I Didn't Do It!

Seventeen year old girl!  Sounds like two cuss words in a row!  Not really, I have faith in the younger generation and having two daughters of my own I realize that girls can do anything a boy can do and sometimes better!  These are her benches, a crowning of her efforts of the summer working with me.  The pleasure has been mine and the learning and skills developed all hers and she is very good!

I have taught people welding before.  It is pretty easy, I can teach you to weld in five minutes but I can't teach enthusiasm or learning to deal with the dirt.  Welding is messy, dirty and noisy.  You have to want to do it or it just doesn't happen.  Like most learning in life.

It is fun to watch her.  She totally gets lost in her creations, all in a good way.  Focused and caring, each bend and weld better than the last.  She has made a lot this summer spending four or five hours every day at my shop, churning out trellises and plant stands, benches and garden art.

Next weekend is "The Art Show" and a 10' x 20' space I was talked into at the last show I did.  I have done so many of these over the years, probably a hundred!  This one will be hers and I will have nothing there, except maybe my apprentice herself!  That could be my best art ever!

Oh, I am sure she always had it in her, I just pushed and nudged and she fell right into it.

This whole experience reminds me of when I was a teacher and that question good teachers ponder.  Do you teach the student or do you teach the subject?  I never felt the subject was that important and my job was encouragement, providing a flashlight in the dark.  

What a great experience!

denial?

Denial, it is a river in Africa, right?  My local newspapers are still full of school news after the reporting of graduation rates last week.  Our best High School has an 82% rate and our worst comes in at 58%.
Forty two percent FAILURE! Four out of ten get dumped!  I wonder about a society that can't get a grip on its education?  I care about this because these are the people who are supposed to be paying for my Social Security as I paid for earlier generations.  When four out of ten Future Tax Payers are dumped by the wayside something is terribly wrong.
     There used to be other routes to success besides school.  We used to have factories and they would train their own.  Now they relie on Community Colleges to fill their needs.  More school. We used to have apprenticeship programs, learn as you go if you were lucky enough to find a mentor.  We used to have the Army, that time honored institution as a last ditch effort to "straighten you up" and offer you a skill.  With no education one is walking down a very narrow path indeed and choices are limited all along the way.
   It is so easy to place blame but assigning accountability does not solve the problem.  Over 40 students to a class and not enough classes.  Not enough teachers. Even the best students take only four classes and have free hours during the day.  I can see it would be easy to be a student today and think no one really gives a crap.  It is education by subtraction.  Not enough teachers, not enough classes and we drop four out of ten students along the way.
   There is a huge cost in dealing with this problem later.  In addition to my Social Security not being paid, it costs about $28,000 per year to house people in a prison and about $8,000 to keep them in school.  Think about that.