The Ed Show...

gave me my 'sermon of the day' I LOVE it when he gets 'fired up'. ('Psycho Talk' is my second favorite, but that is just snark...)

Yesterday he was on about edumacation. In NJ... and busting unions. Well, having grown up in a mill town, I know a LOT about THAT... and I think if Annti sees this clip, she is going to have a conniption fit.

I have always DESPISED the term 'collateral damage'. Always. It's such a careless term, in my opinion.... but the school system provides so much collateral damage, it should cry out to the high heavens.

I 'would' have thought, did think, that things might get better. I went to a school... oh.my.gawwd... the principal had to punch a punk out in the window once a week during recess to assert his authority. Kids came to school with switch-blade knives, and you had to know how to keep away from them. One day, a 'hood' pushed my fifth grade teacher down the stairs and she broke her leg, and I saw it happen. There was a horrible kid whose mother was a professional wrestler, and he was in and out of reform school. He was evil personified.

So it wasn't exactly in a good neighborhood, y'know? Re-read this after you see the clip. I played a round of playing basketball, and it was WONDERFUL. The other teams were so afraid, they shit themselves, because we were 'bad-ass'. So we won. It was nice to win....

But there was one thing the little thugs never did. Half the school was dedicated to teaching kids with 'disabilities'. At the time, they were referred to as 'retarded'. And we all had recess at the same time. And gawwd help anyone who would tease or bother those children. We're talking about grade school here, by the way. The hardest, soon-to-be criminals, the ones who pushed teachers down the stairs, would have KILLED anyone who would be so crass and hurt any of those poor children in word, action or deed. It was sort of their code, you don't hurt people weaker than you are, there is no honour in it.

Well it seems THAT went out the window nowadays.... I don't know...a couple of days ago I saw video of a bus-load of kids making fun of a little girl who has cerebral palsy. Throwing things at her, vilifying her. And I got this... 'whoosh! back to my childhood'.

There was this book called 'Karen'. And I would read it, and cry, because it was moving. It was about a little girl, and how she overcame many things, having cerebral palsy, and learned to walk and talk.... it was 'uplifting'. HOW can anyone trash a child like that? Oh yeah it was an African-American little girl, so that wouldn't MATTER to trash her like that.

Is that what 'Murka has become? And that is why I liked Colbert before Congress quoting the Bible.... 'even the least of you'.

The sysetm was a friggin' mess. Mostly, I made sure I got ignored.....

And edumacated myself on my own.

I don't know how I ever got out of that, but somehow I did... Except I don't think it has changed at all... I got lucky. Good parents. And I haven't thought about all that in many years. Am not a backward-looking person. You set your eyes on a goal, and go for it.

Seemingly, there was a lot wrong then, and a lot more wrong now. This was disconcerting.

Ed makes sense, watch: