Why People Need Jobs

Daily I am amazed at the intelligence of ordinary people. I give interviews at work and I like to ask my own questions. Recently I was given an applicant and on the front page of his application he had two misspelled words. My spelling is not that great either but I make sure that on important papers such as an application I would at least spell my former company and my title correctly, he had misspelled Fry's 'Frie's' and his former position was receiving store manager, 'reseving stoor'. So I gave him a spelling test asking him to spell basic words such as; job, cashier, and target. It was quite amusing, after all this man had been able to obtain management positions and had some college education.
I have also had the pleasure of asking other applicants what their favorite book is, and I have come to the conclusion that people in this country, at least the general population, no longer read. I actually had someone in an interview tell me that she stopped reading in first grade. Isn't that when most children are initiated into the wonderful world of reading? How can you pass through school every year when you don't or can't read?

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I recently read an article, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2007/10/24/notes102407.DTL&type=printable,that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle which describes the experiences of one teacher in Oakland and his impressions of the students in his classes over a period of thirty years. The article describes a general trend of students behaving more and more poorly as time passes.
Who is responsible for this trend? It could be the students and their lack of ambition, the parents and their lack of involvement with the school system, or it could be the teachers themselves, who maybe have lost sight of what it means to be a teacher and actually take responsibility for an education. It could be all three. As Americans have we really lost sight of what it means to get an education.