Cousin Rufus on Education

Dear Cousin Cletus,

Did you ever see so much snow? It’s been years since we got this much. Ah’m not complain’, though, cause Harley brought me a load o’ fahrwood. Me and Ole Bozo oughta keep warm till the spring peepers start serenadin’ us down at the pond.

Do you ‘member, Cletus, when we wuz kids and had to walk to school through snowdrifts waist high? We didn’t have no phones, so the teacher had no way to tell us if she wuz havin’ school thet day. We got toughened up that way.

Harley’s kids still sit at the computer all day to do school, poor thangs. They’s missin’ the good times we had, like playin’ ball outside with our friends, and chasin’ the girls with frogs and toads. When it got too cold to go outside, we stayed in the schoolroom and played checkers while the girls sat in the corner and whispered. Wouldn’t you like to go back to them days?

This is just mah opinion, Cletus, but ah think kids learned more in a one-room schoolhouse. If you were one of the younger ones, you got to listen to the older kids recite their lessons. Sometimes when Teacher wuz busy, she let one of the eighth graders listen to the first graders recite their lessons. And if you wuz a first grader, you got to hear the eighth graders recite poems they memorized. It wuz a good blend of old and young, and we all learned from each other.

Ah think when schools started separatin’ kids into classes by age, they missed somethin’. Oh, ah know they got so big they had to do somethin’, but separatin' them by age made the kids learn to get along with only their own age group.

Mebbe the ones thet decide how to run schools oughta go back and study the way their grannies and granddaddies learned. Our granddaddy knew more practical stuff with a eighth grade education, than some of the ones with a string of degrees behind their names.

Wahl, thet’s mah two cents’worth.. It’s too cold to go down to Lem’s Gen’ral Store for a sodee pop, so mebbe ah’l just sit by the fahr and read a book.

Y’all come see me when spring comes, y’hear?

Your cuz,

Rufus

What about you? Any thoughts on education? Feel free to comment below.