse. But his genes were mixed with great grandma's, who was a saint. Even the scientists admit that unraveling our biological heritage is a tricky business.

Regarless of our past choices, we still have fresh choices to make today. The same goes for our children as they make their way through life. As we age, we like to say, "I wish I knew then what I know now." But no matter how we fudge it, we knew "then" there would be consequences for our behavior. If we drank too much and then drove, we were drunk drivers who could have killed or maimed innocent people.

The German Chancellor and Sheik Nazarallah can no more pass the buck for the carnage they helped create than we can avoid responsibility for our own choices, good and bad. Saying, "Ah, if only I knew," is like saying, "The devil made me do it. Forces beyond my control put the excessive liquor into my mouth and forced me to drink it."

We can understand when a young child puts his hand in a flame out of curiosity. We can even accept him saying, if he were able to say it, "Ah, if only I knew the pain I would suffer and the grief I would cause my parents." Grownups, however, know that fooling with flames can lead to awful consequences. Still so many of us dare the fates as we ignore the inevitable results of playing with fire. "Truth or Consequences" was a TV game show. But life is not a game. Facing the truth--and accepting the consequences--is the essence of character.

THE SOARING MIND

We talk about reaching the peak of our physical powers, at which point we begin to decline. We think, "When I was a kid, I could run like a streak of lightning. Today, picking up the morning paper from the porch seems like a morning's work."

On the other hand, we think of age itself as an upward movement. We don't reach the mountain peak and then start down again toward our youth. We just keep climbing until we're through the clouds. Where we go from there must, of necessity, be another story.

I must acknowledge my long-gone youthful years. Some may say, "You're youthful-looking," but they probably want to add, "for someone your age." However, there is that part of me that insists my brain is still sending the right messages, but they are arriving at the wrong places. Too often, some body parts persist in going one way while I command them to go another way.

I'm willing to admit there's merit in those messages from the health gurus that one should lose weight, exercise more, eat the right foods--you know the drill. I must ask, however, then what? It's as if these often young, well-meaning advice-givers are saying to someone with cataracts, "Come on, with a little more effort you, too, can read the fine print in the bottom line. We know, however, it isn't going to happen.

I think of all these messages when I'm huffing and puffing after walking only a modest distance. I'm also recalling the years when I walked for several miles, even uphill, without once thinking where my next breath would come from. I'm also hoping that when I finally get back into shape, as advised, I'll be able to walk all those miles again. However, I know it isn't going to happen.

Many of us devise these little methods of torturing ourselves into believing that who and what we are now really isn't us after all. Somewhere within us is still that person who could run like a streak of lightning, or who could walk several miles uphill without breaking a sweat. If only we could carve away our outsides, we would find the real person we are waiting inside. All we have to do is follow all the advice thrown at us to regain the vigor of our youth. But we know it isn't going to happen.

I finally realized that there has to be a compromise, and the best place to begin is with the realization that my body now has its limitations. Fortunately, however, my mind has no such STOP signs.

When I was a child, I read voraciously and told myself stories in which I was always the heroine. The reading habit never left, but I realized I've mired myself in "practical" thinking--"grownup" thinking--for too many years. I've mothballed the ability to let my mind soar over mountains and lose all restraints of time and place.

If we still possess our wits, we have the world before us. Why, then, do we waste time bemoaning the present and wishing to return to the past. Could it be because we fear the future?

A far more encouraging use of our minds is to recall the brilliantly-colored balloons that can sail anywhere in the sky before coming down to earth. I can't think of a better way to describe the wonders that still lie in our imaginations. All we have to do is hop in and soar!

LISTEN TO HER

"Listen to her!" said the waitress with a good-natured smile at my young table companion. She was responding to my gray hair rather than my question about "hot spots." Older folks apparently aren't expected to know about the latest technology in connecting laptop computers to the Internet away from home base.

It must have startled her to think that I even knew about such things as laptop computers, the Internet, and the like. Surely, I must be typing away at home on my ancient typewriter whenever I wasn't writing letters by hand on scented, colored stationery. I could have boggled her mind if I told her that I was on my third desktop computer since the late 1980's and had gone through a number of printers too numerous to remember. I even have a wireless printer now, for crying out loud.

Okay, so my grandson set me up and properly programmed my computer system so that I could actually use the laptop. It would have taken me several weeks of discussions with the young and patient computer salesmen, hours of work, and attempts to connect that would have led to utterly jangled nerves and a sour stomach. In the end, it wouldn't have worked anyway.

My grandson actually had a head start in setting me up because he had already done much of the programming when he visited earlier so that he could use his own laptop rather than my "ancient" setup. At that time, he was tired of hearing me scream, "Don't mess me up! I'll never get it back again," each time he even approached my machine.

