Let's explore the facts, shall we?

- The most logical way to avoid getting pregnant or contracting STDs is to refrain from having sex.

- The most logical way to maintain a good weight is to exercise every day and eat healthy foods.

- About 66 % of adult Americans are overweight.

- In a 2004 study, it was proven that only about 1% of the population is asexual, meaning the other 99% CRAVES SEX LIKE YOU CRAVE CAKE, FATTY.

Seriously. Think about how easy it is to make bad eating choices, despite the fact that every bit of logic suggests you shouldn't. That's exactly how it is with teenagers and sex! That's exactly how it is with all people and sex! Teaching only abstinence to kids is like telling the folks on 'The Biggest Loser' to just stop eating.

    When people ask what compelled me to join the cross-country team, I always opt for the practical. "It's good for me," I'll tell them simply. "I'm trying to fulfill my team sport requirement. I'm a sado-masochist." These clear-cut answers tend to satisfy whatever curiosity my peers may have, so I find no reason not to use them.

    The time has come, however, to confess: my justification, while not by any means untrue, is presented with a gaping hole in its core. Healthiness and convenience are great reasons for running, sure, but I can guarantee you, my humble reader, that these scholarly rationalizations become instantly null and void when it comes to race day, where tension and electricity punctuate the air and there is nothing in the world that will send a panting and aching person hurtling past a finish line like a healthy dose of quiet and calculated revenge.

    The object of my resentment is named Ms. Garcia. She is a middle school P.E. teacher, and though I haven't seen her in nearly two years her image remains robust and vivid in my mind. Ms. Garcia's greatest tragedy was that she was fat; while it's an unfortunate trait for anyone to bear, she had the distinction of being a physical education teacher - and even more distressingly, one of American junior high students, widely known to be the cruelest type of human being. It was a combination of these factors, I presume, that made her so reprehensible, so void of cheer or kindness or any real virtue of character, and I recall, on the first day of eighth grade, being absolutely bemused by her. There was no way, I thought, that I could possibly take this woman seriously.

    I learned. Perhaps nothing related to actual physical education, considering it was awfully hard to compel oneself to work towards a faster mile time when the instructor didn't seem to do much more than curl up on a bench and lazily observe her sixty charges, oftentimes with a taco in hand and a cold, merciless glint in her eye. But I learned, at the very least, that there were some forces not to be reckoned with - especially when those forces weighed 200 pounds and were supposed to be evaluating me.

    In retrospect, one of the vast number of benefits associated with being a middle school loser was that, as a frequent victim of cruelty, I didn't have a lot of time to procure subjects of my own. Throughout the three years I was a reasonably nice kid, but I regret to say that my relationship with Mrs. Garcia was no shining example of my moral temperament. It wasn't that I was directly unkind to her; I didn't call her fat or egg her house, but subtlety was not beyond my grasp. Her intelligence (or lack thereof) was my target, and I set out to embarrass her. Beyond being pathetic, our conversations would develop an almost formulaic undertone, in that they were always the same and achieved absolutely nothing. Generally, it would go as follows:

(The scene opens on a cement quad adjacent to a bathroom. SARA, a youthful and attractive young lass of thirteen, approaches MS. GARCIA, an overweight and slightly miserable looking woman leaning against a planter.)

SARA: I was harassed while we were playing soccer today! I was violated! My very soul was torn from the recesses of my body and mocked!
MS. GARCIA: You really need to try harder.
SARA: How can I try when I'm being harassed?
MS. GARCIA: If you don't try harder, I'm going to lower your grade.
SARA: Maybe you should do something about the kids who harass me instead of ignoring it.
MS. GARCIA: I gave you a zero for today because you weren't trying hard enough.
SARA: [insert obscure and irrelevant reference to Communist Russia]

(The bell rings. SARA heads off to class and  MS. GARCIA lumbers off to finish her milkshake. The scene disperses.)

    We hated each other. It was completely mutual and undisguised and within time she became the main antagonistic force in my life, providing me with a steady sense of angry purpose as we approached what was presumed to be the climax - graduation. I was determined to escape from her grasp permanently, but one morning in mid-May she said something to leaden my eager flight. I had started it; a companion and I were walking across the blacktop, loudly and frivolously declaring that we had found Jesus. It was a dumb joke, but we were at that tender age where sacrilege and the number 69 were still considered the height of humor and our judgment was such that we considered such exclamations to be appropriate for the forum. When Ms. Garcia approached us, I had not anticipated her interjection.

