A Letter From Kathe

My wife sent this e-m,ail out to our nearest and dearest:

We just had our regularly scheduled accident down at the corner of 9th and Jefferson. Those of you who have lived here, and some who have not, will recall that we have one of these every week or two.

This one however really caused me to think. They all cause me to think "what idiots!" But this time, the person running the stop sign came from the south. To provide context, 9th is a through street for its entire length of several miles, except at the south end. At Jefferson there's a stop sign, and then two blocks later, 9th comes to an end at the railroad tracks. So people coming from the north have been on a through street, where they didn't have to stop except at traffic lights, and there aren't very many of them. It's easy to see how they might fall into the mistaken idea that traffic on 9th just doesn't have to stop. It's less easy to see how people coming from the south could get this idea.

Moreover, it looked as though the car *had* stopped, and then just driven into the traffic on Jefferson, where it T-boned a vehicle which totally wasn't expecting any trouble, because, y'know, the other car *stopped.*

Next thing you know, I'm thinking dark thoughts about the end of civilization in the US. As follows: It looks as though the driver thought that stopping was some kind of ceremonial requirement, having no connection with real things, and in particular, real consequences. I can see him now, arguing that he's not at fault, because he stopped, didn't he, at the stop sign. I have frequently observed people with new drivers licenses (obviously new, because of their age) making illegal turns and stops, and failing to honor a pedestrian's right-of-way. It's like, having passed the test on which they were required to demonstrate that they knew these things, they were thereafter exempt from having to deal with them in real life. And we've all heard students say, no, they don't know that, yes they had it last year, or last term, but that was then, they don't know it now, why should they?

I think, thanks to "teaching to the test," we've raised a whole generation of people who think that instruction, of any kind, is simply irrelevant to their lives. Even if it's instruction in what they are actually expected to actually do. They just never involve themselves with the actual content of the instruction.

They do instruction differently in other countries. It's remarkably difficult to find out the details because no one writing about education in this country is at all interested in how other folks do it, but when you do, you're apt to think "but that's not right." And then, almost immediately "but it seems to work better than our way."

So I guess what I'm saying is that our failure to do instruction right is affecting, not just how our High school grads compare with those of other countries, but the continued existence of what we thought was our civilization, our anyway our little variation on it. I think, in short, that the US took a wrong turn, some while back, in primary education, and as a result, we're gonna die out. And rightly so.

And what do *you* think?

I think...could be.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Me, too."\\