Go Gently into this Good Night

This day started way too early. I went over to West Valley High School to meet some teachers and I got there even before they did....6:55 am. I think it is criminal to have high school students get up so early to go to school. Their sleep patterns mean that they will always be tired for the first 2 hours and short term memory never becomes long term. (see brain research)

My rant of the day is the way the bus schedule drives school start times. The need to keep high school students and their corrupting behavior away from the younger students mean that each neighborhood needs to see 3 different buses. (Apparently private school students are not as delinquent.) This also means that parents with children in different level schools must be home for about 2.5 hours to see off all 3 of their children. Even worse is the after school hours.

On another wavelength, if I were to design the ideal high school schedule for a village school, it would look like this:
* At 11:00, students could use the library and study hall, piano or showers.
* Lunchtime would be combined high school and community members who buy a punch card or are contributors through senior programs.
* Afternoon classes would be standards-based, reading, writing, math with science or social studies. (1:00-5:00) Course completion would be a combination of hours attended and completion of a mastery test or performance assessment.

* From 6-9:00pm, vocational and elective classes would be available for anyone who attended during the afternoon and any adults who either pay a materials fee or volunteer time to teach or to help out in the school. Evening courses would be anything from building a dogsled to robotics, from cooking to webpage design, from outboard motor repair to music depending on interest and access to instructors (mainly local). Kids would earn their electives that way by accruing practicum hours. If a high school didn't attend during the afternoon classes, they would not be able to participate in the evening classes that night.

The stock market is "experiencing a slow down" according to budget experts. In my opinion, it is downward facing dog. Time to sell your real estate stocks before they bottom out. I have totally rethought my retirement plans. What's in your wallet? I remember the 1970s recession. There was gas rationing and for those of us who were unskilled, it was hard to find a job beyond minimum wage. Fortunately, my worldview was pretty narrow, so I didn't panic.

How about that Hilary? (Is it funny to you that you call your teacher Mrs. Clark, but you call a presidential candidate, Hilary or Barack or Bob?) I think an exercise in perspective would be for all males to remember that they were young, they were told, "when you grow up, you could be president", but girls were told, "when you grow up, you could be president" followed by a snicker with a hand delicately placed over the speaker's mouth. No girl ever believed it, really. The most they could hope for was to become first lady and have the ear of the president (and of course put a pretty dress in the Smithsonian).

To put the feminist progress in perspective, when I was applying for a job at Amoco in 1972, I was told, "all our girls start in the typing pool". When I joined the Army in 1974, there were only 5 MOS's (jobs) open to women and the quota was 18% women so that the force wouldn't be weakened. The cut score for the Army qualifying test that year was 69% for men and 85% for women. I was trained to use an M-16, but wasn't allowed to be photographed with it because "the country wasn't ready to see women soldiers carrying weapons". I was the only woman in my upper level math and geology classes (although my favorite prof was a woman). In high school, girls couldn't wear pants or slacks, just dresses or skirts. Culottes were considered to be pants. In fact, pregnant girls were not allowed to go to school because of the bad influence on the rest of us, but the fathers of their children were celebrating their access to sex and cheered as football players or greasers (think James Dean). Birth control pills first became accessible while I was in high school, but the hormone strength was 100x stronger than it is now, making us human guinea pigs. In my own home, my chores included ironing clothes for my brothers. Has progress been made? Of course. Has equality been achieved? You decide when you look at the gender disparity in our country.

I haven't decided how I'm going to vote yet, because as earth shaking as it would be in a country that professes to be a world leader, I can't bring myself to vote on gender alone, as has been done for 230 years. Besides, in Alaska, the primaries will determine our choices, but we will only get our largely symbolic vote in November, in spite of having to listen to months of analysis and posturing beforehand. Now, I believe that voting buys me permission to gripe or celebrate, so I will definitely vote, but Alaska gets 3 votes and is only earlier than Hawaii on election day.

I'm planning my weekend. I hope to get out for a long walk- maybe downtown. I'm going to need to spend some time packing for my trip to Kotzebue area schools, so there's laundry to do, grocery shopping, baking, making copies of materials, sending emails, cleaning the house, paying the bills, etc. Not very interesting, but the devil is in the details.