SAT Reading and Math Scores Show Decline 4380

I was held back because my father wasn't and he wasn't ready to advance.

Isn't this what I just said? It is in the human hardware to explore. It has to be hardware.

Exactly.

It was also a socialism....I think that's the word I want. This is very different from the farmlife I know.

You got a flavor of summer chores and that's about all. I doubt you had exposure to any of the winter work and winter thinking that has to be done on any farm. I doubt you absorbed (because it wasn't formally taught) how to read commodities markets and extrapolate to next year. I doubt you absorbed (again, because it wasn't formally tuaght) how to look at a field and make an estimate of yield and look at field and sense what you should be growing or letting lie fallow next year. There is all kinds of very subtle knowledge with any kind of work that isn't taught but absorbed. This is why mentoring is the only successful method of transferring the knowledge (of how do stuff) from one generation to the next. PhD programs are based on mentoring. Trade schools are based on mentoring. Shoving everybody into college creates a mentoring absence for a growing majority of people. This produces a society of middle clbutt that doesn't know how anything works.

And this is as far as I've gotten in figuring out how things break.

So you should have been at home on a farm. The work involved is loaded with that kind of stuff. My Dad invented all kinds of gewgaws that would solve problems.

Yup.

You were lucky. Kids weren't allowed to have these kinds of discussions.

It sounds like it. My brothers and sisters, although not geniuses, are similar. I'm the only one who is "book-smart". Everybody is amart in practical things.

BAH