I graduated from high school in Beaumont, Texas in 1969. I went to Lamar University in Beaumont because that is where refinery kids could afford to go to college. I earned a BA in 1973, with some financial help from my parents, and got a teaching job. I went to graduate school and earned a MEd in 1978. I am now retired after having been employed for over thirty years as a teacher, educational diagnostician, and principal. There is no mortgage on my house. I am happy as a clam and have always felt "privileged" because I had help and encouragement from my family and good people to work with on the job.

Ma'am; ...This is an interesting article, and mostly because we can learn so much from statistics, and so little... I would measure quite high for little education, and take the prize for long scrotum... When I was working I had to tie mine in a knot to keep from tripping on it... I only see a single problem here...I am a terrible student.. I am a slow learner, and an imperfect learner...I am close to being a genius, with extremes, high and low...One of my children was diagnosed with add; and I think I must have that too...But from the perspective of a person who could have benefited from higher education, and been ruined by it; I have to wonder why it is soooo expensive...If it is the key to success, then why is it not mass produced??? Do we not want educated people??? Look at all the uneducated and ignorant people in prisons, and yet we send them there when a college education would be cheaper, and the girls prettier...Higher education is just one method of concentrating wealth... If you can believe one book, The Bell Curve, then nearly all those with high intelligence are recieving a higher edgucation; but at what price???.Is it the price of slavery; that students first must commit to mountains of debt to get an education, or on the other hand, must be able to pay cash... Everything I ever wanted to learn about never had a decent paycheck at the end of it...What could I have done if educated???Could I have been a History or an English teacher??? The very thought of trying to drum some knowledge into the minds of people having no sense of the value of education, which is only seldom monetary, is about the furthest wish from my desires...Yet; having no formal education to speak of, I must always wonder what I do not know, what might have been covered in some class I never took because I could not get debt and education to fit on the same end of a beam scale... I do know one thing...People having a formal education think formally, and can only seldom escape their forms...That fate is not mine...When we see one party made up primarily of well educated people, and the other party denegrating them as intellectuals, and each party struggling for the votes of many people knowing much ignorance and poverty, we should ask, -what is going on... It seems like education is simply another means to divide the haves from the nothaves, and that the process begins at grade one... Were my learning disabilities ever addressed??? Were the disabilities of my child ever addressed??? The resources of education are rationed, and have been rationed for many years; but it will lead to, and has contributed to the instability of society...Can you imagine a killing field here, where the educated and the intellectuals are bagged and tagged with little regard for their lives??? Do you think the fact will be missed that the bankers and financiers are well educated in all but morals, or that their children are all well educated in all but morals???Socrates said knowledge is virtue; but this cannot be proved by the knowledgable...What if the contempt the right holds for the educated who feed upon them becomes general???The blessing of education should be general...I should celebrate your education as a benefit to me, as you should mourn my lack of education as an impediment to all...Instead everyone's education is their own lookout, and the rest be damned...So; I don't think any part of it works very well... Thanks...Sweeney