I got thinking the other day that I really never told you what happened about my tooth. As you might remember, Malcolm went to our local Stop and Shop on the Cape and bought some pitted olives to use in something he was cooking. These weren’t canned olives, but ones that you had to dip from a big pot at one of their kiosks. Well, he did and then served me a wonderful looking dinner, with the olives in it. And as I was eating, I bit into an olive that had a pit in it and bang! That pit broke off a tooth, right at the gum line.
This olive was supposed to be pitted. In fact, there was a sign that had advertised them as pitted. Well, I don’t need to tell you how upset I was. And I assure you that toothless is not a very good look for me. I did call the Stop and Shop and told the manager what happened and he assured me that they would “take care of it.” Well, of course when my sad tale got to the upper echelon of Stop and Shop, they felt a lot different and refused any and all responsibility. In fact, they told us that there had been a sign warning that some of the pitted olives might have pits. And Malcolm said that there wasn’t. Of course, by the time my story got that far, there was a sign! But not before.
So, here is what happened. We had to pay full bore to have a new tooth made and put in place. And because I have the best dentist in the world he did try and have the tooth made in less costly material so it only cost about $2000! I have to admit that it looks fine. So when and if you see me, you will see an older woman with a full set of teeth. And I don’t think that you can actually tell which one is a fake. At least, I hope not. Oh, and I will never ever shop at the Stop and Shop again. Maybe if I had fallen on some of their vegetables and broken my leg they wouldn’t have said it was my fault. Or maybe they would have said I was just careless. But tell me how can it be just carelessness to bite on a pitted olive and break your tooth on an olive pit?
Since I am on a roll today… how can a senior citizen or even a younger citizen have any input on how to keep the school budgets throughout the state under control and affordable? It seems to me that most schools are finding that their pupil population falls every year. And although there are fewer pupils, the school budget rises every single year to where it is beyond what a small town can afford. Well, it is my opinion that the teachers’ unions have made it almost impossible to get rid of a teacher who doesn’t pass muster and of course, the teachers get raises every single year. And whatever you hear about how much the teachers get paid and what their perks are, you never hear that we are graduating too many students who after 13 years of public school education, still can’t read or write a decent sentence.
My favorite statistic is that the U.S.A. is barely 24th in the world on educating our children. How can that be when we spend the most per pupil to educate them? And if you go into almost any public school, you will find a tremendous group of adults who are being paid to educate, and this includes aids in almost every capacity. I don’t know about you, but I think that too many of our schools are trying to be all things to all students and that means that educating a child in the way that they should be is now taking the backseat to making sure that every child feels good about him or herself, and this often means putting strict education on the back burner. When many children graduate they are thrilled to have a degree but they can’t do anything with it. But they feel good about themselves! I don’t know about you, but I would rather spend my taxes on really educating our children rather than making them feel good about themselves. I know this probably makes me considered an old and crabby woman, but I don’t care. I just feel that we don’t get an actual education for our children.
And now that I have made some of you very angry at the thought of making real and important changes in our education system, think about how angry you will be at what I think are the parents’ responsibility. And this is it: parents should train their children, right from birth, to be pleasant, polite and working members of society. It seems nowadays that too many parents are so obsessed with their children that they feel that their children deserve to be treated with respect although they don’t give it to anyone else. Children now are considered the shining star in their family and that they should not be encouraged to do anything that they don’t want to do. They should not be taught to respect their elders or their parents, oh no, they are to be allowed to behave any way they want to. And when they go to school, the teachers should never be allowed to upset the child in any way, regardless of his or her behavior.
Do you remember when you were young, and the rule was, if you get into trouble in school, you will find much worse trouble when you got home? The school teacher was always right and you were wrong. Boy, that never happens now. And if, God forbid, you were ever sent to the principal’s office, the punishment that you would receive at home was almost unimaginable! Boy, have times changed.
Have I upset you enough this morning? I didn’t start out with this in mind, but I do think that it is time for us to think about where we are going. And it sure would be nice to try and make all our ideas about our school affordable. I know as a senior citizen, we are almost at the end of what we can afford, but no one seems to care about us these days. And we have spent our entire lives working so that we can care for ourselves as we grow older. How ironic that it is our local school which is making that almost impossible!