Education is impotent! Ain't it?

In my opinion, life has changed a bunch since I was a kid growing up in Lebanon Kansas, where for awhile, when I was between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, absolutely NONE of the town's adults appeared to have a "lick of sense", at least to me and my particular "circle" of friends! Fortunately, over time and probably many long hours of specialized night schooling, these adults, (who are now "senior citizens"), appear to have finally gotten their "act" together, and in many cases could easily pass for geniuses, at least in my old mind. I'm not sure that if these same adults would have achieved this level of intelligence if they would have to start all over, and be educated by our current public school system. In fact, I'm not sure they would even "fit in", and I don't blame them, cause I'd be a little lost myself! If I remember correctly, even as recently as the sixties and seventies, things were a lot different when it came to the "little" things in life, such as the actual "raising" and educating of your own children, mainly because the actual PARENT had to assume the biggest share of the responsibility, rather than the government and whoever was the "First Lady" at the time. Our parent's were weird that way. It may just be my "clouded" memory, but I was also thinking that our parents were just our parents, and didn't in any feasible manner attempt to be our "Best friends", and in some of the more EXTREME cases, would expect us to sort of "earn our keep" by doing menial labor tasks called "chores", wherein we would have to "slop the hogs", "gather the eggs", or in my particular case, carry several "bazillion" cases of motor oil down into the basement of my dad's gas station, just so I could carry them back up again every time I changed the oil in somebody's car, which I was already doing at 12 years old. Many times I would ask dad why we didn't just leave the cases of oil upstairs in the shop, but to no avail, the oil ALWAYS had to go downstairs. Dad was a real "Hoot" when I was a kid, and seemed to be under the impression that hard work would build "character" or something, but who knows, because as I stated earlier, literally ALL of the grown-ups in Lebanon during this particular time frame appeared to have underlying mental conditions leading them all to believe in the exact same principles. If I had to take a stab at figuring out what caused this problem, I would have to assume that somehow it would be "Bush's" fault, but I'm only here to write, I'm not a detective! Our school teachers weren't much better in them days than our parent's were, at least I didn't think so. It seems that they were more interested in the actual TEACHING of us, rather than just being our "friends" and drawing their meager salaries. Just to be fair though, I really think that eighth grade teacher Doug McNichols TRIED to be friends with me, but we never really had a chance to get to hang out with each other very much on account of he was a teacher and attended school pretty much on a daily basis, whereas I was a student spending large amounts of my actual "learning time" being on "suspension", and carrying cases of motor oil up and down the basement stairs at my dad's gas station. As far as I'm concerned, I pretty much "paved the way" for all the "S's" on the other kid's report cards, even though theirs mainly stood for "satisfactory", and mine were mostly for "suspended". All of our teachers were basically infected with the same type of disease that our parents were back in those days. My seventh grade teacher was Esther Herndon, (who took teaching very seriously, as if the future of our great country depended on it in some way), never once gave me the impression that she wanted to be my "friend", and for the life of me I can't remember her ever asking me to support her in a "picket" line wherein she could demand some type of "collective bargaining" for her profession while letting her students miss large amounts of school time. Esther was strange in that way, but you have to realize that in these days people actually CARED about other people, and many made HUGE sacrifices to their own well-being in order to do the job that they were hired to do by the people who actually pay for it, which is the tax-payers. Even the coaches were infected by this way of thinking back then! Heck, if you lost a game they would tell you that, sometimes straight to your face, and many times even tell you whose lousy playing was to blame, not like "modern times", where the coach always takes the blame and everybody always wins, the parents and teachers are always the kids best friend, the actual "gun" is the real killer, rather than the idiot pulling the trigger, (who is a "victim" of society anyway), and of course, "Muslims are our Friends", even though they repeatedly try to kill us. If I could take only ONE lesson away from my encounters with our "Senior citizens", I would have to say that it is being responsible for yourself and your own, but that's just me! I also think that we were raised by the most intelligent collective group of people on the entire planet, and trust me friends, it's a GIFT that we should NEVER take for granted! Plus, we should also warn our children and grand-children as to just how "crazy" life was when we were kids. Have a great weekend Friends, and remember that my writing will be famous someday, so this would not be a good time to delete me! Save your bullets and your green beans, and GOD Bless YOU!