a kind estimate. i'd have said more!

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maybe basic reading and writing too, huh? it's sad but alas not surprising.

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I live and teach in DC. And sadly, this does not surprise me. At all

the schools of d.c. have always been bad, and nani, i am glad you're there because they NEED you. my mom worked for the wtc for a very long time. the level of education of most d.c. teachers was shockingly low, at least in the '60s, '70s and '80s. how can the ignorant teach the ignorant?

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@genessa teacher education all around in the US is very low. And all the newest research in best practice with evidenced based programs and teachers are not given this info. Teaching colleges are years behind. So sad. Thank you for the kind words.

when i first worked as a government clerk, not only was i not an idiot (i hope) and not only was i not ignorant (i hope) but the people with whom i worked, while not geniuses, seemed to be of normal intelligence and education. some were even smarter and better educated than average. they were open to learning, too, though at first they did not appear so. this was in 1976-7 in the department of justice in d.c.. by the time i got to my clerkship at the social security administration, l.a. office, things had changed, or perhaps they hadn't quite caught up on that coast, or (most likely) the agency itself was worse.

while i was a clerk at doj, roots was shown for the first time on tv. our office was multicultural and multiracial but most folks didn't mention our differences. (i shocked a friend early on, before we were even friends, by referring to her being black -- i wanted her opinion of something AS a black woman so it would have been silly to go through contortions not to mention it!) the day after the first episode of roots aired, we were ALL talking about race, and it was wonderful. no one was mad, no one was hostile, everyone was alert, awake, interested!

while i was at ssa, holocaust aired for the first time, also on tv. being jewish i was especially revved and the next day i asked everyone in my office if they'd seen it. no one had. furthermore, one coworker, a middle-aged black woman (i was in my 20s and she seemed old to me but now she would seem young lol) declared that she hadn't watched roots and wouldn't watch holocaust because such things caused tension and bad feelings among people. since was the opposite of my experience of roots i asked her what she meant. she said "well, what if, the morning after seeing holocaust, a little jewish child picked on a little nazi child because of it?"

our national ignorance has been augmented and legitimized but make no mistake: it's always been there.

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