[kristijoy]

HI gals...I'm feeling a bit of a curmudgeon...and was hoping I could grumble to you all....

The last couple months I've had a couple experiences about kids and learning. The first was my son's magazine 'Appleseeds' that talked about the industrial revolution. One of the articles talked about child laborers who worked in candy factories. What they desperately wanted was to go to school and learn to read. Then we visited the Lincoln museum and saw Lincoln who would've loved to go to school more than he really did and then ended up teaching himself to read.

Then I look at the kids I'm helping and they grumble about the simplest things, they don't even want to be at school and learning something like reading or math is just the most miserable torture being inflicted upon them.

My grandparents grew up in the dust-bowl, they migrated west to find any kind of agriculture job, ate food out of a dumpster to give their kids a better life. My mother was the first one in her family to marry someone who had gone to college. Both my sister and I went to college. My sister's in-laws immigrated to this country to give their kids a better life (under political persecution). They barely spoke English, but managed to put both their son's through college. Both sons are now important contributors to their communities.

Somehow though now in our affluence this next generation takes learning and education for granted. Is it because they've grown up with a life of leisure and never been exposed to a hard-days work or we've shielded them from the realities of this world and why we are where we are in the first place? And what is it we are really teaching???

Thanks....grumbling over.