I Know

I think I know why things are more difficult for students these days.

First, my high school had a "smoking lounge" up until I was in about 7th grade.

We had a Coke AND Pepsi machine and a snack bar at lunch where one could buy a big cup of fruit punch and a Susie Q for $1.00. There was no sissy salad bar.

We only has TRS80 computers and "Computer Class" consisted of writing Boolean programs.

The Home Ec. Teacher and the (married) Principal were having an affair and everyone knew about it. And no one cared.

We didn't have 'weighted' classes...meaning, the race for Valedictorian meant that Linda H's mom could still do her homework for her all the way through High School.

If you needed to smoke a cigarette before Softball practice, there was the equipment shed.

Kids didn't have sex on the dance floor during dances, that's what the cars in the parking lot were for. And the bathrooms were for sneaking nips off the pints of Peppermint Schnapps girls snuck in in their purses.

If a kid got caught smoking in the bathroom, he had to stay after school and clean the bathrooms.

I'm being tongue in cheek here. However, I do, on some level, think that when I was in high school, my parents and my peer's parents treated us as though we were a bit more mature. Our teachers didn't seem to sweat the 'small' stuff.

And finally, most of us knew that graduating from high school and pursuing some kind of higher education (college, Junior College, Technical college) would lead to greater success. Unfortunately, my students see that often time, additional education means jack shit.