    "Finding Jesus might be good for you," she suggested, her eyebrows raised, and my heart sank as it became clear how she perceived me. My pseudo-intellectualism had been lost on her. She understood nothing of the boarding school I would be attending, or the books I tried to read. It didn't matter to her that my irreverence was inspired by Abbie Hoffman and John Locke as opposed to Eminem, it was irreverence all the same and she saw me as nothing more than a troublemaker and a screw-up.

    I haven't seen Ms. Garcia since the last day of eighth grade, but I can't stop her from waddling, every so often, across the threshold of my thoughts. In my determination to see her as some kind of two-dimensional adversary, I wonder about all I misunderstood about her as a person. What was important to her? What did she struggle with? How did she feel about herself on a day to day basis? Was she happy? Is she happy?  This, to me, is the most pressing question. I'm not sure if I'll be able to forgive her, I'm not sure if I'll ever stop feeling a stab of vengeance every time I cross a finish line, but for what it's worth, I hope the answer is yes.

    The instinctual reaction most people have when they hear I attend Thacher is to start making assumptions. I've been bombarded with countless stereotypes, some positive ("You must be crazy smart!"), some negative ("Boarding schools are just where people send rich, spoiled kids to be indulged.") and others simply wishful thinking ("CAN YOU DO MAGIC???? WHAT HOUSE ARE YOU IN, IS IT GRYFFINDOR???") For the most part, I'm nothing more than amused at these generalizations, happy to answer questions and clarify, but there has always been one assumption that irritates me beyond the others, jumps out to torment me when I least expect it, ensuring I never find inner peace.

    "Oh, so you ride horses?"

    To put it as civilly as possible, "NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I DO NOT RIDE HORSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

    Allow me to clarify: yes, Thacher does have a riding program, and yes, all freshmen are required to participate for the course of a year. After being caught rallying up a group of disgruntled newcomers I was warned to stop instigating campaigns of negativity against the horse program, so I'll spare you the gory details - why my hatred of riding was completely justified and no I was not being irrational and yes I DID put my saddle away correctly, how dare they give me work crew! - but I think one thing the horse faculty and I can agree on was that the experience did not bring out my best qualities. There are a lot of factors that I could attribute this to, some of the more significant being the slightly authoritarian attitude that permeated the barns, the fact that I accumulated approximately six billion work crews over the course of the year, and (I mention this grudgingly) my own immaturity and unwillingness to take responsibility for a two-thousand pound beast - but I think the most long withstanding issue in my life is a perpetual inability to feel affection towards animals. Exempting perhaps horses, I don't claim to necessarily hate them - it's more a comfortable indifference, and after a long and tumultuous history of pet ownership I have concluded that unless being served on a platter with a hint of exotic seasoning, the animal kingdom is best advised to stay far away from me.

    Beyond other animals, horses are often perceived as being beautiful or majestic, although I regret to profess that these claims have always puzzled me. Coming to Thacher did nothing to quell my confusion, and about two weeks in I came up with a much more appropriate way of characterizing horses: mobile old people. My horse's name was Uno and I viewed him as something of a crabby and senile old man on steroids: both content to whine incoherently to himself as he rolled around in his own feces, but also cheerfully willing to exhibit his superhuman, seemingly drug-induced strength, be it through kicking me as I tried in earnest to pick his hooves or brush his tail, or simply throwing me off his back, as if performing some kind of morbid aerobics routine. It was simply unnatural, and I found myself feeling betrayed. I wanted to hit something; Cormac McCarthy and Anna Sewell both came to mind as fitting targets.

    "All the PRETTY horses?" I would inquire as I rammed Cormac's head against Uno's stall door. "Black BEAUTY, you say? My, my, isn't that an interesting title for a book!"

    I suppose I must have unknowingly allowed these personal aggressions to seep into my everyday behavior, because something about me never quite meshed with the fabric of the horse program. I always managed to pick the wrong fights and make the most ridiculous mistakes, and by the end of the first trimester I had just barely evaded failing the program altogether.

    Considering all this, I was a pretty abysmal rider, often subject to random lapses of control, but the most terrified I've ever been on a horse came at a standstill. I had been moping around in the sand arena waiting for it to be 5:00 p.m. so I could unsaddle, when Mr. Swan approached me to reprimand my unrelenting sense of irritated apathy.

