1534 Pre School, Post School

1534 Pre School, Post School

We hear a lot about “pre-school.”  It supposedly gets little kids ready for “official school.” And every state has limits on the age for dropping out.

Good way to help reduce the unemployment rate among free range toddlers and teens.  Keeps the eductocracy in business. May actually force today’s anti-education generation to stay in school long enough to learn how to accurately add a column of ten numbers in less than ten minutes.  Or maybe to write a coherent English sentence.

School ends early for many kids.  But it also lasts longer for others.  There are record numbers of college students who can’t or won’t earn a degree in the four years it used to take.

But maybe there should be an age requirement on the other end of the spectrum.

Post school.

We tend to lose our marbles gradually in old age. If we were forced back into a classroom, we might avoid some of the ravages of the adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  Actually, you can.  But the dog has to want to learn.  Many don’t.  So force them!

A friend who is of late middle age returned to the classroom as a teacher.  That can work equally well to returning as a student.  Another, an insurance broker, took early retirement and went on to teach at Riker’s.

Most of us don’t have the time to return as full time students at, say, age of 65.  But part time studies and distance learning is as common today as part time employment and telecommuting.

Self education can work, too.  With supervision.  For example learning to navigate Windows 10 will keep one’s mind active and the synapses firing.

Lessons, though, don’t have to be in rocket science.  

Remember all those “easy-a’s” you thought about a million years ago?  The ones in which you drew B’s and C’s? The ones you cut all semester.

Well, post-school education doesn’t have to be any harder.  Art history, theology, filmmaking, gender fluidity studies, even “physics for poets” would fill the bill.  

Plus, if you want to feel young again, you can always take out student loans.  That’s the fastest way to experience what young people go through nowadays.

But if you do, be sure to take out new life insurance to cover the debt.  You don’t want to burden those you love when you die deeply in hock.

Shrapnel:

--If Microsoft wants its “Word” program to remain the world standard for writers, it’s going to have to make a significant change.  Since the very beginning, it has not allowed punctuation marks in the “subject” or title box. So no contractions, no question marks, no anything other than letters and numbers and that has to go.

--Trump has signed the Republican National Committee’s loyalty oath promising to back the party’s eventual nominee and make no third party run. You have to wonder what he got in return.  Maybe if he’s the nominee, the other candidates will have to mow his golf courses.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015