rant of the day

This morning’s Bellingham Herald got me all hot and bothered and I said to myself, “That’s what I can write about!” Now that I’m at work, I have cooled off. No, to be honest, I have forgotten what I was so exercised about at breakfast time. There is a vague recollection of the editorial page, 'though…and some semi-rhetorical wondering whether anyone else lives with a person whose political beliefs are 180° away from his/her own.

I’m boning up, as it were, for a discussion night later this month. The topic is: “Who is responsible for the dumbing down of America?” My glib first response is Garrison Keillor, but he was only picking up on a trend when he crafted his monologue tag line about Lake Woebegone. My generation was raised by parents who tried hard to give their children every advantage, the greatest one being the chance to go to college. Now, for some reason, instead of making the same effort for our own children, too many of us expect to continue receiving advantages. Our children can be nothing but above average, and we take great umbrage when they aren’t given the highest marks, the first place trophies, and the biggest circle of friends. We go to the principal when the teacher is not responsive to our complaints and to the school board when the principal backs her teacher. The school board DOES respond because we threaten to vote against the next bond measure. And so begins grade inflation. My class was not a bunch of dummies, but when I graduated from high school there was 1 valedictorian. I see that most high schools here in Bellingham produce 2 or 3 each year, and all of them have GPAs of at least 4.0. You don’t have to be told the rest of the story by Paul Harvey.
Let us not forget all the special interest groups and their pressure on the textbook industry. School boards approve textbooks for local use in most locales, but California has a list of textbooks approved for use by the legislature. And California is the largest market for textbooks. Who decides what goes into any given text book, and what influences his/her decision? Read The language police, by Diane Ravitch. We have it in our collection.

As I say, I'm just stating to do some reading on this, and I’d love to have some feedback. Everyone is invited to head downtown to three trees coffee house at 7pm on June27th to join in the discussion.