Reply #22: please see post 21, do you agree that our education system is

[barb162]

and has been basically uncompetitive with other developed countries for decades.

I had a teacher in high school freshman English in the early 60s. On our first term paper, if we made any mistake, a misplaced comma or a word spelled incorrectly, she took us one grade down. Four mistakes, you flunked on the term paper and that was before she even started on the content. The highest grade she gave was a "C" and two people got that out of 30 kids as a final grade. But you know what? We learned.

A friend of mine who is still a teacher (burned out) and who was in that class commented to me a few years ago that there was no learning going on in the same school district anymore. He took karate to defend himself and just babysits the kids basically. He said when he gets them (high school) most can't even read; he is a physics teacher. That teacher who gave the high "C" grade was his aunt.