The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

For most of my life I’ve had this quaint notion that school was, for the most part, meant to give you skills that you could use AFTER you LEFT school. Teach you, for instance, how to read so you could, on your own, pursue further education. Teach you, as an example, how to reason, how to analyze, how to navigate the world after graduation. Sure, I know, school was a means to acquiring the skills to get you employment, a job, even a career. But mostly I’d hoped it would encourage curiosity and offer the skills to explore that curiosity.

When I taught 8th grade back in the Dark Ages before computers or AI, my goal was to convince my little students that reading was the KEY to it all. You can’t read, well, life was going to be a rough ride. Now, of course, you can watch You-Tubes and even let ChatGPT substitute for your own thinking. Reading the 21st Century is like using a slide rule to do your math problems — are you kidding?? You got a computer to do that crap.

Now I know I sound like an old fogey, possibly even a Luddite, but I still believe in reading more than a few sentences of Google articles and calling it knowledge. More than half of us don’t read one single book in a year. 50% of us can’t read at 8th grade comprehension. I don’t think you have to go to college to be an intelligent person. I went to college with plenty of dumbasses. I’ve known plenty of people who never even cracked a book — and were proud of it. Some of these were actually intelligent, they just decided being an ignorant dumbass was perfectly fine.

I don’t know where the kids I taught reading to in 8th grade are now. Plenty didn’t want to read even though I let them pick Anything to read, just read, goddammit. I read them great books just to convince them reading could be enjoyable. We had entire classes, outside even, for reading days. Just read!!

My guess — just a wild shot in the dark — 50% never cracked a book after high school or college. Call me Old School. Call me Mr. Chips. But I’d hate to be a teacher now. Books? They don’t need no stinking books!