"All kids are born with the ability to do it."

Lucille Davy, NJ Education Commissioner
February 18, 2009

I really wish the newspaper had modified the "it" better, but in context, I think she meant passing the newer, better, shinier, higher standards given preliminary approval by the state Board of Ed yesterday.

I was once a pediatrician. New Jersey has a lot of kids in nice buildings with modern machines breathing for them, buildings they will never leave alive.

Not every child is born with the ability to do it--a few children born do not even have the ability to live past a few hours.

I am tired of the rhetoric.

"This is about opportunity for all kids, for every child to have opportunities to go to college or not be forced to take a job that is low-level because he or she wasn't prepared properly."

Ms. Davy again, same day.

By low-level, I think she means low-paying, but I'm really not sure. By low-level, maybe she means a job that does not require a degree. I really don't know because some very bright powerful folks have learned to say nothing well.

I do know this--just about all our children not on public assistance during adulthood will be "forced" to take some kind of job unless they have a decent plot of land with clean water, and unless they know how to grow, sow, slaughter, can, knead, knit, and all those other quaint activities now seen as too "low-level" to bother learning to do anymore.