Mixed Emotions

I read an article on WND about students in Massachusetts suing because the mandatory exam for graduation was biased against the poor and minorities. At the risk of sounding less than sympathetic, wouldn’t students who are aware of their poverty and its concomitant ‘ignorance’ perhaps want to hustle a little harder during their school years and try to cull the necessary knowledge that will put them on a level playing field? Or make them fit to play on a field that is never, really, level?

I remember an article that I read about Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher being taken to task for commenting to a science class (in a poor school) that was studying the environmental effects of sulphur, that, of course, is why we don’t eat our poached eggs with a silver fork. (The article was in Punch, but I do labor all these years under the impression that it was a true.) Poor Mrs. Thatcher addressed those students as though they had silver forks. Which I think was the noble thing to do. To speak to them as though they had no sterling, and probably would never would have, would be demeaning. Mrs. Thatcher didn’t ‘dumb it down.’

So what’s my point? (besides my blood sugar is low and I should probably eat, rather than rant?) Shouldn’t this be the least ignorant era in human history. Any student who can find his/her way to the public library has the world as his oyster and really shouldn’t be complaining.
I would wager that these poor students know the lyrics to most popular hip-hop songs, who won on American Idol, and most relevant fashion and sports stats. So they can’t absorb the basics to get out of high school.

By the way.........technically we are poor. But I would not want my children ever using that as an excuse for lack of intellectual acumen. They will have to come up with a better excuse than that.

And, please, dear family, stop eating the eggs with the sterling......it really does tarnish the tines!