Star Wars the Force Awakens, Thoughts WITH SPOILERS

Since the first paragraph of most every blog often appears in links, I am going to ramble a second just in case some not wanting spoilers can be sure to avoid the remainder of this post. That said, if you’ve seen the movie, or if for some reason you don’t plan to and don’t care about spoilers, feel free to read ahead!

First of all, no matter what else is said here, I want to be clear: I loved the movie. As far as being a Star Wars fan or feeling like I got my money’s worth in a Sci-Fi picture, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (SWTFA) worked. There’s enough of a “tribute” feel toward the first films, mixed in with plenty of action, so seriously – What’s not to love?!?

Well, for me personally, it was the trope of a disintegrated family system, so common in our era of hero-making that was again presented for thousandth time with seemingly no thought of how prevalent it is in our culture.

I have read enough Joseph Campbell to know how the “hero’s journey” works. Our protagonists must endure some degree of personal tragedy, find a way to overcome that tragedy, and emerge victorious on the other side. If they don’t do this, they feel less “hero-like” to us (as if any of us from healthy family systems with living, loving parents are incapable of making the trip).

Still, here’s how it works if you are new to the idea: Batman loses his parents, Superman his home planet. Spiderman loses his uncle. Catniss loses her father, her freedom, and her friends. Captain America loses Bucky and General Maximus loses his wife and child. Bambi and Nemo lose their mom and Cinderella loses both her parents; so does Harry Potter. We could go on for pages. From Snow White to William Wallace to the Divergent series, the Maze Runner series, the Walking Dead, or even yet-to-be-named man or woman you create to play in Bethesda’s new Fallout IV game – the trope is alive and well in our story-telling today, and perhaps for all time.

So why would it bother me in Star Wars? More specifically, why would it bother me so much in “The Force Awakens,” when:

·         Anakin’s mom is tortured and murdered by sand-people

·         Luke’s aunt and uncle get torched by Stormtroopers

·         Alderan gets blown to bits by Tarkin (killing Leia’s adopted parents & home world)

I think it’s because (and here come the SPOILERS), Han and Leia represented what may have been the “only hope” for a potential unbroken family unit in six straight films. Alas, this wasn’t to be as not only do we learn that one of the great romances of our generation was a bust, they also managed to create an angry, crazy, “all kinds of messed up” kid to give the galaxy as a parting gift.

For me, watching Kylo Ren struggle with the light side of force in that gut-wrenching scene on the platform had a lot less feeling attached to good old Han getting sabered (which was emotional, no doubt), but rather left me with an even more hollow feeling of ridiculous it is to hope that true love and healthy families can exist in the Star Wars universe.

Gail Simone’s now infamous phrase “women in refrigerators” was once employed to raise awareness in us about how the deaths and injuries of many women in comic books serve the nearly solitary purpose of raising our emotional investment in the male protagonist… as the trope would have it anyway. The phrase refers back to the killing of Green Lantern’s girlfriend, Alexandra Dewitt, by the villain Major Force who later stuffed her remains in a refrigerator for our “hero” to find.

What we seem to have in the Star Wars universe is (thankfully) much different than the woman-killing trope (although look at all the dead mothers). We have in SWTFA a female lead, which is both welcoming and refreshing. But we still have the trope and in Star Wars, it’s the corpse of a healthy family that gets employed over and over again… Newcomer to the force, Rey, is apparently orphaned and comes from a broken family. Finn, our other newcomer to the SWTFA universe apparently has been kidnapped from his family and robbed of growing up in a family unit. Just like Darth Vader, Luke, and Leia all emerged from a broken families with dead mothers, absent or psychopathic fathers, and what seems to be a galaxy-wide orphaning of children where this beautiful thing called “the Force” is concerned.

I think one of the things that made Han and Leia’s relationship so meaningful in the Star Wars universe before SWTFA was that despite their differences, we had a feeling that love was going to prevail. The constant “dislodging” we felt for our protagonists was finding a warmer place to settle down and find health in the two of them. The idea of a real home, a couple that could fight honestly with each other and yet remain together, and maybe even a glimmer of a miracle in a happy family all seemed to finally be shaping up in our “happy ending” in the original films.

But alas at the end of the day, the TROPE is really the strongest “FORCE” in the galaxy and this hope we sensed didn’t stand a chance. Han and Leia split, ending one of greatest screen romances in divorce (or at least separation); Kylo Ren commits patricide (talk about killing a family unit, there you go), and our two other young would-be heroes are as they have always been in the Star Wars universe, galaxy wandering orphans carrying around the scars of their respective broken families.

