It’s been a loong Labor Day. Fittingly, I was laboring all day trying to clean up the basement and help my Mom make the “leatherette” bags to go along with the fabulous design kits I prepared as hand-outs for my design class. They’re very spiffy – beige with a blue stripe along the center of the bag. I’ll take pictures before I hand them all out. 🙂 Now I’m completely prepared for tomorrow. I burned the cool movie I made onto a CD, and guess what? It runs perfectly on the laptop. I watched it again and it didn’t skip at all. Hurray for technology! It’ll wow them all tomorrow night. At least, I hope it will.
You know what scares me? I was sitting in sunday school yesterday at church, and I used the word ‘transitory’. All but two of the other teenagers – most of whom are honor students – just sat there, staring blankly at me. Finally, after a very awkward silence, one of the boys piped up: “Whaaa?” I had to actually play Miss Dictionary and explain to them what ‘transitory’ means. That scares the crap out of me. These kids are the best that the local public high school has to offer, and yet they don’t understand something as simple as ‘transitory.’ The girl sitting next to me whispered, “I think you’ve just amazed everyone again.” Why is that word amazing?
I think that’s not only scary, it’s sad. As you all know, I get tons of emails from kids every day. You would be so shocked by how poor some of their writing skills are. I don’t want to insult any of them, a lot of them are good, but there’s that occasional email without any punctuation, all in capitals, or what have you. It’s hideous.
I remember getting an email from a 14 year old boy in Puerto Rico a few months ago, and in a post script he added an apology, explaining he’s still trying to learn English, and he was sorry if I couldn’t understand it. When I replied, I assured him not only could I understand what he wrote, his English was a lot better than most Americans his age. Why does it seem that English has become an elective in high school? I hear from these kids, either in writing or in person, and they’re incomprehensible. Everything they say is skewed, and it could be so easily fixed.
A few years ago I was on vacation in Florida and I went to high school for a day with my friend Nate. I attended his AP English course, and was really looking forward to learning something. You know what we did instead? We had one minute to continue this sentence – “It was a dark and stormy night and there were shadows playing against the wall. And then I heard a creak, someone coming towards me…” We would write until the teacher said “stop”, then pass our papers to the person behind us. I got the paper from the boy sitting in front of me, then we’d have another minute to continue the story from the point where our neighbor left off. I was truly shocked. I did that when I was still in first grade, and now this is considered AP English?
It seems that a lot of schools have worried too much about being politically correct, teaching children about gun control, revisionist history, and sex education from such an early age that they’ve forgotten to teach the basics. So many teenagers graduate from high school without even being able to read or write. That is nothing short of hideous. But more than that, it’s sad. Children are merely victims to a system that is in dire need; they don’t need more money, they need complete renovation.
Two months before I started PotterWar, I had just gotten back from that trip to Florida, and I was disgusted with the state of the public school system. That AP English regression back to the first grade wasn’t even the worst of it. I remember having serious discussions with my friends Erick and Chris, trying to figure out a way to start a campaign for serious school reform. Nothing like those crack-pot campaigns started by most politicians. There’d be no fund-raising here, just straight out protest by the children who were being victimized by a corrupt system. Maybe then they’d get the message, that the kids themselves feel that they aren’t getting what they deserve from the system.
But then the enormity of the campaign hit me and all I could think was, so many people have already tried this, why would I make any difference? I still somewhat believe that, but who knows. Maybe one day it’ll work out, if I ever decide to take on such a huge campaign. Anyone feel like helping? Due to my recent brush with the realities of just how little some of these kids know, I’m starting to get that fire in my heart again, that desire to quit complaining and *do* something.
Or maybe I just have heart-burn. 🙂
But seriously, if you have any thoughts please post them in my guestbook. And don’t think I’m dissing *all* public schools, or that I think *all* kids are stupid. I don’t mean that at all. Some schools out there are really trying, and really accomplishing something. And I know of several people who have made it out of the system unscathed and intelligent. But the majority of students are suffering, and I think it’s time to do something about the core of the system, rather than just throwing money at it and hoping that will solve all our problems.
I need to quit thinking now or I’ll never get to sleep. I may go watch TV for a while, who knows. Don’t forget to post in the guestbook, please. Good night!