Good night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. The resurgence of infestations led the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to hold a National Bed Bug Summit April 14-15, 2009. The following courses of study at a university should be interested in bedbugs, parasitology, entomology, epidemiology, bacteriology, and every area of public health. It is almost inconceivable that in this Age of Enlightenment, entire apartment units, entire housing developments, are being closed down because exterminators and public housing authorities have no solution for this onslaught of bed bugs resurgence.
The only thing the Department of Agriculture and the Public Health Department seem to know is just throw away all furniture, bedding, clothing and anything else in which the “varmints” could find refuge. It seems that the only solution to the problem, now as 100 years ago, is the God given blessing of sunshine. My ancestors, on the farm, would put their mattresses and other bedding out in the sun, go around every seam with kerosene oil. This effort at almost microbiology seemed to work. The genome for a human being is 23,000 genes to a cell. These rapidly multiplying pests are only a few cells in size and have only ten genes to a cell. One would think that in this Age of Enlightenment, some chemical solution would have been found. It is believed that just as the mosquito experimentation, the weaponizing of these small pests with disease has been tried. There has been no publicity about it. But, I understand that congressional committees know that mosquitoes were dropped from planes in balloons, to unsuspecting poor areas of the country to see if this type of biological warfare would work.
When DNA was discovered in 1953, when men supposedly walked on the moon 40 years ago, when the miracle of the internet became a household utility, we had reason to believe that most of our earthly problems were being solved. Over and over, for the past 50 years, with more money spent on education, public, private, high school and college, I have become more exasperated with college graduates and college students completely debilitated by education. They had been through the courses, had the pieces of paper, but were unable to do anything, particularly follow simple instructions, showing any semblance of common sense. My employees spend about as much time correcting mistakes of other employees as they spend in actual productive activity.
The nation's two largest school systems, NY and Washington, DC have been turned over to the mayors of these two cities. In Washington, DC, a new Chancellor of Education, a 39 year old, Dr. Michelle A. Rhee, in a long line of those attempting to solve the worst public education dilemma in the nation, including a Major General, has resorted to hiring teachers from Ivy League universities, has a contract that will give mid-level teachers who are paid $62,000 yearly, the opportunity to earn more than $100,000, but they had to give up seniority and tenure rights. The Washington, DC system where 92% of 8th graders do not have the math skills required of 8th graders, where there is a 70% achievement gap between white and black students, is spending an excess of $12,000 per student, compared to an estimated $10,725 per student in the US. As a comparison, in NC $7,500 is spent per student.
I still resent paying this amount of money in taxes for the product received. When my grandfather was in high school in 1900 $500 was spent per student. When I was in high school in 1940, $1,000 was spent per student. But, we could read and write, spell and do mathematics. Today's students, not only do not have the rudimentary skills of education, but none of the self discipline which will make them successful in life. The dogmatic “look good, be good, act good” is scoffed and scorned by “modern” students and teachers. If you want your child educated, home school. Home schooling is increasing at a phenomenal rate, because most parents love their children too much to see them defiled by the lack of discipline, both physically and intellectually, in the public schools. One of my assistants home schools her five children. The wife of my stock broker home schools their child. My two grandsons, now, a lawyer and an engineer, never attended a public school, nor did their father, on whom has been conferred two doctorates. Even the Obama daughters in Washington, get $7,500 each vouchers. All students should have the opportunity for a voucher, and the option to attend a charter school.
Life does not just happen. No one comes with an instruction manual for life. We cannot reinvent the wheel. In this Age of Enlightenment, please use education procedures and directives that work, sensible discipline such as memorization. My father's ancestors came to this country from Scotland. He always used the Celtic calendar for planning in butchery. He always had the best crops. He knew when to put the seed in the ground. There was never spoilage at his “smoke house.” Procedures that had worked for hundreds of years still worked.
Learning is as old as life, man has the innate capacity and desire to learn. Children soak up knowledge like a sponge. We have heard many advertisements about a mind going to waste. It is a tragedy in this Age of Enlightenment, that the school house would become the place of deception, not enlightenment.
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