    "Do you treat human beings like this?" he demanded as I opened my mouth to argue. "Because if you do, I feel sorry for a lot more than just your horse."

    I have always persisted that I learned nothing in the horse program, but I admit now that my claims are not entirely true. His insinuation startled me; I thought back on all the problems I'd ever had in my life, and it was on that day I realized the possibility of them being my own fault. 

    As I read Mary Maffei's Aug. 20th letter, I found myself grow increasingly agitated. A popular argument used to support deportation is that illegal immigrants take jobs from American workers. In Ms. Maffei's letter, she claims her readers won't completely understand until "one of [their] family members is thrown out of a job because [immigrants] will work for less money." - and while I sympathize with how hard it must be to lose a job, I don't see why it's the illegal immigrants who being burdened with the full responsibility of this problem.  Immigrants often replace American citizens in the workplace because they're willing to work harder for less money. If I agreed to wash dishes or pick strawberries for twelve hours a day at below minimum wage, I could probably replace you at your job too! It's called capitalism, folks, and the only thing unfair about it is how badly illegal immigrants are exploited by their employers.

    As unions emerged in the early 20th century, American workers saw a fortunate shift in power from the corporations to the proletariat. Ideas like child labor laws, minimum wage, and weekends came into place, and a balance of power was created in the work environment. I do not doubt Ms. Maffei's family members were making reasonable financial demands from their employers, but if a hungry immigrant family, perhaps even unable to speak English, ignorantly offers to work extensive hours at hardly any pay, it should be the employer's responsibility to recognize hiring them as both illegal and inhumane. Instead of blaming poor families who often put their lives at stake trying to create better lives for themselves and their children here in America, the "land of opportunity", blame the corporations who allow themselves to be swindled by temptation, simultaneously leaving hard-working citizens without jobs and their "alien" replacements without the means to support themselves or become legal citizens.

    Caging human beings up like animals and shipping them off to their home countries is not going to solve any problems. If business owners were simply willing to do the honorable thing and refuse employment to people willing to work below minimum wage, there would be no reason to hire illegal aliens instead of American citizens - but until that day, the employment issue will remain. It's up to us to demand fair and humane treatment of all workers, illegal or not.

    I recently went on a backpacking trip in the Golden Trout Wilderness, just south of Fresno. EDTS (Extra Day Trips) are a long withstanding and slightly painful Thacher tradition intended to build character, although many times throughout the trip - while powering up a switchback at top speed for no apparent reason, while morosely dropping an iodine tablet into decidedly questionable water, while being attacked by swarms of bees - I wondered rather desperately what kind of character I could possibly building. A very bitter one, perhaps?

    A few words from one of my fellow campers and classmates registered with me strongly throughout the trip, and even now still, as I enter the start of the school year.

    "You know what's funny?" she pondered the first morning as I blearily rubbed my eyes and examined the freezing campsite. "Some people are in school right now!"

    Ah yes, give me the wide, open plains over cold-hearted academia any day of the week!
    

I've noticed a lot of Americans take great pride in being moralistic. Since I am slowly and grudgingly growing up I've somehow learned to accept and respect other people's ethical beliefs, despite how they might conflict with my own, but it doesn't stop me from noticing the differences. Somehow, here in America, the terms "morality" and "interfering with the lives of strangers" have become interchangeable.

    To say things in the least offensive way possible, I find myself politely bemused.

    I'm no expert on world cultures, but from what little I've observed I've concluded that morality is more or less relative. There are consistent elements, but these tend to be too straightforward and simple to answer any big questions. Basically, all people can agree that doing things to make others happy is good, while prompting anger or sadness is bad.

    And yet somehow we demand more than this. We look within ourselves, probing further than ever was necessary, demanding answers to the mysteries of life. This is, as you might imagine, rather unnerving for our flustered consciences, who thought they had settled things pretty well. "Oh, I don't know," they say back disappointingly, nervously, like a student grappling to explain a portion of his report he hadn't researched thoroughly enough. "I guess whatever you're afraid of. Whatever you're afraid of is immoral." Our consciences don't tell us this because they know it for a fact, but because they suspect it will leave us satisfied. And usually, it does.

