<Class act that I am I won't make any comment about most of the folks on this BBS being products of the American educational system, EXCEPT that it ain't all bad, sure as the dickens ain't all good.

What's really amazing is that many of us managed to receive reasonably decent educations before there was a Federal Department of Education--we put men on the moon without it--yet this funding rathole is somehow seen as absolutely essential now. Kind of like Medicare, which was foisted on us despite the notable lack of elderly dying everywhere in the streets for lack of medical care. There is nothing so immortal as a government bureaucracy.

Sadly, the math teaching joke is too true to be funny.