Blog John Silver

As you work your way through the GED process you encounter weird unexplained things. I remember especially the math test. After I studied math. The people running the testing service wouldn’t let me take the GED math test. They would let me take a math pre-GED math test only. If I passed I could take the real GED math test! Well I passed the pre-test. Now I could take the real GED math test.

The reasoning was that they only wanted people who could pass to sign up for the test. So to pass the GED math test I had to take two tests! If I was stupid I only took one test. If I was smart I had to take two tests. Perhaps they didn’t want the real GED test to be overused?

In my state you can’t get the GED if you want a high school diploma too. You can’t have both. What are you going to learn by the ninth grade that’s not on the GED? Possibly a language I guess. At age seventeen you can get a GED. I guess the state wants you to drop out of high school once you get a GED. When I was in high school, no one told me I could choose between a GED or a diploma.

To validate the GED test series currently being given to GED students high school graduates took the GED test. 60% of the high schools graduates passed the GED at the current levels approved for a GED student. In other words, 40% of the high school graduates failed the test that GED students take. Yet, they get a high school diploma! No one said life was fair I guess.

I remember how the virtues of a diploma over the GED were being extolled. Since the pass rate for the GED is 60% for high school graduates and 100% GED graduates. I guess the GED is more demanding. That’s probably the penalty for not being born here or graduating from high school. Education is overrated in the USA. People who don’t go to college aren’t worth much. Those who don’t graduate high school aren’t worth anything.

I can deal with “player” hating. To hate based on educational attainment is stupid! Yet, our society is happy to indulge in it. For a many of our youth the prison system is the finishing school of choice instead of college. The government would rather pay for prisons and guards, then schools and teachers. Schools and teachers costs are cheaper though.

Why does a prisoner get a GED or college degree while in prison instead of out of prison? Because someone motivated him or her to do so! Oh, by the way, prisons have a little thing called discipline. I remember the ad that says that “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” I agree, if that mind has to live for many years.

Why can’t our public schools teach? Could it be the need for three administrators for every teacher? Could it be that lazy teachers have been promoted out of the school classrooms? Could it be that the classroom has no students who are ready, able, and willing to learn? Would any sane person attempt to teach children in a public school system run by the NEA?

Somehow parents and teachers who DEMAND RESULTS from students are viewed as child abusers, evil torturers who should be cast aside into eternal darkness. It’s a shame you don’t have to get a license to be a parent! We won’t let kids drive a car without one. But we will let adults try to raise a kid with no idea of how. A child who can’t understand no is not very educatable.

Why does society believe it’s the depth of a belief in a child that’s important. Not the depth of knowledge a child has. A lot of money is thrown away at the altars of image and political correctness. Where is this world where no losers live? Where children are fed, housed, and say yes sir? It like parents have disappeared and we have house sitters in our homes. Schools have become daycare centers for the future adults of the nation. Kids have it hard today. They have to raise their parents and themselves!