Nolen: Our education system now earns poor grades

When my friend went for a doctor’s visit several years ago she was told she was experiencing change-of-life symptoms.

She told the doctor that she had been through so many changes, one more would hardly matter. The last time I saw her, she was still going through changes.

Most women I know have lives like that. They no sooner get through one crisis before another starts happening. By the time they get their children to adulthood, their children start producing children, and the process starts all over again.

Part of the problem these days is education. For some reason people have begun to believe that they can grow up with a minimum of education and still get by.

The truth is that with a minimum of education you can get by, barely.

Every year jobs become more technical and education in mathematics and science becomes more necessary.

Jobs such as handling food are quite common and pay little. It’s up to people who are educated to let other people know what their chances are for succeeding without education with a purpose.

We have finally in this country reached a point where we are becoming one of the least educated populations in the industrialized world.

I really don’t know where we think we can go with this situation. We will have to import such professionals as doctors and engineers from other countries.

Soon it will be that the only jobs Americans can perform for themselves will be menial tasks. The middle class will be taken over by people from other countries.

Unfortunately, Americans have let things go on for too long to take back the initiative.

Instead of adjusting our educational goals to meet the challenges of the times, we began to let students set the rules for school attendance and the adults merely fell in line. By this hour in our educational system, students should be ready for college several years before their high school classes terminate. Instead of advancing, though, we have declined.

At one time our educational system was first class, top of the line. Now we must sit on the sidelines and watch people from other cultures perform.

We have wasted years letting our educational system fall into disrepair while we invested our resources into building sports teams that profit us nothing. Their purpose, after all, is about playing games.

Well, I suppose for too many years, this issue, too, was about fairness. For too long a time, energy and resources were spent in a useless fight to keep people out, to reserve the educational system for those who were deemed to be the best and the brightest.

The trouble was that the yardstick took the wrong measures, measuring color and class instead of intellectual capacity. So for too long we only thought we had the best available in positions of leadership, in places where they could effect change.

Now, in any case, the die has been cast. Those searching for a way forward must look back upon the mistakes of the past and agree never to repeat them as they look for fresh ground to plow.

Something must be done about education. We simply cannot lose the blessings of our past. Future generations are dependent upon them.

It’s time to look backward to find the place where we can move forward. History is good for that.

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I can’t imagine who the person was who thought the people with the most money should pay the least in taxes. Whomever it was, I hope by now that they have come to his or her senses.

I don’t dislike wealthy people. I just don’t think they need financial favors from poor people.

It’s a matter of fairness. It’s not as though when the country is in recession these rich people are going to step up and pull the country out.

I’m sure when the country is in an economic crisis they find even greater reason to stash their money in out-of-the-country places.

I certainly don’t entertain any illusions that the wealthy are great patriots. I don’t believe they are grateful that the free enterprise system has made it possible for them to make scads of money.

On the contrary, I think some of them believe they are entitled.

Just so the rich will know I disagree, I’m going to be talking about the need to establish a fairer tax code. And I’m going to be talking about it a lot, in all kinds of places.

I think the wealthy will get the message.