What I didn'tt know...

I ran out of ground coffee at work and decided to get something better than the standard national brands. I like Yuban well enough (the only one drinkable in my opinion), but I'm the only one drinking coffee (mostly) so I thought I'd treat myself.

What I don't know about coffee could fill several books and has mostly been learned from advertisements. I knew that coffee is a lot more expensive if you buy from Starbucks or The Coffee Bean, but what the hell.

I also know that there are many different kinds of roasts and many different kinds of beans and many different this, that and the other thing about coffee. But I pretty much figured a certain range.

So, at the coffee bean last Friday morning, I grabbed an interesting looking one pound bag of beans and asked the counterman to grind these while they made my latte and Stacey's iced coffee. He handed the beans off to another who immediately dropped them in the grinder. I heard them grinding away in the background when the cashier said, "That will be $58.90."

YeGods!

How was I supposed to know that ANY coffee could be that expensive. Jamaican Blue Mountain.

On the other hand, it is really, really good.

Run in circle; scream and shout

When confused or
When in doubt
Run in circles
Scream and Shout.

I know, let's try that AGAIN.

Years ago, California schools were convinced the way to deal with children with severe learning disabilities was to segregate them with teachers specifically trained to deal with their extraordinary needs. About the same time, various gifted programs were created to deal with those children who also have extraordinary needs. So the bottom and top twp percent of learners were given extra attention.

Activists of many stripes fought against these programs. Few of those activists were really experts in child development or education. Most that were experts had a personal agenda (usually kids who had learning disabilities). The activists won their battle. Usually, though, they won because of the added costs of supporting the learning disabled and the gifted kids. Most California school districts integrated those with learning disabilities and the gifted into the regular juggernaut that is public education. Everyone said it was good for everyone's social development. (Seldom were the gifted folks saying that!)

The grand experiment mostly failed. The average kids plodded through with their average and below average education (not the fault of most classroom teachers, though). Those with learning disabilities struggled with the material and the constant social pressure of being less than -- dealing with the intentional and unintentional cruelty of 13-year-olds.. A terrible thing to experience in middle youth. Gifted kids became bored and created their own amusements which often didn't help the learning environment at all.

So, the state insisted that we provide special programs for those who learn quickly and those who learn slowly. Get these distractions out the everyday classrooms so the plodders could plod unencumbered by those who are too different in either direction.

But wait! Even though we have come full circle and we have seen the effects of both integration and segregation, we are going to try again.