watch out for the dumbing down of others

I get to swing from my place on the Ventura/Los Angeles County line late yesterday over to the 5 freeway and north above Edwards AFB to pick up my marooned nephew. I'm already tired and it's raining.And it seems my nephew let his insurance lapse by missing a payment and my insurance doesn't cover undesignated drivers. Lovely, So we head out and I have a hot coffee in the center console, the window cracked open to keep fresh air in my face and the radio firmly turned off over his protests. And I'm pushing a fast double nickle in the slow lane being passed by lots of high beams and chinese good luck signs out the windows. We come to a stretch of the freeway with an overpass that is for all practical purposes a tunnel.And my mental map reminds me this has always been a nasty stretch in a brutal drive. And I can feel the onset of pilot's TUC and tell my nephew I'm pulling over to rest. And he objects since we are so close to the amenities of the Valley and I almost kept driving. But something said PULL OVER NOW. I did, as best I could with my hazards on when this banging sound of multiple crashes followed by a huge fireball blew back out of the tunnel ahead. We wound up sleeping for 6 hours AFTER we finally got rerouted back north. I pulled of at a rest stop. My nephew objected. " I can't sleep like this! I said "The experienced Coast Guardsman can sleep anyw...ZZZZZ." 15 trucks and cars piled up with two known dead so far. I told my nephew he could walk until his insurance is reinstated.

Glad you and nephew are ok.

Your experience makes several good points. One reflects my own experience. When that odd little voice is telling you to do or not do something, listen!

It is impossible to tell how many bad things I have avoided by listening to that voice, but every time I ignored it, I ended up wishing I hadn't.

Strange but true. Survival instinct....?

Interesting, I never take the truck route tunnel, staying up top in the air. That looked like a good place to not be. Glad you're still with us.

Wow! You live a life of danger, Chris.

I wish the voice in my head was as helpful as yours. It's always saying things like "Go ahead Charlie, DW won't mind.", "Light the fuse, Charlie. You'll have time to run to safety." or "Hey Charlie, try giving the cat a fleabath."

What's really annoying is my name is Mark.

-Blast

I travel back and forth between PA and NJ every few weekends (about 250 miles). I've done the trip so many times now that I can run it straight threw no problem, but I've often gotten the feeling to stop at the rest stop for a few minutes to take a little break. A few times I swear it has saved me, because I ended up being right behind an accident, major snow storm, ect. Really makes you wonder if we do have some sort of a sixth sense or have someone looking out for us up above.

Three dead in the final count, one a child.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/10/14/tunnel.fire.ap/index.html

This was just a regular day. Can you imagine it under evacuation conditions?

I was letting the car warm up a bit while yawning one morning some years ago (Silicon Valley, CA), and I literally heard a voice in my head that said "Watch out for the bicycle!"

I've had "feelings" before, but never something as strong as that. It was spooky. So I headed the nine miles to work, got off the freeway, and saw a guy on a bicycle ahead of me.

Nah! But my foot moved from the gas to just barely touch the brake, to know it was right there.

A delivery truck just ahead of the cyclist turned right and his handtruck flew off from where the blade was tucked under the door, right at the cyclist. Cyclist jumped right, toward the sidewalk, landing with bike and both legs in my (right) lane.

Solid traffic on my left, no time to climb the curb with all four wheels. I stopped with my left front tire on the back wheel of the bike, about a foot from the guy's legs.

I guess not all voices are bad. Well, maybe Blast's....

Sue

Please tell me that you didn't pull over and nap on the shoulder of the freeway! In addition to being illegal, over the years I worked over 30 fatal accidents where a vehicle stopped on the shoulder of I-5 got run over by another sleepy driver (usually a big rig). Hopefully you took the Calgrove off ramp and napped somewhere down on the Old Road...

I hate it when the voices in my head confuse me with someone else.

Glad to see someone elses medications not working right either.

Speaking of medication, Blast. How's the battle wound from the cat?

OBG, has it become pretty standardized now that highway patrol approaches vehicles from the passenger side? Over the past couple years I've noticed east coast highway patrols no longer seem to go to the drivers side of the vehicle, instead going to the passenger side (even when they place their car far enough to the left to help block from getting hit). It's not just one or two states though, it seems like it's all over. I was just wondering since I've been spending a lot of time on the highway lately and it has caught my attention.

