"Jeopardy.................................."

Conversation with one of our church school kids yesterday has me deep in thought this morning. We birthed that ministry about thirty years ago, my middle daughter the first to graduate from it, our hope set in providing better environment than what seemed to be prevalent in the public arena. If such effort fell short in some areas (no science lab, no athletics in those early stages), we felt at least academically our results would fare as well as what was graduating elsewhere. Indeed, I was somewhat shocked to see the lack of grammar and math skills that came to us in that initial switch. Whether it was representative of the masse, I do not know; but three decades later it would appear that the condition is merely who we are as a nation, education being a matter of any individual’s own desire to learn and, at this point, teachers, themselves, but products of the system. Let it also be noted that this old man confesses that, while having traversed those first twelve years making all “A”s and “B”s, with a good handle on English and Algebra, college was dismissed after nearly failing two subjects right out of the gate and any knowledge possessed as to this country’s history and governmental foundation was very minimal. Thus my mind ponders the idea of America as a creation, of sorts, a “being” not so much in the sense of it evolving out of a “singular” sense of an ethical set of morals, but most certainly out of the bulk of those people contained within its journey. If our flag and our Constitution define us, what they define is “e pluribus unum”; and when that is lost, it’s all over. Looking back at my small slice of that, it would be easy to blame television and Hollywood for much of the mess, to wonder if “progress” hasn’t enslaved us every bit as much as it may have helped us, people lost any more without a computerized device of some form or fashion held in their hands, attached to their ear, feeding their brain. Beyond that, though, I’ve got to ask myself if where we stand globally, compared to other nations knowledge-wise after gaining these college degrees, doesn’t suggest we need to take another look at “No Child Left Behind”?......