Learning Something, From Experience

 I SPENT THIRTY FIVE YEARS teaching then retired. I had perhaps the most convulsed, convoluted teaching career in educational history. I taught, at one time or another, every grade level, college through pre school. At one point I had a job teaching one community college western civilization class at night, a class in which there were seven women, while working at a day care during the day, with a class of seven two and a half year olds. I liked the symmetry. I'm not a big bucket list person, but early on the idea came to me that it would be quite a memory to teach every grade level, and I was able to do this because I never got married nor had children, didn't need much money, was willing to accept nearly any job, and willing to move. My favorite story is when a high school principle called me in to his office, again, and asked why I was telling my classes that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist. I replied: "Why don't you take a wild guess". He didn't like that, and I didn't come back the next year. Actually, Jefferson called himself a "primitive Christian", but did not believe in miracles, such as resurrection, referred to the Christian faith as "our modern superstition", and called the Bible" "a dung heap". He extracted diamonds from it, as he put it, and compiled his own narrative and discussion of the morals of Jesus, commonly called "The Jefferson Bible". But, I digress. I don't know any more than anybody else, but I know something about education and schools, and I know this: there is no way in hell that any school in America should be open for brick and mortar classes this fall, nor should there be anyone playing football. Not in our age of lap top computers, and in a country in which most school districts can afford to provide computers and internet service to all economically disadvantaged students, and in those that cannot, the federal government surely can, especially considering that the recent economic bailouts included twelve hundred dollars for everyone, and billions for corporate welfare for Trump cronies. Look it up. there will be three hundred thousand dead Americans by Christmas, unnecessary deaths, caused by the virus which both the American government and we the American people refused to take sufficiently seriously. We Americans must have or cake, and we must eat it too.