All I can speak for is CA, and my recent observations in WY. The CHP went to the right side approach probably 15-20 years ago (altho some dummies still walk up on the drivers side). They did that because we were having so many officers picked off by passing traffic while standing at the drivers door. In years past I have actually had my butt brushed by a passing car doing about 75. That might have something to do with my grey hair falling out. In WY I have seen officers do nothing but left side approaches, then go back to sit in their vehicle to take care of the paperwork. Not a good place to be sitting when someone rear ends your patrol vehicle. Not to mention your delayed response when the bad guys you are writing a ticket to decided to jump out and blow you away...

About four days after I went off the antibiotics a 3/4" strip of dead flesh came off my finger, but the skin underneath was a healthy pink. It seems the only long-term effect will be a scar that looks like someone put a cigarette out on my finger and I won't be able to afford a new canoe for a while.

To try and steer this back nearer to the original topic, here in Texas a law was passed stating you have to slow down 20mph under the posted speed limit if you are in a lane passing a cop or emergency worker parked on the side of the road. That being said, a motorcycle cop was picked off by a passing motorist the day after my buddy got shot. Houston is hard on cops.

-Blast

OBG I got off onto the old road asap. In fact, history repeats itself! My grandfather used to point out a tree where gypsies parked their horsedrawn wagons because it was safe there from observation, wind and wild animals during the Depression. We woke up parked under that still surviving old tree!

Good man! Having worked in the Newhall area for almost five years, the stories I could tell you...

Stories? I was out on the 5 when the Newhall quake hit.We were on a then popular C.B. radio t-hunt. Watching the freeway literally rippling like a shook blanket and bouncing my '66 Chrysler 300 ( rebuilt CHP H.D. suspension, twin magnum headers and mild spyder manifold on a 383 ) and then simply falling down ahead of us gave this then 16 y/o driver a good dose of religon. Instead of new rims ( those big Chryslers always popped the hubcaps off,) I bought a fire extinguisher,flashlight, blanket ( my mother thinking I had romantic uses for it)and a first aid kit.

"...blanket ( my mother thinking I had romantic uses for it)..."

Good ole Chris: even in the early formative years, recognizing multi-purpose when he sees it!

Sue

"But mom! I need the condoms to store fresh water in...seriously!"

When I was that age I used to carry a blanket in my car too, and with raging hormones, EVERY thougth I had re that blanket were romantic...

That little voice in my head is why I have 80 years mileage on a 49 year old body!!!

At that age: blanket, hood of truck, bed of truck, door of truck, steering wheel of truck, bumper of truck, gun rack, any flat/semi-flat/not flat-at-all surface,... were sources of romantic thoughts when combined with the thought of the right young lady (i.e. any one that would talk to me).

Oh the opportunities I could've had if only I had be socially competant (sp?) ... and could spell.

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto (1992).

Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add by Charles J. Sykes (1995)

Dumbing Down: Essays on the Strip Mining of American Culture By Katharine Washburn, John F. Thornton, John Ivan Simon (1996)

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt (former Senior Policy Advisor in the US Department of Education) (1999)

The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem by Maureen Stout (2001)

If you read the original, you will remember your own compulsory public school education and keep saying to yourself, "Yes, that's right! That's the way it was! That's what they did!"

Sue

Are you me???

So sad, so true. Luckily, I'm a teacher at a college-prep high school, and there still is a lot of real-life common sense among the faculty.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know that the product of the US educational system i.e dumb Americans, were the result of a most monstrously conceived and dangerous international PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER./Soviet conspiracy to impurify the minds of American children. Gosh you learn something new everyday. The less educational pyschologists around the better in my view. Most psychologists I know have serious psychiatric problems. They just love their Skinner Boxes to much and harbour unhealthy thoughts about wanting to put everyone in one whilst in charge of the levers while wearing their white lab coats. These people created politcal correctness, the assassin of common sense. The author I suspect is one of these folks despite her protestations to be diametrically opposed.

BTW is Geography taught in schools in the US.

Hi BrianTexas,

I'm afraid I don't know to much about the levels of educational achievement within the US schooling system and the issues surrounding some perceived crisis within that system. Is there really a crisis in attainment levels or is this just nonsense put forward by some for nefarious ends.

