There has been a major shift in education in our state in the last 15 years. Some good, but some is questionable. The textbooks and the gadgets that come with them from the publisher leaves very little time for a teacher to do anything outside of the required lessons. Our textbooks are changed every 6 years. Reps from 4 combined districts look at and pretty much choose the publishers offering. Instead of quality though, they've been going with the best price. We got the 'new' system this go round at the beginning of last year. It and all of the added work load because of the way our District wants things done is almost overwhelming. It's all politics anymore and we have a computer program that I believe was developed in Texas and is quite expensive but the schools are required to use it. From what I gathered, the developer of that system was friendly with the Bush family sooo, when Jeb was our Gov. of course we had to fit that into our already empty budget. Schools are like any other 'business' for the most part now. Driven by the dollar and what corporate wants. Many talented teachers are retiring as soon as they can because they can't really teach now, it's just follow the prescription. What they are doing to the history lessons is just a taste of the editing and changing. Some schools don't bother to teach cursive writing anymore because they say the students will be communicating by kepboard. That gets my radar up. It's sounding more like they are dumbing down the students and setting them up to follow the 'leader who ever that may be and what ever agenda they follow. We think there's a problem now? Just wait.

True, some kids are not interested in history. My own are not so inclined. Well, one is and it's on a couple of events and that's it. If they don't know where they came from and have little to no idea how the world around them was formed, guess they won't object when the 'big teacher' tells them how to live, how many children they can have and a whole lot more ugly stuff. I keep hoping that my grands may one day want to learn more. Maybe some of what I've told them and the places I've taken them to will stick in the gray matter and poke its little self out and recharge their learning gene. Whatever their future holds, they have been informed of their very deep genetic connection to the Southern soil and to the blood that has soaked into it.

Pam