What Happened To Education?

I know we live in a different world than the one I grew up in. I know that there have been a lot of changes. Some of those changes have been very good and some not so good. Life is like that, I guess. But whatever happened to education?

When I was a youngster in school, you didn’t get promoted to the next grade until you could pass all of the tests to show you had learned the things your present grade was supposed to teach you. For years now, it seems like schools are just passing kids to get rid of them. Maybe it’s because they don’t want to deal with the kids anymore, or maybe they don’t want to deal with their irate parents who can’t understand why you failed precious little Billy even though he never turned in his homework and slept through class. Either way, we need to get back to the basics in the classroom.

I won’t even begin to go into the lack of spelling skills so many people show, and I’m warning the younger generation, us old farts are going to start writing in cursive as a secret code and you won’t know what the hell we are plotting against you!

To be honest with you, it’s not just the younger generation. When Terry and I were vending at RV rallies around the country I cannot tell you how many people in their 50s and 60s that we tried to give a sample copy of the Gypsy Journal told us that they hadn’t read anything since they got out of school and didn’t plan to start now. For voracious readers like the two of us, we never could understand how someone could not read. But to each his own.

When it comes to RVing, I think some basic skills like map reading and a little knowledge of geography might come in handy. I help John and Kathy Huggins administer their Living the RV Dream Facebook group, which has grown to over 60,000 members. Most of those members are RVers or wannabe RVers and I’ve got to tell you, sometimes it’s like herding cats trying to keep things under control when you have that many people stating their opinions, sometimes loudly and forcefully.

The other day I blocked a member from the group for being rude to other members and using profanity in a thread about Canada and the metric system, but I had to laugh. She said the dumb asses in Canada need to get with the rest of the country and dump the metric system. Huh? Did we have a giant earthquake and Canada fell across the border and is now part of the United States? How did I miss that news?

In another post in a different Facebook RV group, I saw someone saying that they had just finished up their first winter as snowbirds in Arizona and were headed east to visit family in Florida. The person making the post said that they were in Deming, New Mexico for the night, and wanted to know of a good campground to stay in the next night when they got to the Lake Charles, Louisiana area. That is a distance of just shy of 1,000 miles and he plans to get there in a day? He’s going to have to drive really fast.

Then I had the person who asked me a while back if I knew of any routes they could take to drive their RV to Panama to visit their son, who is stationed there with the Army. But they want to avoid traveling through Mexico on the way. Have you ever looked at a map, mister? Unless you have some sort of amphibian RV, I think you are going to have a problem.

I’ve also had someone ask me if there was any RV parking at the Statue of Liberty. Again, have you ever looked at a map?

But one of the strangest questions I got from someone who doesn’t understand the difference between north, south, east, and west was the lady who wanted to know how late in the morning she had to wait to leave the campground she is staying in near Denver, headed toward San Francisco, so she wouldn’t have the morning sun blinding her as she drove. I found myself humming Sunrise Sunset from the old Fiddler on the Roof musical.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Stillborn Armadillos, the first book in my John Lee Quarrels series. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – A woman’s mind is cleaner than a man’s because she changes it more often.