I came across a term called New Math. Hmm New Math I thought, I was intrigued and delved a little deeper and came across this,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI

College students can't multiple 6 times 4 without a calculator!!

Is this true or just hype? I'm having a hard time believing this.

"BTW is Geography taught in schools in the US."

No, not really. Point to a few unlabeled states on a map of the U.S., and ask ten kids what they are. Then ask where France, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Kenya or India are.

They can't even really teach the kids to read, so how can they be teaching geography, history, or anything else?

The educational system in the U.S. ranks about 28th in the nations in the world. I thought there were only about 19 industrialized countries. Parents scream at the annual test score results, so they lower the requirements. That's the American solution.

Dr. Barbara Bateman of the U. of Oregon: "Near failure-proof methods for teaching all children to read are already available. Continued failure of schools to employ these programs is at best negligent and at worst malicious."

According to Rudolf Flesch, who wrote Why Johnny Can't Read, and much later, Why Johnny STILL Can’t Read, the following are the ten favorite alibis used by educators on why children in their schools can’t read:

1) Everything is Fine means that all the statistics on illiteracy & declining reading achievement are nothing but propaganda.

2) We Do Teach Phonics means they offer a window-dressing token form of phonics, saying that they use all methods combined. Most of them have never seen a good phonics book.

3) No One Method Is Best means that the phonics method, based on common sense & scientific research, won’t work, but look-&-say will.

4) English isn’t Phonetic means just because English is 97.4% phonetic, phonics won’t work.

5) Word Calling Isn’t Reading means just because a child can read a word doesn’t mean he knows what it means. And it’s true that just because he can read the word 'catastrophe' off a page, he probably won’t know what it means. But a look-&-say child won’t be able to read the word at all.

6) Your Child Isn’t Ready means if the look-&-say child can’t read yet, he may be ready by the time he’s twelve.

7) Your Child Is Disabled means that thousands of children from look-&-say classes have been incorrectly diagnosed as dyslexic, brain-damaged, learning disabled, etc. Taught with phonics, the “disability” disappears.

8) It’s the Parents’ Fault is never said out loud, but the meaning is unmistakable. Indifference, abuse, neglect, conflict all causes children not to be able to read.

9) Too Much TV is a handy scapegoat. Of course, since they’re not taught beyond the 1,500 words they’re taught at school, they can’t read anyway.

10) We Now Teach ALL Children means that some children, the dregs of society, aren’t capable of receiving an education; as “many of them have innumerable combinations of genetic factors and experiential backgrounds”. That word genetic is always racist. They’re poor, black, Chicano—the children of lowborn riffraff who are too dumb to learn how to read.

Question: do you think it's easier to control a population that is educated or not educated?

Americans tend not to think much of France, but any child there can read from any book by the time he's six years old. France says our educational system is 'mediocre'. Yes, it is.

We also have the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world, and the ones who don't die within 24 hrs of birth have an unusually high death rate due to accidents and injuries.

Sue

"...Then ask where France, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Kenya or India are..."

If you are from my generation, and want to feel really left out, ask a kid today to tell you ANYTHING about Vietnam...

OBG--or WW one or two..when Ken Burns was doing a preview
of the War program and said kids comming out of high school
thought it was the US and Germany V.S. the USSR i just thru
up may hands and turned off the "Boob Tube"--

Or, we watched Jay Leno one night, and he was at the back of the stand, where folks just graduating from one of the Souther Cal Universities were coming down right after receiving their sheepskins. He asked one graduate how many moons the earth has, and, after a long pause, she replied "...oh, it has been so long since I had that class".

That my friend, is the future of our nation...

OBG, I've hit that Vietnam wall several times already.

"That my friend, is the future of our nation... "

Yes, but is that dumb enough, or do we keep going downward???

"... the glory that was Rome is of another day..."

I'm afraid our glory days are past, too.

I'm not sure it's still true ....

Unfortunately, being somewhat a younging I was in-between the "old" math and the "new math." We still learned most of the old stuff, but they tried to introduce other methods and procedures. To this day I think it did me more harm than good. I had problems learning the basic fourth/fifth grade math, and now I have problems with advanced material. (for the life of me I couldn't do high school algebra, even when being tutored by two people).

