"I don't see these ugly traits any more often in young people than I do in adults."

This is not a single-generation problem! This didn't just show up, it's just been getting worse, as so many other facets of our lives have been doing. It's been an ugly snowball rolling downhill for many years, it's going downhill faster now, and there's going to be a point where it's going to end with a big nasty SPLAT!

How bad it looks now probably depends on how old you are. If you're 20-25, what you're seeing today is all you've EVER known; you have nothing else to compare it to. If you're 30-35, it seems a little more out of control from when you were younger. If you're 40-45, you're probably seeing enough differences to make you feel kind of uncomfortable. If you're 50-55, you're probably seeing a lot of differences. If you're 60+ (like me), the differences are quite shocking.

I remember the worst troublemakers in my middle school and high school, and they were pretty tame compared to the truly vicious trash that I see out here now. Teachers from my schools didn't live in daily fear for their lives, nor did the students.

It is the inability of the schools to teach the kids to read that is the crux of the whole problem. A hundred and twenty years of public schools teaching reading via a method that has been PROVEN IN HUNDREDS OF STUDIES TO BE TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE has produce an illiteracy rate that is astounding.

Statistics from the Education Portal show that...

* Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 44 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their child.

* 50 percent of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level.

* 20 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level.

* Nearly half of all Americans read so poorly that they cannot find a single piece of information when reading a short publication.

* 3 out of 4 people on welfare can't read.

* 20 percent of Americans read below the level needed to earn a living wage.

* 50 percent of the unemployed people who fall between the ages of 16 and 21 cannot read well enough to be considered functionally literate.

* Between 46 and 51 percent of American adults have an income well below the individual threshold poverty level because of their inability to read.

* 3 out of 5 people in an American prison can't read.

* 85 percent of juvenile offenders have problems reading.

* Approximately 50 percent of Americans read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as balancing a checkbook and reading prescription drug labels.

* To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests.

* Illiteracy costs American taxpayers an estimated $20 billion each year.

* Illiteracy has been proven to cause children to drop out of school. Dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues.

[Statistics for this article were obtained from the National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, U.S. Census Bureau.]

But the most frustrating part of the whole thing is that no matter how much proof is provided that this country is DEAD IN THE WATER EDUCATIONALLY, nothing changes. WHY???

All of our presidents have had their cabinets, and one of them is Secretary of Education. Have you ever heard of ANY of these Secretaries even hint that the teaching methods used in public schools need a serious and immediate renovation? NO, YOU HAVEN'T, NOT EVER! Why not???

All Americans who can read well have something in common:
* Parents who cared enough (and were able enough) to teach them enough of the basics to give them a strong start in public school, and those kids ended up being mostly self-taught.

* Parents who saw the need for a decent education and either homeschooled, hired private tutors, or sent their children to a good private school.

* Parents who stuck together as a group and INSISTED that the schools use viable methods of teaching, do it well, or they WILL remove their kids from the schools.

One of the arguments frequently used is that it's the parents' fault for not doing more. Step back and take a longer look. If the kids of the 1950s (I'll start in the middle of this debacle to make it easy) were taught that the schools were all-knowing, and their kids of the 70s were taught the same, and their kids of the 90s were taught the same, WHO THE BLOODY 'ELL SUDDENLY TAUGHT THE PARENTS OF THIS NEW CENTURY THAT SOMETHING WAS WRONG???

What percentage of the total school district income in your area goes to administration? Here, administrative costs eat up well over half the total income of the school districts. When they're trying to get another school levy passed, they're always whining, "It's for the kids", well, it ISN'T for the kids, it's for administration, and they don't give a hoot about your kids, it's all about the money.

When a country like the United States of America can't educate its own people for over 100 years, there is a reason for it. And just what do you think that reason might be, hmmmm?

So, you think the current Gimmee Generation can take care of itself? Try this: remove all their caretakers who have made their lives so easy. And what you will get is a national (if not worldwide) Lord of the Flies.

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper." (T.S. Eliot, 1925)

Sue