Do older men tend to get cranky, rude as they grow older? I met other people on different forums which most the guys tend to be dam rude for any reasons. They would personally attack a person online for no reason. In contrast, I notice that most of the younger guys don't have this personality characteristics. <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

What, no link?

<img src="/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

That's becuase we remember when were your age. And we did it better. We made it ourselves. If we wanted a website, we wrote it out, tags and all, and then wrote the ftp client ourselves to get it on the server. And we had to dial into the server directly. None of this point and click java-powered drivel, I'll tell you what. You call those hyperlinks? I'll show you a hyperlink! All you kids, soft, soft in the head....

Spell check? No wonder you can't spell. I remember when a spell check was ten minutes swearing at the dot matrix, then waiting an hour for it print your fourty pages, and then you had to go through with a pencil. And do you think that pencil made suggestions? No, you had to have a dictionary, and if you could figure out what word you thought you'd typed, you had a real problem on your hands. And there was none of this GUI snot- we were real geeks, we used command lines and booted our apps off of floppies!....

You've been pampered your whole lives. Why, back in the day, we had to pay for our email by the character- now, you can email an entire song! And it isn't that midi stuff, it's the real song. That's not right, there should be a law....

Get off my lawn, you freaky looking hoodlums! Or I'll sick the dog on you! *waves my cane so vigerously the shaft flies off, reveiling the sword blade inside* Kerberos, attack!

(In computer years, I'm ancient)

HA HA HA, that was hilarious. That reminds me of an e-mail i I recieved a long time ago:

[cut and paste]

Dear Kids of America:

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through year 'round blizzards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of [censored] like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it. But.... Now that I've reached the ripe old age of forty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! Compared to my childhood, you live in a freaking Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

When I was a kid we didn't have The Internet -- we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves! And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter -- with a pen! --and then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! And there were no MP3s or Napster! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up!

You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options! We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either. When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was. It could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent, you didn't know! You just had to pick it up and take your chances!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a little square and in order to have any fun you had to rely on your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win, the game just kept on getting harder and faster until you died! When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were out of luck. And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no on screen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Did you hear what I said you lazy little freaks? We had to wait all week for cartoons! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980! .....But I don't want to lecture you.

[end paste]

But yeah, I kinda know what you mean. There've been a few notable "mature" people on some forums I've visited, and they've had this real attitude, and take any type differing opinion as a personal attack on themselves. Ironically, it seems more common with ex-armed forces gentlemen than others, at least in my experiences. Must be something about it that make them that way. Although there are plenty of young people who have a similar attitude, so I wouldn't say it's a result of age.

Why do you think that movie is titled "Grumpy Old Men"?

20 channels! ! We had 1 channel from the antenna on the roof & if we had an ice storm, someone (me) had to climb up on the roof and straighten the antenna & point it back in the right direction while listening to shouts from the ground!

Yes, and the more I live by myself the crankier I get also. Ironraven is right, you are babied in this day and age.

As for me when I was growing up:

Our family finally got a color tv when I was .......12!! It still had 13 channels on it. We usually got 3 stations about then, if lucky. Cable tv as a kid? Nope. I learned to type on a "Royal" brand manual typewriter. They didn't have PC's in my high school, or any kind of computers. We still had rotary dial phones and were still tethered to the wall by them. I could go on and on, but why would I want to sound "cranky?" lol

Actually, the reason people get crankier as we get older is a lifetime of accumulated frustration & discovery that the world sucks. I have LS-120 disk drive that I hadn’t used for high capacity disks in a long time. It works ok with std floppies. Now, for no apparent reason, it won’t read the LS-120 disks. When I tell my antivirus program not to scan Word or Excel templates, it does it anyway. The roof in my breezeway leaks. The light switch in my bathroom doesn’t work & the sink leaks.

I owe the gubmint a total of $900 because my employer screwed up my withholding (didn’t withhold, actually). The contractor who was supposed to bury the wire in the backyard 18”deep underground actually buried it 1”. The backhoe operator from another company discovered it when he was prepping the area for a pole barn foundation. I got Voip (telephone over the internet); now the Internet “goes out” frequently, something like 33 times since April, taking my phone with it. (These are only the ones I remembered to record.)