    I don't know a lot about religion, but I've gotten the sense that the rules established within well-known texts - that a person shouldn't wear cotton and polyester at the same time, that homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to marry, that in order to gain the approval of the Heavens it is necessary to bathe in goat sweat in a field of barley beneath the full moon each month, whatever they may be - are not necessarily the key points. This actually bodes well for religion, because if the stories in the bible were the foundation for morality, it would be easy to point out inconsistencies and label Jesus and his pals as unreliable and uneducated. I suspect if God did not have an underlying regime to what sometimes seemed to be simply ridiculous shenanigans, he would have faded from public view years ago, only to be embarrassed on occasion by critics. "And as you can see, on page 628, Mr. God neglects to mention that the Earth is not flat," a student might point out pompously to his friends, and they would laugh mean-spiritedly, cruelly at the poor deity's expense.

    Because let's face it: God or Jesus or whoever authored the bible really didn't have much of a knack for writing, but there is no denying that his heart was in the right place. And that's why there are morals to go along with the sometimes improbable stories. When Moses abandons his comfortable life in the Pharoh's kingdom to help the Israelite slaves, he reminds us about the value of freedom. When Lot's wife is turned to a pillar of salt for looking back at a burning city, we see how dwindling on the past can destroy a person. At the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses his congregation, telling them to reject their inclinations and strive to judge no one - and somehow, all of this is overlooked in favor of a tiny passage that loosely implies two men shouldn't have sex.

    I don't personally find morality to be a legitimate justification for denying other people happiness, and I think it's sad that it's often been acceptable for groups of people to be eradicated or tormented under the guise of righteousness. Regardless of whether or not you agree with someone's actions, they are still a human being and should be granted the right to do what they want with their lives. I read a saying somewhere - I think it's used a lot in Pagan texts - and while I am decidedly Atheist, I've always liked the line: "If it harms none, do what you will."

    I don't see how anyone can go wrong with that one.

    My personal taxi service (aka mother) went back to work full time recently,
leaving me in a bit of a quandary in regards to my own job, an internship at
the Ventura County Star that inconveniently started later and ended earlier
than her grown-up-person post as a teacher. When I arrived, half an hour
later than usual and decidedly frazzled, the receptionist regarded me with
vague amusement. "Tell your mom you need a car," she said, and though I
smiled politely, I knew a car was uncharacteristically last on my list of
things I'd ever ask for. On top of being fifteen and incompetent, the former
of which makes it illegal for me to drive and the latter simply ill-suited,
I am a public transportation junkie. Thus did I enlist the services of CAT,
Camarillo Area Transit.

    Growing up in San Francisco, I've always harbored a deep love and
appreciation for subway systems - an almost over-zealous love, perhaps
fueled by my indignation at being mistaken for a tourist. I haven't lived in
San Francisco for almost six years, but I am defiant about my heritage,
arrogant and stuffy and generally very obnoxious. It was easy to do in
Camarillo, where a few casual references to Bay Area geography reaffirmed my
status, but a year of living at Thacher, where I found myself
surrounded by real San Franciscans, left me in a constant state of
self-doubt. Sure, I can rattle off descriptions of San Francisco's various
neighborhoods or talk about the historical significance of city board member
Harvey Milk, but I've also been known to wander downtown to meet a friend
without a phone or money, expecting her to just find me. I try to convince
myself I'm really just stupid, not a tourist, but I think people are onto
me.

    These suspicions were reaffirmed last time I visited San Francisco. I
stayed with my friend Noelani, and around midday we decided to go into Noe
Valley for coffee.

    "That's a bus," she explained to me gently, and my mind darted to a home
video I'd seen of my mother, teaching a class of learning disabled third
graders. "This is flubber-agoo," she told them in the same patient voice,
gesturing to a jar of slimey, home-made silly putty. "What do you think you
do with flubber-agoo?"

    The third graders in the video answered her with vigor. "Eat it!" one of
them suggested while another sat and cheerfully picked his nose,  but I was
not going to give Noelani that sort of gratification. "I know what a bus
is," I said irritably and she ignored me.

    "You put the coins in that little slot there, you see? Hey, do you have
buses back in... where do you live again?"