History repeats itself in SWTFA, and not all of it in the right ways.

Sometimes I wonder if 1,000 years from now historians won’t look back at our idyllic fascination with disintegrated families and see it as more than just a literary device. I wonder if they’ll see it in ways that we don’t even see it now – as a perfect representation of where we are as a culture, met head-on with all the resolve that popcorn and Coca-Cola can muster.

Arrow: Seasons 1-3 (The Secret Review with Spoilers!)

Season One:

My name is Oliver Queen. I like secrets. I secretly slipped away on a boat with my girlfriend’s sister, Sarah Lance. She died. (But secretly didn’t, see season two... but dies again, dang it... I have no luck with the ladies.)

My dad, Robert, had a secret he told me. And a secret book too. The names were secretive, but I came home after five years with a big secret of my own. I can kill people real nice. With arrows that I sharpen in my secret lair.

My bodyguard Diggle doesn’t like my secret. I need to tell him, so I do… but only after I use my secret to embarrass him a little. My therapist says I have trust issues.

I learn that my mom, Moria, has a secret too. Lots of them actually. She is part of a secret plan to nuke my city. She has failed this city.

My sister Thea has a secret drug and alcohol problem. This makes me sad because she’s really nice person deep down. I need to keep her drug problem a secret until I can fix it.

Yesterday, I tried to help her, but she says I keep too many secrets. WTH? Women. Psh.

This chick at my company suspects me of secrets. She is goofy and wears goofy glasses and talks all nerdy. She secretly loves me, and I tell her my secret because... well, she is easy on the eye I guess. Plus she can secretly hack into computers and satellites. I don’t tell her all my secrets though, just the secret lair stuff. And I bought her some high tech stuff cause I am rich.

I was upset to learn my best friend’s dad “Merlin” has a better secret than me. His secret kicked my secret's butt. I don’t know where his secret lair is, but I will find out. He is part of the secret plan to nuke my city.

Thea, my sister, stays mad at me on most days because of my secret. She really needs a drink. I hate to say it, but she’s wound up pretty tight.

I go back to my 1^st girlfriend, Laurel, and secretly get her to cheat on my best friend Tommy. Tommy sees us because as secretive as I am, I like to leave the shades open when I make out. I am cool like that.

Laurel doesn’t know about my other secret… the one where I learned how to kill people real nice. She doesn’t like my other secret very much, says I am dangerous. Whatever.

Laurel’s dad is a cop. He huffs and puffs a lot about my secret. I can’t understand why, I mean really? I am doing the man a favor. He needs a drink too… except he has a secret drinking problem. Lush.

My best friend Tommy finds out my secret. But his dad Merlin, who has a better secret than me, gets his son killed. Plus he sets off his secret nuke! What a douche!

I have failed this city…

Cue the pouty music, I need to mope around some.

Season Two:

 My name is Oliver Queen. I still mope around because I failed this city and my best friend is dead.

My mom told everyone about her secret collaboration with the psycho-nuke father of my dead best friend to the world. We all are kind of sad now because she might go to jail. She could blame my dead best friend’s father, but she has too many secrets to come forward.

This year, I have new secrets to go with my new name, Arrow. You see four years ago, I had friends on the island that I told no one about. One of those was my secretly my former girlfriend Laurel's sister, Sarah, who didn't die on the boat. I kept that secret real good, didn’t I? Haha. You are all chumps.

Sarah has a secret like me. She kills people real good. I want her secret and my secret to make love, so we do. But honestly, she makes me mad because she kills people. My secret is going soft… I mean the first one of course. I don't like to kill people real good anymore because I am a hero.

I don't feel guilty about being with Sarah even though she is my ex-girlfriend’s sister because Laurel has a secret drinking problem now, just like her dad. I don’t like that kind of secret; in case you forgot -- my sister had a secret addiction last season. It makes me sad sometimes when I think about it in my secret lair.

My friend Slade Wilson got brain-washed from a drug with a stupid secret name. He is alive with a secret of his own. He can kill people real good. He is really looney toons crazy also, but that is no secret.

Slade doesn’t know that I have another secret… he doesn’t know yet that I secretly chose the love of his life to die instead of Sarah. If he finds out he is going to try to kill me real good.