After 55 years of frustration, I am a grumpy old man. I could go on & on about it, but it would take another 55 years to explain it. Now, I have diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic pain and several other disorders, plus operations on my back, both knees, & wrist. When I was a lad, I was led to believe that no matter what was wrong with you, doctors could fix it. Now, I find out that it is a miracle if they can fix anything.

There are older people who are not cranky, grumpy & permanently pissed off. The only explanation I have for that is that they must be brain dead.

By no means am I old, hell if I was 80 I still would not be old. But the kids today are soft, my wife wanted to get a bike helmet for our oldest when she started to ride a bike, I was lucky if my bike had brakes and a seat!
Kids now days get a scratch that you need a spoting scope to see and they think the world is ending, the ambulance should be called and rush them to a trama center when I was a kid I was lucky to get a band-aid for a severed limb or finger(came real close a couple of times on the finger)
My 10 year old thinks she needs a cell phone! so she can talk to her friends, I told her try not haveing a phone as a kid, even better try being a teenager and haveing to walk almost a mile to your uncle's house so you can try and get a date.
And seat belt laws? where were they when we were kids? my folks always had old cars that had the good old metal dash you could just wipe the blood of of when they slamed on the brakes and you bounced your head off of it.Then they would get on you for getting blood on the dash becouse you were not sitting in the seat.
As for cranky, I know why men get cranky as we get older.
It's the getting up before the crack of dawn six days a week to go to a job that you dont like to put food on the table, making sure that everyone has all that they need for school,band and any other activety that they do and you pay through the nose for. And do we ever get a thanks dad? or a thanks honey? nope not a one. I would call my Dad now and tell him thanks for all he did and all he gave up for us kids, but he is cranky and would kick my backside if I was to call this late.

i love these replys! hilarious! funny, i remember when learning to ride a bike meant at least one good blotch of skin coming off. my first experience learing how to ride a bike? peddling as fast as i could thinking my dad was still holding on to the seat, then looking back seeing he was about 100 feet back, and then somehow flipping over the handlebars. ahh, good times. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I'm not even that old yet (compared to geological formations) but I understand why the older generation is that way, I'm starting to become that way myself. They definitely are getting crankier, but for good reason. I think the younger people today are getting dumber. There's a lot of truth in all these funny replys. Things have been getting easier and easier for kids, to the point that they're almost not able to think for themselves anymore.

[start rant]
when i was a kid, there were no computers everywhere. When you went to the library and wanted a book, you looked it up in the card catalog. There was no browsing by keywords, if you didn't know the title or author, tough luck. It was all done by the Dewey decimal system. If someone else was looking at the drawer you needed, you had to wait. And if somebody was lazy enough to rip out the card rather than right down the number, you were screwed! Cuz there was no way in hell you were gonna find it now.

We didn't have remote controls growing up, when you wanted the channel surf, you stood right beside the TV changing channels. Fortunately, there were only 7 channels. There was no TIVO, Netflix, or even VHS. If you weren't around to watch your show, you didn't see it until it came back on reruns. No fast-forwarding the commercials either, you sat through them and got brainwashed. And how many kids nowadays have ever had to fiddle with rabbit ears or that damn dial around the channel changer while watching their favorite show? Sometimes you just listened to your show while watching a fuzzy white screen.

Don't even get me started on the 10 year olds with cell phones and computers. I still have my rotary phone, no such thing as push buttons back then. If you didn't have the skill to spin the dial around all the way on the first try, you had to hang up and dial the whole number again. Those phones had actual hooks too! So when you say you left the phone off the hook, it really meant something.

[end rant]

The funniest part about that first letter above is the part about video games. It's true, every video game back then ended the same way. You died. There was no end, there's no cool story or special treat for finishing. The game just got harder and harder, until you were killed. The best you could hope for was getting a high score, which you then got to brag about by putting your initials in. I don't know if that's a sign of the times, not wanting to hurt childrens egos by having them experience failure. Guess what, people are gonna fail, whether you protect them from it or not. I just can't stand some of these new laws and restrictions that are trying to isolate children from failure. It's a part of life, deal with it. this whole thing reminds me of a quote from John Wayne. "Life is tough, but it's tougher when your stupid."