Now I often end up helping my 12 year old brother with his school work (everything other than math at least ). The kid is twelve years old and he can't write his name in script. While talking to him about it, I learned script is no longer taught in schools. If script is gone, what else is missing?

The more I sit back and look at what he is learning the more I think our educational system needs a full revamp. They spend a lot of time trying to learn concepts without having a firm grasp of the basics.

I recall taking a test as a freshman in high school and having the results tell me I was at the same level academically as a freshman in college. Then I took a similar test as a sophomore with similar results. After that, I wondered why I would need to go to college if I was learning the same thing now as I would be there.

Later on, I found out my conclusion was spot on. My first two (and only) years as a college student were little more than review of the same stuff I was doing in high school. I think maybe the last quarter of my 2nd year on an Associate's degree was to start into the actual "degree specific" content. Too bad the school abolished my degree right before that quarter started.

I've since discovered that most of the college grad engineers, accountants, and business managers learned very little about how to actually do their job while in school, and got most of their education on the job, just like I have. That is, if they are worth a darn.

I never could stomach all those required liberal arts classes I had to waste my time and money on either. If I want to study Shakespeare, I will do it when I have spare time and nothing else of any interest going on in my life, not when I am scrambling to get through a program so I can get a job.

It all comes down to parenting--or lack of it. A large segment of our society has bought into the European notion that the government should be raising the kids rather than the parents. Another large segment simply doesn't care what happens to their kids as long as they can score some crack or meth. There is a definate gap between kids whose parents care enough--or are capable enough--to be active in their education, and those who do not.

And that's why I don't buy into the doom and gloom visions of the future. We still have parents who care about their kids enough to get involved. You won't hear as much about those kids because they don't end up on Leno, but there are still plenty of them around.

Since I'm a private school teacher, I'm not qualified to discuss the public school system in detail. However, what I've found in education is that there is a fascination with being "bleeding edge" as opposed to "leading edge" when it comes to educational teaching methods. Many so called 'new' ideas are just rehashed old ideas that went out of favor.

Their really is a crisis in education. I've seen it with the declining skill sets (with inversely related 'self-esteem')
of people I had to hire.

The business world simply doesn't tolerate too much of this nonsense, especially if a company's existence is in question. The Darwinian process of weeding out weaklings helps keep it in check. However, in education, I've seen more consultants in 7 years than with nearly 20 in the corporate world.

That being said, most teachers and administrators are honorable, decent, hard-working people who can only do so many miracles when absentee parents bring their spoiled and lazy children to the school.

I'm afraid you are right. Sigh.

I'd say our Glory Days were back in the Age of Reason. Since then we seem to have only gone downhill in general. As we've progressed technologically, we've regressed intellectually, on average. I think this can be largely blamed on two things: 1. the strive towards political correctness, and 2. the fact that our technology now does most of the thinking for us. Why learn math when a computer can work the whole equation for you in the time it takes for you to read the problem? Why learn proper English when chatspeak is becoming the dominant form of communication?

Can you provide a link to that segment? It's not that i doubt your word, but I just CANNOT believe that anyone who's managed to graduate from high school wouldn't know how many moons are orbiting around the planet on which they live. She must have been putting him on.

"She must have been putting him on."

Sorry, no, it's not hype and it's not propaganda.

As a group...
They don't know which states surround their own.
If you gave them a list of the Revolutionary War, the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, they couldn't put them in chronological order, or even tell you what any of them were about.
They have no idea what a Periodic Table is.
They can't really tell the difference between 'receipt', 'recipe' and 'receive'.
They can't compose a grammatically correct sentence.
They don't know what a gross is, or how many cubic feet are in a cubic yard.
They don't know how to address an envelope.
They don't know how to balance a simple checkbook.
Even given all the information, they can't figure out a relatively real-life problem in logistics.

OF COURSE, their parents are partly to blame: THEY were brought up by the SAME school system! What would you expect?

I think it happened in Israel, where the schools copied the American way of education. A year or two later, the parents were screaming in rage, and insisted they go back to methods that work. Do you see the parents here complaining very much?

I heard that private schools are are quietly hiring more and more homeschooled instructors, because the system-educated ones are ignorant and inept.

