Raised Hackles

Well friends and neighbors, my hackles are up again. Does anyone know what hackles means? It's the hairs (or feathers if you’re a bird) on the back of your neck. In my case it’s the feeling I get when my red-neck self gets fired up about some bureaucratic stupidity. Today’s stupidity is the move in our public schools to start indoctrinating grade school kids into thinking that every last one of them is entitled to a college education.

I just got calmed down about the move to disallow parents the right to opt their children out of the insipidly foolish and dangerous standardized testing business. And today I learn that my youngest grandson needs to complete a crazy “packet” of tasks designed to teach him that a college education is very important and absolutely necessary to a successful life. He’s in third freaking grade. Who is making the decision that this is an appropriate educational requirement for a third grade kid? What insane bureaucracy decided that all children must go to college? When did the state abrogate the responsibility of parents in making these decisions?

Do you understand that I’m pissed off here? I respect a good college education. Both of my children have degrees. I want my grand-kids to have the opportunity to go to college. I want all kids to have the opportunity to go to college if they have the aptitude and ability to do the course work. I respect young people who go to technical colleges as much as I respect those who go to Harvard or Yale. Education is a wonderful thing. But, contrary to government propaganda, college is not for everyone. College is not for the youngster who doesn't want to be there. College is not for the kid who did a crap job through twelve years of school and who is completely unprepared for the necessary intellectual discipline that college courses should require. And colleges should not be extensions of high school where the first three semesters are spent trying to get a student up somewhere close to the necessary level needed for that course work.

Two year “degrees” should not take three or three and half years to complete. Four year degrees should not take five or six years to complete. The push to make college a requisite for life is a mistake. We are losing people who would be a valuable part of the workforce doing jobs in all kinds of trades because the propaganda tells them that those jobs are less important than the ones requiring a college education. How did this aberrant idea take hold?

But that’s not my focus here and it’s only part of why I’m angry. I’m angry because little kids, from the ages of five through eleven or twelve are being propagandized into believing that college is a thing they need to think about right now. I’m angry because those “educational” packets about college are wasting time that these children could be using to learn math or history or English. Or they could be using that time doing some other useful childhood activity like playing outdoors or reading a book or drawing pictures. What has gotten into our educational system? Where have we gone wrong? And most importantly, can we fix it?

I know that I’m not a highly educated person. I passed up my opportunity to go to college. I never thought about higher education until I was in seventh or eighth grade. There are folks with PhD s who have done all kinds of research, served on panels making recommendations to educational departments in state and federal governments. These folks always assume that they know more about what is good for kids than parents and local school systems. They advise the people who control the money that is pulled out of the pockets of citizens. Perhaps if the money supply got interrupted these bureaucrats would learn where their paychecks really come from. Maybe then they would listen to a little common sense advice provided by parents and teachers who know what is truly important. And telling third graders that they need to worry about college now is not truly important. It is truly foolish.

Now have a fine day.