Anyway, to get back to the original subject, yeah, there are a lot of cranky old people out there. But even more annoying is the arrogant young people out there who think they know it all because they read it on the internet. The interenet is full of pimply faced 16 year olds debating over which is the best car, when most of the most of them can't even drive yet and have never gotten behind the wheel. Same thing goes for just about every other subject. The net allows everyone to exchange information much easier than before, but the actual information is pretty much the same. So just because these kids are able to surf for info better than anyone else, doesn't mean they know more about it than some of these older guys. In fact, in almost every forum out there, the most prolific posters probably aren't the ones that know the most, they just spend most of their time on the computer regurgitating facts. Because the guys with the real knowledge aren't the ones sitting in front of a computer typing.

Of course they do. There is no point in living long enough to be a GOM (Grumpy Old Man) or a GOG (Grumpy Old Git) unless you can do it properly. Young people want to live to be old. Not disposed of young because someone didn't like their tone of voice. Once you become a CD (Coffin Dodger aka anyone over 50, aaahem, sorry......60.) there is nothing that they can do to you that isn't going to happen anyway.

Coffin Dodger. I saw that for the first time on the acronym list the other day. I still laugh when I read it. Ah.... the British. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I guess I qualify as old, as a kid I used to sit before a radio (TV, what was that???) half the size of Miami, with only two knobs, and listen to The Whistle and The Shadow, getting the bejeezes scared out of me. So I guess I could/should be rude, cranky and crabby, but the older I get the less I am able to stop some youngster from kicking my butt. So I try to be nice and friendly to everyone...

NO, WE DO NOT!!!!!! AND JUST WHO THE HECK ARE YOU TO ASK?!?!?!? HUH?!?!?

You young upstarts have it sooo easy today. Why, when I was a young boy, we only had ONE, yes one, McDonald's in town. And it only had ONE window at the drive up. And they didn't take any credit cards, oh no sir! Cash only. And they only had TWO sizes of fries.

And we didn't have this internet thing. We had to talk to other people FACE TO FACE, or on the telephone. None of this Forums or Chat Rooms. And we didn't have all this porn on demand. All we had was a Sears and Robuck catelog and our imagination! We had to think, son!

And phones had round dials, back in the day. None of this Space Age push-button thing. Boy, our fingers were strong back then! And when you dialed long distance, it really ment something. I think it cost my dad a month's wages just to call Baton Rouge. For five minutes.

We saw Velcro as a wonder - a sign that the New Frontier had arrived. We watched rocket launches - live - on all THREE TV channels we could get. When I was a boy, we thought the greatest cultural phenomenon that would change the age was.......... pet rocks. When I was 12, a digital calculator cost more than Doug's Ritter's car.

So cut us old-timers some slack, will 'ya? If I want to get cranky, I got reason. You will understand once you realize what your future holds - that you will be taken care of by the folowing generation, who will see you as merely rude and cranky in old age.

(wink, wink) <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

.....CLIFF
(like, who else?)

You had one MacDonalds actually in your town? We had a Carroll's, the predecessor to Burger King & it was 20 miles away. When I was in college, the computer (the school had only one) was a collection of boxes the size of refrigerators. Your computer "homework" was a stack of punched cards. In the math bldg. they had a calculator for the students use. It had a modern calculator type keyboard & display, but was attached to a processing unit the size of a loaf of bread. All it would do is regular arithmetic & sq rts. On my first job, we had to use a mechanical calculating machine that had buttons you pressed to input your data, then you turned the crank, and after much clunking, you read the answer on little metal wheels with numbers printed on them. It didn't do decimal places, so you had to figure out where the decimal point went. BTW, gas was 30 cents / gallon

Had to drive approx. 23 miles to go to McDonald's. Gas was 33 cents per gallon. Then we thought the TI digital calculator we got Dad for Christmas was really something! -- only half the size and weight of a brick and only $50. It didn't even do square roots either, but did keep a decimal point. He probably still has it. Would make a good paper weight.

