I Had Two Incompetent Teachers In High School

 It's not worth discussing, and I didn't really figure this out until my late 20s.

The first teacher was a science teacher that I had for four years.....who absolutely prevented evolution from coming up in the class.  I actually figured her tactic of skipping chapters (she'd start the year on chapter 6, then go to chapter 4, then onto chapter 16, and so on).  At the end of each year....the one single chapter on evolution would have been quietly skipped.

You can laugh over this today, but it's just remarkable this occurred each year.  

Getting knowledge across?  No....you eventually figured out that memorizing about 25 things for each test....was  the only way of passing.  After that....you would forget everything taught.  She did a remarkable job in making you hate science.  

The second teacher situation was a series of math teachers that the school had over a four-year period (the old gal had health issues and was gone mid-way through the 6th grade, the gal for the same class for the 7th grade stayed one single year, same for the 8th, and 9th grade).  

None of the four seemed capable of getting a simple problem across to the majority of the class. It became a root-canal-like experience sitting there daily.

This was the early 70s, and these were mostly people who'd passed out of the college system in 1950s/early 1960s.  

If you'd just gone to a self-taught or occasional seminar system?  I probably would have been ready by age 15 to test-out and progress out of high school.  I think a third of all kids are capable of that level (even today).

The fact that probably a quarter of all kids are low-IQ and just see school as baby-sitting?  Well....yeah, that factor is driving a lot of this poor quality business that you see. 

Oregon Story

 

I sat and pondered over this story in the news from yesterday.  

Basically, Oregon has passed a law and said that things have reached a level....that we don't want to burden stupid kids....so ease up on reading, writing and math in high school.

What'll happen?  I would suggest one of three things.

First, you will start to notice in three years that those graduates of high school in Oregon....arrive at college, and can't meet the general entry requirements.  So the colleges will rig up a semester (maybe two) of fake college....basically charging you $2,000 minimum to take 'real' high school math, and English classes (instead of college-level classes).

Yeah buddy.....what you didn't learn in high school.....you will waste six to twelve months in college (call it the '5th' year).

Second, about ten years into this era.....people start to remark that young folks can marginally read at the 6th-grade level....at age 25.  Nationally, folks start to point out what seems to be a low-IQ status of Oregon residents.  Some term will be created....'he seems oregonish' will be uttered (meaning not too bright).

Third and final.....blacks only make up around 12-percent of the demographics.  If you throw the map up....the majority (say near 75-percent) live around Portland, Bend and Eugene.  If you head to the eastern half of the state....I doubt if they make up more than 3-percent of the population.  Maybe they injected 'people of color' to mean Hispanic folks....but I doubt if they want to be included in this group.

More or less, this is just going to drive the wedge to split half of the Oregon off to Idaho at a faster pace.