Sue

Sue,
Now you don't seem from your postings to be a person who would speak in generalties or resort to stereotypes. So I assume you weren't speaking of all kids and teachers from our public schools. Having been married to a wonderful primary school teacher for 35 years and having two daughters that are products of public schools (one was a Jeopardy champion this past spring, the other cum laude grad of a liberal east coast college who's caught salmon in Alaska and who has provided bear protection for her FS colleagues) who know pefectly well all those things you listed. While there are problems in our schools (caused in my mind by the onerous administrative demands put on classroom teacher among other things) many schools do work very well. For every self-absorbed, ditzy SoCal social butterfly there are far more kids who are smart, tough, and involved. Just look at the kids serving in our military.

What Jay doesn't show are all the kids who looked at him like he's crazy for asking such a juvenile question.

Relax people, the next couple of generations are going to be no better and no worse than we boomers are/were at solving the problems of the world.

Andy

PS, how did it go with the roof repairs?

Sorry, no linc that I know of. We saw it at least a couple of years ago. You might go to his website, it is probably under "JayWalking," which is a hoot in itself. Imagine him being on Melrose Blvd in L.A., asking a good ole, born in the USA type what country borders the US on the north, and getting a blank stare as a response. Or showing a picture of an elephant to someone, and they call it a horse. I kid you not...

You HAVE been in California, haven't you???

Same with me. I struggled thru high school (goofed off is probably a better term), went into the service for three years, eleven months, and twenty three days (but who was counting), got out, went to a J.C. on the GI Bill, and pretty much maxed out all of the required courses, and a few electives. All on what I had learned in high school. What is wrong with that picture???

As far as I've seen, the kids who are educated are the products of parents who care, and who taught them things at home, maybe without even realizing it. Then, when they went to school, they used what they knew to learn more.

But most kids.... no.

The purpose of schools is not to teach facts, but to teach learning methods so the kids can continue learning for the rest of their lives. But if they can't read...

It's been proven that our schools are garbage, and the teaching methods are garbage. But has anything changed in the last 50 years? No.

And I don't care how good a teacher is, he and she are limited by what the schools insist they do.

Got some time? Read what teacher/counselor Linda Schrock Taylor says about schools: http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor-arch.html. She's a teacher, but homeschooled her son. What does that tell you?

Sue

"...She's a teacher, but homeschooled her son. What does that tell you?..."

Scares the crap outta me!!!

Teachers get first hand experience at how messed up the public education system is.
Even when I was in school they didn't teach anything, it was a simple memorization of the "facts" at that time. I've noticed that even with a couple years difference between my wife and mine education the number of differences in the history books as facts are changed to match the authors views of the event and the teachers are required to teach it even if they know it was wrong.
There were times when I took my own books to school and read them in class when the teachers wouldn't teach, the ones that would take us down to the gym so they could spend time with their sports team getting them ready for the big game while their class had a study hall.

You've sure got that right. DW teaches in the New York City schools. When kids don't do their homework, she calls the parents. More often than not, the answer is, "nothing I can do about it, you people are supposed to be teaching them." At her last parent-teacher night, ONE parent showed up, out of five classes of 20 to 30 kids.

Of course, the administrators' solution is always a call for more money.

Hi Susan,



I have even read that even some motion picture titles have been changed to accomodate the 1500 word vocabulary and historical knowledge failings.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Canada: English title) (International: English title) (UK)
Harry Potter (USA) (working title)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (USA) (Whats a philosopher? Hmm maybe even the public school educator would have a tough time answering this one. )

The Madness of King George III (UK)
The Madness of King George (US) (distributors thought that no-one would want to watch the film having missed the first two )

I actually agree with every thing you have said about the use of the phonic method rather than the look-&-say methods. The ability to decode the written word almost always requires a phonic approach together with its use within a social vocabulary (its common use within the family, associates and contemporaries). Even the Oxford English Dictionary has entries beside each word using the internationally known method of phonic pronunciations. Comprehension of the individual word just requires access to a dictionary together with the ability to understand its grammatical use within a sentence. Word and sentence comprehension also requires a formal understanding of the use of verbs, adverbs, nouns and the understanding of the use of full stops, quotations marks, semicolons etc. Without a solid understanding of the primary spoken and written language skills, progress on to more advanced English literature will be almost impossible. This is where reading and writing stops becoming a chore and starts becoming an enjoyment for students.