I have to admit there was a time when I thought I'd black out the entire house, or blow the damn thing up if I touched the wrong key. It really does take courage to enter the electronic age. However, I want to remain current rather than be an old fuddy-duddy who screams, "Don't mess me up!" I had to take the plunge into these modern times. Nevertheless, there are limits. My husband and I each own a cell phone of ancient vintage and mostly call each other to say we'll be home shortly.

This new electronic age fascinates me. It's my mind that is boggled at the equipment that apparently can do anything and everything. There are all the fantastic advances in medicine, science, and industry that have been made possible by electronic breakthroughs. A world we could never have imagined can now be seen.

I draw the line, however, at some of these so-called advances that are merely frivolous and meant to deprive people of their cash. Do we need cell phones that take pictures, send them over the Internet, provide e-mail, and show even your own movies? Is it necessary to talk incessantly just because you can, all the while filling the overflowing coffers of telephone companies and communications giants?

Where in all this is the content of what is being said and done? Do we talk, read, and write any better and have more meaningful conversations about society's--and our own--problems? Are we even aware of other people, let alone the rest of the world, as we hunker down over our keyboards and click and clack away? Do the plugs we push into our ears help us to hear what's going on in the rest of the world? How does chattering up a storm help us do anything but exchange useless information? Do we know how to use the information available to us in such great abundance on the Internet to our own advantage? Or are we just amusing ourselves with smut and violence to keep ourselves from thinking about what is actually important?

Supposedly, we are what we eat. However, as we continue to click away at keyboards and shout at each other over a gadget held in our hands, we have become what we think. And if we have listened in on these conversations held anywhere and everywhere that display what is on our minds, we may be forgiven for concluding that many of us have minds filled with useless fat.

SCHOOLS NEED DIRECTION

Public education has absorbed much of my life as student and teacher and, especially, as writer of a newspaper column on education for 28 years. I feel comfortable, therefore, in saying that we need to stop blaming our schools alone whenever the latest test results indicate U.S. children are close to illiteracy in math and language skills

The usual response is to demand more courses in the curriculum in the belief that whatever ails the kids is mainly a lack of exposure to educational material. Many insist that if the stuff were there, the students would learn it, provided, of course, that we had more and better-trained teachers. I would say "Amen" regarding the need for highly qualified teachers because teachers are essential keys to classroom success. My quarrel, however, is with the definition of "highly qualified" as practiced by so many schools.

I have the considerable advantage of looking back over the years of my experience to conclude it's a no-brainer to say that our schools exist in and respond to the culture of their times. For example, on October 4, 1957, Russia launched the first artificial satellite into space, shocking the U.S. into the race to conquer space. The cry went up that we needed more math and science courses in the schools--and teachers trained to teach them--to compete with the Soviet Union and, of course, overtake it in the race to space.

Back up to the Great Depression of the 1930's,when education beyond 8th grade proved to be a luxury great numbers of American families could ill afford. Dropping out of high school was commonplace, not because the schools failed their students but because their families desperately needed every penny to keep their heads above the roiling financial waters.

The schools, therefore, had to cram as much education as possible into those elementary grades. No excuses were allowed for failing to teach children to read, write, and figure as quickly as possible. There wasn't enough time and money to set up committees or form commissions to determine how to do it. The elementary schools just did their job, which was to teach! Consequently, the high schools often drew the academic elite who would put to shame many of today's college graduates.

Jump ahead to the end of World War II when millions of returning veterans took advantage of the G.I. Bill of Rights legislation and virtually stormed the nations private and public colleges to get the education they felt they needed to get the "good life" they had done without for so many years. These young people were survivors of the Great Depression and World War II. They weren't slackers looking to the college experience for sex, parties, and drinking sprees. School was serious business because there was much time to make up and an overwhelming need to prepare for the future. This was "The Greatest Generation" described and written about by Tom Brokaw.

Since the schools became politicized in the 1960's, however, they were caught up in the movement to include minority students as quickly as possible, regardless of educational preparation. They were also deeply involved in the tug of war between advocates of "permissiveness" who encouraged children to decide on their own how to fill their educational needs, and those who believed it necessary to maintain rigid control over the curriculum to keep out ideas they considered harmful to a child's emotional and intellectual growth.

Missing in all this for decades has been a unified, clear-cut vision of what public education means as various factions across the nation pull the schools in many different directions. There was, and still is, no consensus on what should be taught,to whom, and for what reason.

I believe that when parents honestly ask themselves what they want their children to be when they grow up, and in what kind of society and culture, they will find the vision that will inform the schools what society expects of them. If the answers come in specifics, not in high-sounding, ultimately meaningless phrases, society will know how to structure the schools.

Enter supporting content here