OH SNAP! He does know that secret now! He is going to destroy everything I love and maybe expose my secret. That I am secretly the Arrow, the guy who formerly killed people real good.

In other news, you might like to know that my mom Moria and my dead best friend’s father, Merlin made a secret baby… my step-sister Thea! Whaaat? She got her freak on with that guy?!? Women, psh.

I can’t tell anyone this secret about my sister! It would just be awful, plus it would hurt my mom's chances at becoming mayor. She’s out of jail and ready to be a politician. Politicians have good secrets!

Thea, the secret love child of my mom and nuke boy Merlin, can sense that I have more secrets. My sister really doesn’t like me much... sigh. Women.

Laurel keeps drinking booze in secret. This still makes me sad. I gotta get this chick some help. Maybe I should tell her my secret… or tell her the secret that her sister is still alive and we are doing it secretively every night.

Everybody look out… the man my mom is running for mayor against is a guy with a dark secret. Oh no! That guy is brain-washing people with Slade Wilson brain-washing juice! This is a terrible secret that even affects my sister’s new boyfriend, Roy. He is getting brain-washed by the Wilson juice… but it will help him with his new secret, being my partner!

But first I need to tell Thea's boyfriend my secret. Crap, he killed someone while brain-washed wearing one of my costumes…. we gotta keep that killing a secret -- even from himself. Let’s lie to him when he gets up and say he was playing Monopoly or something instead of killing people real good.

Holy Smokes! My old friend Slade just killed my mom real good! It is no secret that I am sad. I am moping around some more.

Detective Lance is warming up to my secret. Still, he's always mad about something... like the way his daughter Sarah keeps secrets about her past.

Wow, Sarah my new girlfriend had a secret romance with another woman in the secret League of Assassins. So freaky, girlfriend! I don’t mind much. Everyone has secrets. Maybe her ex-girlfriend can help me in my secret war with Slade Wilson... maybe. I need to discuss this with her in secret.

I tell my partner Roy, who recovered from brain-washing to break up with my sister. Just protecting her like a good big brother would and keeping the secrets going so she can be safe. My sister is none too happy about even more secrets, but what she going to do about it? We da men shoot arrows! Yeah, baby.

Guess what? The season is over and I pounded Slade Wilson… but it costs me my company. Dang it... I be poor like you now! Still, Slade is down for the count. I lock him up in my secret prison on the island where my big secret started.

Season Three:

My name is Oliver Queen. My show is about brain-washing people and secrets. My best friend’s dad, Merlin, is back in town with another secret, but it isn’t a nuke this time. I am not too mad at him really. He’s got a pretty good sense of humor for a psychopath.

Bonus: I told my sister my secret. She wasn’t mad… finally sobering up I guess. I think she was still kind of sore about her boyfriend’s secret though. She flirts around some with a DJ who has a secret identity like a mad girlfriend might do when abandoned by a man who secretly killed people real good.

Her new boyfriend / employee who works above my secret lair is really a secret agent in the highly secretive league of assassins. This group is really mad at Tommy's dad, Merlin, for all his secrets. They are coming to kill him, but I won’t let that happen. He might have dropped a nuke on my city and killed a bunch of people real good, but this is still my city. I take care of the secrets here, not the pajama parade of ninja boys.

My girlfriend Sarah, the sister of my old girlfriend (the one I keep secrets from), is murdered! We really want to know who did it, but something tells me it is a terrible secret. Sarah’s ex-girlfriend is back in town to figure out the secret of who killed her… she is so mad at me now. Women. Psh.

No one should tell Sarah’s dad or any of her family the secret that she is dead. Quick hide the body! We might be able to use her in a spin-off series.

Remember how I lost my company? The dude that is running my company these days has a secret. He is kind of goofy. The goofy chick likes him. He learns my secret and gets really mad at me. Women.... and the men that act like them. Psh. I need to go flex or something I guess.

I find out the secret of who killed my girlfriend… it was my sister. This is bad. My sister was brain-washed by her dad, Merlin, and can’t be held responsible for her actions. Merlin did it secretly to take the heat of him. He has been training her to be a killer in secret. I can’t stand this secret and it makes me mad at her. How dare she keep secrets like that from me? What kind of crazy person keeps a secret like that? Broads... psh. Who understands them?

I really need to protect my sister’s secret, or the secret assassin league will come kill her. I don't tell Thea she is the killer. It's a secret. I don’t tell the secret assassins that my sister is innocent. I keep that a secret too.

I tell some lies to my friends because I want to go fight the secret league of assassins and secretly offer my life in exchange for Thea, my sister. I team up with Merlin who secretly killed my girlfriend after brain-washing my sister. I guess he’s alright for a psychopath.

Some point along the way, I met another dude who could move really fast… he has a secret too. His name is Barry Allen and he is trying not to fail his city. We do stuff together in secret… I mean, not that kind of stuff, but you know, secretive stuff. He doesn't like to kill people real good, so we are cool with each other I think. He's keeping his secrets real good though from his lady friend.... protecting her like me and my gals! Yeah, fist bump!

My sister discovers the secret -- you know, the one where she secretly killed my girlfriend… man, is she acting all depressed now. She goes and blabs her secret to everyone. She needs to man up.

Dang! My girlfriend’s sister Laurel (who was my old girlfriend twice over) found out the secret of how my sister killed her sister in secret because my sister blabbed about it to her. Laurel is really mad at me now. Crazy broad. She is even starting to train in secret to be a good fighter like her sister was in her secret life.

Hey Laurel, lets’ not tell your dad, the Detective! We have to keep this a secret or he will have a heart attack. (He does find out about this secret and gets really mad at me. Psh. What’s his deal?)

Meanwhile, I go fight the secret assassins' boss in a secret city and get stabbed through the lungs! Man, I thought that hurt… then I fell off a cliff and died. Wow, that really sucked. He killed me real, real good. I mean, it was awesome.

But two of my other secret friends from my secret stay in Hong Kong working for the secretive Amanda Waller resurrect me! How they did this is an ancient Chinese secret. I don’t even know!

While I am gone, the dude who runs my company practices all kinds of secrets in a shiny suit. He also hooks up with that goofy chick in what used to be my office.

I hope this crazy secret boss villain doesn’t find out the secret that I am alive. Or who secretly helped me that night! That would be bad!

My dead girlfriend’s sister Laurel is still really mad at me. She keeps training in secret to learn to fight with a boxer and with her sister Sarah’s ex-girlfriend. They try to keep it a secret, but her dad finds out. Worse, Detective Lance finally learned the secret of his dead daughter. He really hates me now… and Laurel too for keeping secrets. I bet he starts to drink again in secret. Lush.

Double ouch… that secret assassin boss that killed me real good knows I am alive. He is coming with a secret plan to make me the heir to his secret kingdom! I am such a stone-cold king of the world kind of dude!

I hatch a new secret plan of my own! My friends can’t know this secret... they can't handle it, but I can. My plan, you ask? I will secretly join the league as a double agent.

My friends are like mad at me now; this new secret isn’t going over well. They kind of whine a lot. Mostly about kidnapping my friend Diggle’s wife. He is so mad at me for keeping my double agent plan a secret. He says I have trust issues. Who does he think he is, my therapist?

That goofy computer girl and my friends try to rescue me and we make a little love. It was pretty good. I sent her off though, because there’s a secret plan to get me married to my dead girlfriend Sarah’s ex-lover. I don’t mind much… she’s pretty decent looking and fights ok.

Mr. Secret League boss thinks he has brain-washed me. Doesn't he know my name is Oliver Queen? I can keep a good secret. He doesn’t know I am about to secretly betray him. ROFL, what a douche.

I betray him on an airplane where I secretly hoped to die in a sacrifice to save my city. Whoops, I messed up. No decent obits for me I guess.

My friends, who are all kind of slow and silly, get over our trust issues to work with me. We find the secret location of his secret plan. It’s a bioweapon! I get shot after killing the secret assassin boss with a sword, or so everyone thinks. I will let them think I am dead. It’s a great secret.

We won! Now, I am going away with the goofy computer chick now to live a life without secrets.

Before I go though, I have one more secret:

I will secretly put my best friend’s dad, who killed his son and who brain-washed my sister into killing my girlfriend (who was the sister of my old girl-friend), in charge of that secret league of assassins for secret reasons. In his first act, he makes my dead girlfriend's ex-girlfriend (who I guess is technically my wife), and also the daughter of secret assassin boss dude that I killed bow down in allegiance to him. She doesn’t like this much, but I don’t care. Finally, I have my life back.

My name is Oliver Queen. I am happy.

The End.

Imperial Religion has No Place in the Kingdom of God

Preparing for the greatest day of the year, Easter, was a bit harder this year than last. On Thursday, the night we remember how Jesus was betrayed and handed over to both the religious and political Empires of His day, I happened to read of the new bill that seeks to designate the Bible as the State book of Tennessee.

There are a ton ways to scream “No” to this legislation, starting with the both the Tennessee Constitution and the United States Constitution. There is also the objection that the bill places the transcendental and eternal qualities of the Bible on the same footing as the Lily (our State flower) or the Raccoon (our State animal). Of course then there’s just down right common sense: The laws I use to influence my neighbor’s religion (or lack of) can easily be the same laws by which my neighbor one day attempts to subjugate me.

Those are fine ways to oppose this bill, but they are of lesser concern to me as a Christian pastor of twenty-five years. I am most deeply concerned at the way in which an action like this stands in stark opposition to the actions and words of the Bible itself, most especially as revealed in the person of Jesus.

When we read that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life” in Gospel of John, I can only assume that there’s something about the way He lived, the Truth He stood for, and the Life He exemplified that is worth understanding and accepting.

In no instance do we ever see Jesus consorting with the political powers of the day to accomplish His objectives. We do not see Him leaning into the Roman Empire to advocate for “His rights.” We don’t see Him threatened in any way by what was likely the most godless, licentious, and sadistic Empires to have ever existed. He never feels backed into a corner, insecure in His faith, or anxious enough about the future to launch a political advocacy campaign for his religion.

In fact, Jesus not only refuses any collaboration with the Empire for the political advancement for His ministry and mission, he also actively bombards a religious Empire who worshipped and honored its religious texts with more fervor than the God who authored them.

“You search the Scriptures because in them you think you will find eternal life. But they point to Me!” He said in John 5:39. The religious Empire had “spirituality” whittled down to the very last bullet point, but as Jesus noted, in so doing they rejected the reasons the texts existed in the first place: to promote the justice and the love of God. (Luke 11:42).

Jesus came to us as a “New Word” (John 1:1-14) that would be written down, not by chiseling into stone (like the recent ‘In God We Trust’ campaign), but rather by inscribing eternity straight onto the human heart (2 Corinthians 3:3). The old systems of the Empire were not to be salvaged, Jesus came to declare a whole new system (Mark 2:22). He called this new way of being in the world “the Kingdom of God.”

The Kingdom of God has no room for Empire thinking. It is not taken by force, though many have tried (and continue to do so). The Kingdom is received as a little child (Mark 10:15). Children do not push their worldview on society, parents do that. Children do not legislate their holy texts, politicians do that. Children don’t force their morality on a community, Empires do that.

Jesus’ message about children and the Kingdom was very clear: Stop trying to be everyone else’s parent. We have one parent and that is God the Father.

As if that message were not clear enough, he spells it out in detail two chapters later with even more authority (Matthew 20:25-28). There’s no parenting or lording over others in the Kingdom. How can we claim to be His followers while being so absolutely dull and ignorant as to the way Jesus changed the world?

There is no room for the Empire in God’s Kingdom. Jesus stood every power structure up on his head and He never passed a law, raised an army, or flashed a fancy degree to do it. “It was accomplished” (John 19:30) by the unstoppable LOVE of God alone. God gets the credit for that -- not Pilate, not Caesar, not the Temple or the High Priests.   

How small the Love must be that needs an Empire to prop it up! What a powerless Kingdom that needs the backing of Human Law. Only an easily forgotten Faith is in need of Memorial; and only the most fragile promises need be etched in stone.  

How lost, the Way.

How forgotten, the Truth.

And oh, how shallow the Life.

College Degrees: Simple Paper in Complex Frames?

My grandfather died on Christmas Eve at the age of 87. He never finished high school. Outside of his time in the Navy during World War II, he worked as a farmer, carpenter, and manufacturer his entire life. For all extents and purposes in today’s world, he would be considered practically unemployable without a high school diploma or a college degree.

Yet, unlike most Americans, he balanced his check book. He lived within his means. He stayed married 65 years, retired more than comfortable, and died without lacking anything. He never stopped learning and even learned to use an I-Pad to check pictures of his great-grandchildren, and did so regularly up until time he passed. By every measurable means that matters, he was a man who succeeded.

President Obama has just visited us, pleased to see Tennessee offer our citizens what he believes every person should have in order to be successful: a piece of paper representing an education that has been endorsed by an institution of higher learning.