I got to listen to those on the radio as reruns on public radio when I was little. Now that was talent- no wires, no visual effects department, and no hiding behind a pretty face. Pure storytelling! That's what kids these days need, to be told stories, rather than being shown a bunch of airbrushed hacks babbling lines they don't even understand.

*grumbling*

Going to your uncle's... to get a date..... Uhmmmmm....

I wouldn't admit that if I was you, Lance. *passes Lance a banjo*

NO! WE DO NOT GET CRANKY AND RUDE!!!

Now about your post...


Your said "cranky, rude". It should have been "cranky and rude". You young moron.
Now what kind of fool would say that? We're not "dam" rude, we're "damn" rude! Sheesh!

Now you got me so worked up I just piddled myself, and I'm out of Depends. Life sucks!


<img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I think I have a reason why some of us are cranky, and Cliff pointed it out. Look at the calander.

How many of us remember that by the year 2000, we would have:
flying cars
commercial space travel
SSTs
space colonies (orbital and Lunar)
pioneer bases on Mars and the start of asteroid mining
fusion power
no more dependence on hydrocarbons
cybernetic implants, both theraputic and enhancing
cure for cancer
a culture where your merit, your achievement is rewarded
an end to famine
an end to war
an end to poverty
an end to discrimination
an end to stupidity

Lets face, we were lied to our entire childhood. But those were dreams, they were things to work for. OK, so maybe we didn't succeed, but we've tried and we're still trying.

And now were are surrounded by kids who don't even have dreams beyond being the next pop/porn star. Half the current generation thinks that a credit card with a 19% interest rate is a good deal, becuase they can't think! Those that can have spent thier lives having thier souls and imagination crushed by an education system that has turned into theraputic therapy for morons. No one wants peace to have peace- they are scared of a draft and of having a low number. They don't care about people starving, or getting sick, so long as it isn't them. They don't care about anything but thier own security and comfort. They not only don't care that they might not have a brave new world- they don't WANT one!

I applaud the teachers, and the scout leaders, and the coaches that try to teach these little *censored* think. I dont blame them. I blame the safety-firsters and every parent who thinks that thier kid is going to grow up to be a rocket scientist, despite having an IQ that is barely room tempurature. I blame the people who can't be bothered to potty train thier little geniuses, much less teach them thier last name, before they go to kindergarten. I blame the people who never read to thier kids, who never bought them blocks, but gave the little punks thier own TVs with ALL the cable channels at age 10. I blame the people who think that worshiping mediocrity is a good thing- what the hell are they smoking?!

And yes, there are days where I take out a sheet that I painted a bullseye on, and stretch it out on the lawn. And sit next to it, with classic music or opera playing, a big bottle of tea made with loose leaves and real lemon and honey, reading a good book, and every so often looking up and taunting the asteroids. I know one is out there, it's waiting, just for us, but the bloody coward just won't come down here and show us what it's made of.

Ironraven, you're exactly right! Space 1999! It never came true! Dang! I even had the toy ray gun! It still bothers me from time to time!

I'd settle for fusion.

Ah... so many truths. It all boils down to personal responsibility. I don't want to lump all the youngin's in one group. I'm sure there are good ones out there. But there are so many idiots looking to have everything handed to them, it makes the weight of the world crush your optimism. I think that's the source of the gumpiness. Crushing and overwelming realization that our hopes are either dead or dying. <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

I kinda figured that our kids would know they were being excluded from that rant.

And your father said that about you, and his father said that about him, and his father's father said that about.......

I OBJECT!

So you think only the old GUYS get rude and cranky? What do you think the women have been doing all these years? We have a right to be rude and cranky, too!

For all you people who remember when John Glenn went into space: Can you imagine how awful it would be if we got the chance to be a kid again starting today, but were still able to remember our original childhood? Look at the comparison... there IS no comparison!

I knew how to read, tell time and knew my numbers up to 20 when I started kindergarten. Every year, I got my new school books, read them from cover to cover right away, then spent the rest of the year bored out of my mind. The kids today don't know how to read, unless their parents actually took the time to teach them, and what are the chances of that? The schools aren't capable of teaching them to read, they're just prison wardens for twelve years. The kids don't know much more by the time they leave school than when they first entered it.

