re: #35 William Barnett-Lewis

Wait til the kids hit time to graduate and try to make it into colleges around the country. I think that’s going to end up being the real test, if you’ll pardon the expression.

This is only anecdotal, so take that for what it’s worth, but here’s what I’ve noticed among the Class of 2012 (my son’s graduating class).

The kids who initially got sports scholarships are no longer in their original schools. Some dropped out entirely and are working in restaurants and retail. The ones who are still in school are in smaller community colleges vs. the state schools they were in to begin with. I know three kids who simply couldn’t keep up with the demands of college level classes and left because their grades were not even close to what they had to be. Many of them cannot spell for shit, can’t tell you where stuff is on a map, know nothing about history or basic science. This is a fairly affluent area, I shudder to think what the schools are like in the poorer part of the county. For all the talk, and all the parents with college degrees here, there doesn’t seem to be much value placed on education by their children.

6 of my son’s classmates are now parents to new babies, all born within the last 3 months. 8 if you count the two girls who had babies the year after graduation. None of them are in college now, they are all trying to work and raise babies, some with the help of family, some on their own or with the help of the other parent. I don’t know how the ones without family help are going to make it. I’m praying they all make it.

I am sure we need to update some of what we do in schools. But I also think a lot of things were “fixed” that weren’t broken in the first place. We had to have been doing some things right at some point, our public schools created the people who made space flight and medical advances and a bunch of other things possible. What the hell happened?