I could easily fill a book with criticisms of the American educational system, but lots of people already have. Not long ago I read a blog written by a lady living in France. She wrote mostly of the adjustments she had to make when her husband moved the family to Nice where he took employment. She went from southern California to that part of France, amd has been there for some seven years now. After some difficult adjustments, she has come to love living there. The most troublesome adjustment came when their three kids enrolled in school . . . and couldn't do the work required of them at the same grade level they were in out in California. In fact, each of them was set back several grades due to poor performance. This could have been for a number of reasons, but the family had to find a school tailor made for English speaking kids. It was easier, and not just because the language barrier as no longer a problem. Their system is more demanding than ours . . . and better.
Her blogs didn't come as any surprise to me. As a former college professor, I'm well aware of what the public school product is capable of. Colleges used to be the cream separator of education in America, but that's no longer the case. You work with what you have these days, and it's not beneficial to the system to send home too many rejects from higher education. In short, we've lowered our standards by a considerable margin. One thing you notice right off in teaching is that kids can't write. They can't express themselves well enough to do well on essay type tests, and most professors I know gave up on written tests. Part of the reason for that is the handwriting problem. College students often can't write fast enough to get much said on an essay test, and even if they can, the grader can't read it. Handwriting in this day and age is awful. Is that a new problem? Apparently not, but it seems to be worse than it was years back.
My father was a highly educated man. Since he'd done clerical work in the miliary, he could make an old typewriter rattle like and old Ford truck. He bragged of being able to type sixty words a minute, but he couldn't write. My mother, on the other hand, had beautiful handwriting, as did most women I've known who came out of her generation. It seems that bad handwriting is somewhat of a man thing. Anyway, I'm doing a book of my father's poetry and journalistic endeavors, and the most troublesome thing I've run into is reading what he wrote out by hand. In fact, I'll have to give up on including some things because I can't find it in type. He knew he couldn't write, often apologized for it.
I've always had a decent handwriting style, but as I grow older, it gets worse. I've noticed that even my signatures on checks don't look the same, but there's an excuse for that. These old hands have suffered some abuse over the years, and now they're stiff. But I can still write some, and I can type up a storm. Some modern conveniences are helpful to old codgers like me, but I still need to practice more with my handwriting.
By the way, the book is called Gathering Ground, and it will be out in a few months. I knew my dad's handwriting wasn't good, but I didn't know how good his poetry was. And, I knew he was an enthralling conversationalist, but I didn't know he was such a good storyteller. A book that should've been in print forty years ago is finally coming to life, and I'm pleased with it. Keep an eye out for it on Amazon.
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