Remember when the only time we were indoors was when we were sick? We roamed for miles, visited friends from school, made up games with cardboard boxes, tree branches and wagons. Today's kids don't know how to do anything unless electricity or batteries are involved, not to mention a lot of money.

There was one main rule at home: be home in time for dinner. We never heard the term "child molester", and we sure didn't need a mean German Shepherd or a sitter with a shotgun to keep us safe. If we climbed into the flood control channel so we could slide down the sandy slope on cardboard and a hobo was coming along, one of the teenage boys from down the street would jump the fence and remind us not to talk to strangers, and hang around until the hobo was out of sight. The kids today can be taken right out of their own bedrooms. Whose fault is that?

My father bought a new television with an 11" screen, and the neighbors all came over to see it. When things really got modern and the remote control was invented, we had to take the collar off the dog because his rattling tags kept changing the channels. The kids today can't figure out how to get into their bright red, parent-provided, brand-new sports car if the battery dies in their electronic door opener.

We actually had to figure out the answer to some problems on our own. If the badminton bird flew up to the roof, Donna would have to bring the wooden stepladder from next door, I would find the 4-prong garden "claw", and Julie would hold the ladder while I climbed up and scraped it off the roof. Getting a baseball out of the drain was trickier. A kid on my street couldn't figure out how to get a frisbee out of a tree with a stick, two feet over his head.

If we smart-mouthed an adult, it was okay for them to knock our head off. They would be backed up by our parents who told us that it was our fault. Today, the kids physically attack someone, and their parents sue their victim for existing.

If we found a wallet or purse or folded money with a grocery list paperclipped to it, we turned it in to the most likely person to know who it belonged to. Most of the kids around here just steal what they want -- from strangers or friends.

We had to work for money. It was just a fact of life. Who was going to give us money for nothing? Nobody. Today's kid expect everything t be handed to them even before they know they want it. Some don't mind having a job, as long as it isn't too hard, they don't have to think, and if La Parent provides the car and the gas money (they never think of insurance).

Drugs were aspirin and castor oil. Now the kids know all the names of all the recreational drugs, and who is selling them.

I think we're nasty because we know there's no hope. The eight-year-old little #@%$& next door is never going to improve, and neither will his parents. The kids can't spell cat, but want their own credit card. The only reason kids manage to learn their numbers is so they can dial their cell phone. You can ask them a question, and they haven't got a clue to the answer, because they can't think.

And no, it's not all kids. The homeschooled ones are much better.

I feel sorry for today's kids. I wouldn't wish today on any of them. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Sue

Don't worry Susan, women aren't excluded. My wife sure is rude and cranky! Sheesh.

I just want to say two things:

One, I grew up in a matriarchy. "Guys", when used by males, is generally a short hand for "everyone". And that is a short coming of ours, perhaps.

Two, not all homeschooled kids are better off. I've seen too many of them that can quote whatever religous tract they memorized, but they can't read anything other than that, can't do math, and literally throw things and spit at anyone who isn't part of thier religion. This isn't in the middle east, this in Vermont and New Hampshire!

I second yer second point. There are too many irresponsible parents who "homeschool" their children. I have seen some keep their children at home for other purposes instead: to work them, to fulfill a selfish agenda. The kid is the one who suffers.

Case in point: A mother I know of homeschooled her kids. The younger daughter had a learning disability. The older son did become an Eagle Scout via him and his father being involved (his dad brought home the bacon, mom stayed at home). But, at 21 years of age, he still lives at home without a G.E.D. Seems like mom did a great job homeschooling him, huh? Dad should have done something. He's a genius of a kid, too, that's the sad thing. He could almost be thru with college by now, that's what he really wanted.

I have only seen the bad side of homeschooling, I am trying not to be biased and know it has its merits.

I've seen the good, the bad, and the indifferent. And the flat out ugly.

The worst of the bad I ever saw was a couple who had significant *coughs* "cognitive challenges". They homeschooled thier kids, but decided to send them to the highschool I went to. I'll be blunt- the parents were clinical morons, and the kid shouldn't have been trusted with anything dangerous unless closely monitored. They figured he was going to be a brain surgeon or something, so they raised hell with the school when the formal tests showed he was less than average. Good football player, though.

