It has been ISTEP testing week over the width and breadth of the State of Indiana and the testmania will continue this week again.  I will forever be amazed at the lack of common sense that is applied by elected officials when it comes to creating demands that are included in the testing culture on the young people trying to learn and the caring teachers trying to teach.

I am dumbfounded that in a nation where so many squeaky wheels are immediately slathered in lubricant and given their “rights” as it politically correctly/media-driven goes, there is still a one size fits all mentality in school politics that seems to get worse all around that it does better.

In a twisted way, this is a compliment to the schools.  Schools are a symbol of solid civility and one of the last harbingers of goodness that are left to the definition of the blind eye that thinks it is informed because it thinks it know so much about society thanks to facebook and twitter and politicians with itchy twitter fingers and various news outlets that try to brainwash their audiences.  These entities can run roughshod over society with little repercussion, until a popular news guy has paid his limit of sex scandal hush money and runs out of favor with the network…even if it is the network that holds the torch of being a moral compass for a section of the audience that thinks very highly of itself.  I have enough respect for religion to never again mention it as a factor in politics.  That activity makes my stomach turn in wake of so much I was taught to believe as a youngster.  I can’t take it.

I digress.

Schools are still to be depended upon like no other place.

If the law makers were to put their money where their mouths are, I would be delighted to see how many of them could pass a test they are making students to pass as a graduation requirement.  It would be a mess. Those that found themselves on the failing side of the score would call for a hearing.  I think there should be a hearing as to why the ISTEP test examiners manuals are over 500 pages and cover grades 3-10 and are given to all giving a test even though that one person giving a 10th grade English section may have to only look at 25 of those pages.  And why did I get twice as many of those at my school than I needed?  If I was in politics I might have time to find that trail of money.  I don’t.  I am an educator.  I am too busy to look for bureaucracy…even though I know it is screwing things up for students.

We press onward.  We always do.  But I sure wish we had more time to talk to students about standards of living more instead of being pressured to cover standards of English, math, science, and the other disciplines.  Thanks to politics, the civility piece has, for the most part, been taken out of schools.  There just is not enough time.  We try.  I wish we had more time to knock around what is good vs. what is bad.  What is right vs. what is wrong.  And could do it in more than just a convocation that, while meaningful, looses its meaning in a place and time that is repetitive like we have never seen.

The ISTEP drum beats on.  As a result industry complains that students coming out of high school and college don’t possess good “soft skills”.   The test culture is the reason for that.

And to think….I sat here to tell a story about seeing Neil Diamond sing last night.

As great as Neil’s singing was, there was another tale to be told about last night.

Before the concert, my dear wife, Carrie, and I took our seats.  We had a nice view of the stage.  In front of us was a couple and I looked at the gentleman and something just came over me.  I knew I had known this guy somewhere in the past.  I didn’t think it.  I knew it.

His wife got up to visit the concourse.  Shortly after that he popped up and said she did not have her ticket to get back.  He was sporting a black t-shirt that said Indiana University.  The plot thickens. When he came back he turned around and asked if we had seen Neil Diamond before.  Well, first he asked about the YUM Center.  He asked if we had seen any ball games in it.  We told him we had not.  I then told him we had seen a few concerts there.  That is when he asked if we had seen Neil Diamond before.  He said they had seen him a few years ago in Columbus, Ohio.  He asked where we were from.  I told him we lived in Harrison County, Indiana.  He said he was somewhat familiar with the area.  He told me he lived in Georgetown, Kentucky.  This is not far from Lexington which is UK country.  I asked about his Indiana shirt.  He told me he was originally from Southern Indiana too.

I then told him that I had wanted to tell Carrie that he had Jackson County written all over him.  I told him I knew him from somewhere.  He paused….and said, well, I’m from Brownstown.  I told him I was too!  I told him he might of know my Dad.  Turned out Dad was one of his teachers and the both of them attended this man’s 40th Brownstown Central High School reunion.  The guy I met last night, Gene Tabor, as a member of the class, and my Dad as a guest of the class.  We laughed, told stories.  Gene managed the Brownstown Pool when I was kid taking swimming lessons.  I told him Dexter Jones was my swim teacher.  He told me Dexter is in Snellville, Georgia now.   It was great to relive some of our times in Brownstown.  Oh, and there was pretty great concert to go with it.  I was so glad to hear Neil Diamond sing in person.

Neil singing “America”.

Prior to the concert, Carrie and partook of this Nacho monstrosity at Guy’s Smokehouse on 4th Street.

It was nice to get the mind off of the insanity of Indiana Public School Testmania.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson