This country was founded on a dream that all men could be free to live, worship, and find a way to start and make a better life. Later this freedom was extended to women, blacks, Native Americans, and immigrants fleeing oppression and poverty.

The dream has not yet been realized. The former slaves still endure harsh conditions, fueled by resentment that they were no longer slaves under control. Native Americans, confined to Reservations, with less opportunities of education, employment, and opportunity have a higher mortality and shorter lifespan of even poor Blacks and immigrants.

The quality of education has declined as politicians, less educated community members, and religious extremists have dumbed down, eliminated, or sanitized courses that would teach students the reality of our history, the responsibilities of citizenship, the general history of the rest of the world, and critical thinking.

Classrooms have become one-size education fits no one. The smarter students are dragged down by teachers having to spend more time with their less enthusiastic co-students. There is less incentive to do well because no one will acknowledge the work and effort put in.

As students in the “olden days,” most of us got the same basic level of education from first to ninth grades, depending on what part of the country we lived in. Students in poorer areas and some larger cities with larger poor populations did not always have the same opportunities for schooling.

Most students moved up grades. Some stayed behind for another year until they “got it.” A few were just passed along. Some students were able to choose classes that would lead to a career path.

Many students started to learn “life skills” — typing, drafting, home economics — in addition to higher maths, English composition, basic science skills, civics, history, and even a foreign language.

High School was where we separated into those who would most likely attend a college or university. The courses were harder — chemistry and biology, calculus and trigonometry, written language skills and research papers.

The second level of courses were for those students who would most likely become office workers — typing classes ( which were open to the College Prep students as well), bookkeeping, stenography, and business communications and business math.

The next level was general education. These were the students who had no interest in college or business, or had no means of getting into a place of higher education. They became auto mechanics, and repair persons, builders, and the folks who became the trash collectors.

We college prep folks and business students were taught to look down on these lesser beings — people who worked with their hands. We didn’t understand that these were the people who would ultimately live better lives as the people who kept our lights on, fixed the machinery that made and still make, our lives easy.

These were the folks who earned good money in the factories that made everything we used, grew and processed the food we ate, entered the military as a way to make a life. The funny thing about those folks — they were brainwashed into believing that they were not worthy unless their children went to college or business school to become better.

Which brings us to now— where we rely on immigrants to make and repair the equipment we use, to harvest our crops, to clean up our messes, to do the work that our families did to give us the lives we had.

And we complain about immigrants “taking our jobs!” The very jobs we were told by our parents and leaders that we were too good to do. And those migrants are sending their children to college to become like us— too proud to do the types of jobs our parents and grandparents did because it’s hard work.

It’s okay if you didn’t finish reading this. I lost track of where I was going anyway.