Does the US education system have a set of age related basic standard requirements? Is there a safety net such as remedial action one to one teaching for those unfortunate students who have failed to meet the grade. The idea that a 12-14 years old student who cannot read and has been able to pass through an educational system up till this point is quite shocking.

Also what formal texts are required reading? (this is where the philosphical analysis and political discussion etc start to enter the fray)

Some required reading (English Literature) when I was at School,

1984,
To Kill a MockingBird,
Hamlet,
Lord of the Flies,
MacBeth,
The Merchant of Venice,
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Romeo and Juliet,
Death of a Salesman,
The Catcher in the Rye,
Gregory's Girl.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Brave New World.
The Time Machine

BTW my friends 12 year old daughter is currently reading Homer's epic Odysseus in her first year at her state run Secondary School. Even I thought this was a bit of tough read for a 12 year old. But then its nice to know that standards haven't dropped since I was at School.

Hi NightHiker

From 1984 by George Orwell;



the quote just popped into my head; Darn that PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. State controlled conspiracy of political indoctrination from English Literature class (actually first read it in 1984).

We need specific examples please !! (sorry about the use of the 'royal' we BTW)

Am_Fear_Liath_Mor:

I read only two of your list in school: MacBeth and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I read all the rest on my own, with the exception of
The Merchant of Venice,
Death of a Salesman,
The Catcher in the Rye,
Gregory's Girl.

(But I had to look up The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui)

Sue

Lots of Shakespeare, but no Ayn Rand. We had a different list.

"It works on paper but not in practice."
This is true of many things, particularly education, but those on the school boards seem unable to grasp this concept. The recently imposed No Child Left Behind act is a perfect example of this. It's all well and good to say we're going to get all students performing at grade level. But that literally means ALL students. That means that the children with a genuine learning disability, or those who DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH are expected to be performing at the same level as their peers, and if they don't, it's because the teachers aren't following the approved teaching method, not because the child has a mental defect that prevents him or her from learning at the same rate, or doesn't speak the same language as the teacher.

Another problem is the standardization of the teaching process. It's true that the same thing isn't going to work for everybody, but teachers are REQUIRED to follow a curriculum set by the higher-ups, regardless of whether that method is working or not.

And then you occasionally get a teacher who really shouldn't be in charge of the subject because they've got quite enough to do already. This is a problem i've experienced first hand many times. For example: my senior year in high school, my English teacher was also the my teacher for art and film appreciation, and also happened to be the head of the cheerleading squad. When the same person is instructing the pom pom shakers on how to do a mid-air somersault, grading my term paper on Moby Dick, and judging the accuracy of my woodcut reproduction, there needs to be some reconsideration regarding staff appointment.

Up until I read 1984 a few years ago I thought that quote was from the song "Testify" by Rage Against the Machine.


As to required reading, there has definitely been a "dumbing down" of the required reading in my area. When I was in fourth grade "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen was required reading. For my brother it was sixth grade required reading. I wonder if that means kids are, on average, two years behind where I was at their age academically (at least in that school system).

I really like how teachers are now being forced to teach the various achievement tests instead of the entire course. Kids get a few facts, but no thinking for themselves with the complete information.

It hastens the conversion process from Human to zombie!!! Easily manipulated populace, through ignorance!!!

"When the same person is instructing the pom pom shakers on how to do a mid-air somersault, grading my term paper on Moby Dick, and judging the accuracy of my woodcut reproduction, there needs to be some reconsideration regarding staff appointment."

It's a common practice for many teachers to hire senior students to grade the papers of the kids in their classes.

Sue

RE side of the highway parking - there are 1-2 times I've been so tired I needed to stop on the side of the road - I decided the best way to handle it was find an overpass, pull off, and get the car totally behind the nice concrete bridge abutment - I figure if whatever is going to hit me can make it through 66+ feet of dirt and concrete, it was meant to be

Good plan. Still illegal (at least in CA), but safe. And that overpowers legal in my book...

Yeah - funny thing, when I find I'm dead tired (the 2 times this happened), I've found even 15 minutes with the eyes closed helps. It's usually on a LONG drive home, into the sun - I'm not sure if the 15 minutes is rest, the sun moving, or what. Thankfully, I tend to know where the legal rest areas are, and I'm not so stupid as to insist on driving if I'm tired - I will pull over to rest