“Everyone understands that education is the key to success for our kids in the 21st century…” the President says. Well, I am not sure I completely agree, but supposing that I mostly agree with this statement, the error I find comes in the belief that college is the best way to educate the populace. Of this, I am not so convinced.

Among my grandfather’s many accomplishments was a dining table he helped construct for the Governor’s mansion in the state of Alabama. He told us a story once of someone who had seen this table’s complexity and the way the sections had to fold up, or expand, to accommodate any number of dinner guests. The man remarked at my grandfather’s ability to use algebra and advanced math in building it. Of course he’d never been formally trained in anything of the sort, which dumbfounded the admirer. How could he build something like that without sitting for hours on end in a college Algebra class?

What my grandfather never lost were three things that led to his success:

#1  Life-long Love of Learning. He never grew tired of learning something new and like most of us, he learned through trial and error. Error was never slapped an “F” grade in his self-learning and therefore he never had grounds for giving up. Failure was merely an opportunity to learn something and try again. As it happens for most college students -- even in the “free” college program – a grade lower than “B” will cost the student his / her tax-payer ride, making many students wonder if they shouldn’t pack it up and quit. In my grandfather’s world, problems were solved because they had to be, not so that another could evaluate and give it a letter grade.

#2  Curiosity. A life-long learner is naturally curious. He or she is constantly looking for new ways of understanding the world and the way it works. My grandfather was a “tinkerer,” meaning he was always busy trying to find solutions to problems that didn’t even exist yet. To date, he is the only person I ever sat across the table with at a Crackle Barrel restaurant solving the “Triangle Peg” game by not only leaving one peg, but selecting which hole he’d leave the peg in every time, long before he started moving the pieces. Always curious about problem solving, he used to construct puzzles out of every day metal and wood for fun, then give them to his grandkids and watch them attempt to work solutions.

#3  Work Ethic. There is absolutely nothing that a life-long, curious learner cannot learn with a good work ethic. It’s easy to imagine that my grandfather, with the proper education, could have been folding time and space with Einstein, not just metal chains and notched boards for governors and grandkids to marvel over. Rumors abound that Einstein himself was an average student. Whether that is true or not, my grandfather was most certainly a man of average, or slightly above average intelligence by today’s education standards. The difference was he worked hard and didn’t give up.

A life-long love of learning... Curiosity... Work ethic. Three keys to success, none of which are guaranteed by a piece of paper from a community college. In fact, we are just as likely to find these attributes in the man or woman who made the frames for our college degrees as we are in the graduates themselves.

I have a Master’s degree and often contemplate getting a doctorate. I love college and want more of it. Still, despite my education, I am not much different than most American’s with a college degree (two of them actually): I make less than the workers who repair my sink, my car, or my air conditioner. Who would ever say workers like these are unsuccessful?

And it’s not just blue collar workers. Abraham Lincoln, who the President admires, didn’t have a college degree either. He taught himself grammar at the age of 23. He succeeded in spite of the obvious disadvantages from his lack of education. Why isn’t this the center-piece of our conversation?

I want to go on record as supporting the President’s initiative for a free college education, but I don’t want that to be accompanied by the big fat lie that a college degree is needed to be successful. Our education systems should be not be focused on weighting students down with the cancer of knowing too many things – free or not. Life is not a game of “Trivial Pursuit.” Rather, we should be encouraging students toward a life-long love of learning, cultivating in them an insatiable curiosity, and encouraging an uncompromised work ethic. From the looks of things today, these are not what most college students miraculously attain at graduation.

Learning to ask the right question is much more valuable in the 21^st Century than learning to answer fifty wrong ones on a tenth grade TCAP scan sheet. How have we grown so confused as to mistake a regurgitated fact for genuine intelligence?

Rhetoric like what we’ve heard this week is exactly how we’ve made these mistakes. It only further feeds the despair to which non-college bound students are prone and it widens the gap between what we believe an “educated” person is truly worth to us. After all, how many of those responsible for our most recent Recession in America were from prestigious Ivy League colleges? I bet a lot of them.

And how many people educated in college math are armed with the best calculators money can buy yet still can’t seem to balance their own check book? Probably the same percentage of them that govern us in public office.

I see no reason to perpetually fill the world with a group of scholars that couldn’t build a sturdy frame for their diplomas even if my grandfather wrote the instructions in plain English. Let's give our youth what they really need to succeed.