I have heard some pretty discouraging things said about our local school system. All arising after Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program completely restructured the curriculum, goals and opportunities. But I didn't really believe all the bad things I heard.

Until today.

Today I and one of my wardens spend six periods (and lunch) teaching each of the classes in our local Middle School. And yeah, I lost my voice early in the morning, again.

I'm just not used to, well, talking, ya know?

When we prepped for our class earlier in the week, I just knew the exercise we laid out was too simple. That early teens would find it boring and dumb.

Well, some of them may have been bored.

But too many of them found our simple math exercise too hard.

I mean, we have 6th, 7th and 8th graders who do not know how to figure out what 30% of 1,000 is.

Really.

really...