The good, that's easy- one parent is literally a rocket scientist (retired becuase he didn't want to work on ICBMs), the other is poet and painter. Thier kids... wow, I rarely feel dumb around anyone.

And everything in between. The vast majority of it is indifferent, becuase there REALLY is an art to teaching, and most people (including a lot of teachers, sadly) don't have it.

The real problem with homeschooling, and this is not aimed at anyone, is how well schooled are the parents? And I don't mean just what courses you took, but did you understand it well enough to teach it? I really think that home schoolers should go to a high school with other kids, and not just for socialization reasons. I mean, how many of us remember how to work a square root (or a cube, or 4th, or nth) without useing a calculator or tables? Or know a second language well enough to teach it (this one only counts for Americans)? Or remember what a dangling participle is?

Then again, I buy used text books on ebay and albris and in yard sales becuase they are good reading, and still use a sliderule and tables. *shrugs* I might not be the best judge of normal.

I think the thread is evolving, much like life.

I truly feel that as a parent, I want to impart good values and the process of learning. Then whatever my kids learn at school or at home or wherever can be put to use in this process. And hopefully, my kids will gain some knowledge out of information.

My goal for my girls is for them to have their own businesses by the time they are done with high school. I don't care if the businesses suceed or fail, only that they try. I am hoping that they will learn the process of being a business owner through their efforts. Then if they want to, they can gradually take over my business. And if they don't, they will have the experience and knowledge to do their own.

"... how well schooled are the parents?"

Religious zealots aside (nothing is going to change them, in public school or outside of it), I really believe that any parent who really wants to educate their kids can do it if they care enough to put some effort into it. There are guidelines and sources of assistance.

I live in the Stupid Capital of America, and the homeschooled kids I've met around here are far superior to the others (of course, anything would be). One reason is that most parents just don't seem to care about their kids --- what would you call it if their kid is 12 before they realize that he can't read?

But the schools care even less. Their priority is control and getting money. Sure, they were all behind the No Child Left Behind, because it meant more money. If you really want to know what goes on in American public schools, check out Linda Schrock's essays at http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor-arch.html
Ms. Schrock is a long-time schoolteacher and doesn't pull any punches on the nightmare of public education. She's from a different part of the country than I am, but I recognized the agenda right away. Take a peek and raise your blood pressure.

Most of the homeschooled kids around here have their own small businesses, lawnmowing, chickens/eggs, vegetable garden & stand, etc. And their lemonade tastes better, too.

Sue

Well, I've known a lot of teachers. A lot of them are there becuase it's a job, but most of them really want to teach. They don't care about power. They care about three things- being allowed to teach with political hurdles, getting the parents involved and about the kids. I don't know of a single teacher who was behind No Child Left Behind. They all knew that was going to be the death knell for public education when it was proposed.

The people you are thinking of are the people who force teachers to have certain things in their curriculum (or not to have it), or they get fired/unfunded.

The biggest problem is that to be a teacher, you need to be certified after a long period of academic and hands on education. To be the people who actually decide what get's taught and how much money goes where, you don't have to be a teacher- instead, they are usually CPAs and the like. If you have a school board that is elected, the board members don't even have to have graduated high school (like in my home town) and are answerable to no one other than the clowns who elected them in the first place.

It would be like having the people who design and build a bridge be at the mercy of someone who thinks that wood can be substitued for steel and portland cement for proper concrete, and has the power to force the bridge to be built that way. Anyone who protests s fired, and that is repeated until there is no one left but those who nod and go along, and die hards who are going to make the best bridge out of what they have.

And the worst part is the parents. I agree with you completely that if the parents don't care, it doesn't matter what kind of education the kid gets. I'll agree, I've known a lot of homeschooled kids that were top end people. And as I said, I've seen a lot that weren't. I'm not saying that home schooling doesn't work, I'm saying that if the parents don't have a clue, there's problems. Lots of them.

As for the theological component, that is still the #1 reason why kids are homeschooled in this country. Our own fundamentalists can't be ignored.

As far a lemonaid tasting better, I'd rather have limeaid. :P

I have close relationships with several teachers and I'd say you pretty much nailed it. It's the same in TX.