Quote of the Week

"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils."
- Woodrow Wilson



Sunday, November 30, 2014

A Mouthful of Turkey Can Keep the Peace

As in many houses across the country, a good portion of my extended family gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner. This is one of my favorite events of the year. Relatives of all ages gather at my parent's house, my great grand parent's on my Dad's side homestead.

We all gather for the traditional turkey dinner with all the fixings, sides and two choices of homemade pie. We eat, drink, play with the kids,watch football and talk. Just like in many houses across the country.

While at the table, the topic of conversion was how college was going for one of my cousins. She was telling a story about one of the older teachers and how she like his matter of fact, tell it like it his attitude. She smiled as she told us this teacher considers her generation as the dumbest one he's seen come through his classroom.

My cousin is going to a private Catholic college on a hockey scholarship. While not Catholic herself, either the school takes anyone, or at least good hockey players. Being a private school, the teachers (at least the one she talked about) are not as PC as found in the public side.

This was shown right away when one of my Uncles, as retired English Teacher who spent his whole career teaching in Madison, exclaimed "oh my word! What a horrible thing to say. I never would have said anything negative like that in front of a class or to any of my students."

I the chimed in saying, how I kind of agree with my cousin's teacher. We as a whole are way too reliant on technology for one thing. I pointed out how most kids who work par time can't make change without the cash register telling them exactly what to do. Another relative added how most people today can't function without a calculator or spell-check in their daily lives.

Then my uncle sighed and said "ah spell-check. What a Godsend that was! It would drive me batty trying to even read papers turned in before spell-check came along. Each year their grammar and spelling got worse and worse. It took me forever to grade papers before it."

Mmmm..... a  Public School English Teacher praising what a Godsend spell-check is. It was a good thing I had a mouthful of turkey to bite down on at the time; would have severed the tip of my tongue off otherwise.

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