    "Where do you live again?" has come to be the question I fear the most,
because despite all the wonderful things I've gotten from my Thacher
education, it's also left me with a crippling lack of identity. Determined
not to answer with Camarillo but also aware of how misleading it would be to
say San Francisco, my response has become wildly inconsistent. To be honest,
I still haven't settled on one. For awhile I was partial to the rather mysterious, "Oh, all over, really," although when people started to assume I literally traveled from interesting place to interesting place I was forced to stop. "Stepford," in reference to Camarillo rendered responses of, "Oh, in Connecticut?" and "Suburbia," really wasn't a lot better. Most of the
time I tend to just stammer awkwardly before declaring that it doesn't matter, and people will generally leave it at that.

    The CAT, which requires a reservation and is really more of a taxi
service than a bus, doesn't quite compare to San Francisco's MUNI but it
isn't by any stretch the worst way to travel. It may have come a half hour
late, but it showed up nonetheless in my driveway and transported me
diligently to the Star office in good time. There were no singing homeless
people or bus transfers to save against all reason as weird tokens of
appreciation to a city that may or may not be my own, but it got me where I
needed to be, which I think is all most people demand of their public
transit anyway. I might have no identity, but at least I don't have to pay
for gas!

    Thacher uses an email client called FirstClass. It's popular among private schools and businesses alike mostly because it's a fairly effective way of uniting a group of people over cyberspace, oftentimes in ways that take infinitely more effort otherwise. We have an online kiosk, club folders, discussion groups, a convenient directory with all the students and faculty, and only a vague recollection of those long-ago times where it was necessary to physically talk to someone to convey information. Instead of having to memorize and save countless addresses, or even worse, utilize those pesky vocal chords, a FirstClass user can just type in a name or premade group - "freshmen" or "seniors" or "Barbara Streisand" for instance - making communicating with peers and teachers amazingly simple.

    With the school year approaching, my class has just been bumped up to Sophomores on the mailing list, a cause for great celebration. It was Graham who sent the email. "Just a quick question," it read. "Which class is this going to?"

    When I registered what his email was asking and what my receiving it meant, I let out a joyous yelp and, since there was no one home at the time, set out telling everyone on my AIM buddy list. "I'm a sophomore!" I typed, albeit with more caps-lock and exclamation points and affectionate profanities, and my friends who were not older and therefore too cool to congratulate me joined in my festivities.

    There are a lot of great things about being a Thacher sophomore; familiarity with the campus, no horse program requirement, built-in resistance to the ice cream machine, more course options... But these were not the ones I dwelled on.

    "We get to be condescending and mean!" I told my friend Sienna, and it surprised me how much I must have been subconsciously waiting to defy my moral obligations towards human equality and become a bully. While we chatted happily about how she would go about harassing the freshmen who signed up to be in tech crew with her, a thought crossed my mind: "Isn't this a little sick?" my conscience asked me.

    "Shut up," I said, and returned to Sienna. "So will it be like subtle mind games or flat out harassment?"

    I realize now we were probably being a little over-zealous with our ploys. Sick as I may be, I don't know if I could ever justify any sort of genuine cruelty, and even if I could I don't think my peers would tolerate it. Yet you hear about this sort of thing all the time. In real life it all plays out a little more subtly than on TV, but no matter how nice a school is, there is always stigma associated with being in the youngest class. I've experienced it three times now, in primary, middle, and high school, and I still find myself at a loss to explain why it happens - why after a year of indirect isolation, a class is so willing to turn around and repeat the cycle. Is it carelessness? Insecurity? Immaturity? And better yet, does it ever stop?

    The only time I handled the transition with any sort of maturity or grace was first grade, and I think that's because I didn't attempt to analyze the situation. It didn't occur to me why Dylan Smith and Maurice, two second graders I regarded with a combination of awe and jealousy, were unwilling to let me play cards or dig holes in the sandbox with them. I just knew it was mean and I didn't like it. After grappling with their disappointing rejection for a year, I entered first grade and finally had the opportunity to showcase the philosophy that they led me to develop: that all people are pretty much the same, and everyone should be nice to everyone.

    I still think this.

    Eventually, I wound up meeting a girl named Elena Goldstein. She was a year my junior and tended to get food all over her face whenever she ate and could play harmonica and was generally a charming person, all of which boded rather well for our friendship. We used to write comics together every day after school. Being older and having more developed motor skills, my art was a little better, but she had a sense of dedication I lacked and eventually produced at least ten serialized issues of her comic, "Burglar Bulldog." It was an impressive feat.

    We fell out of touch around the time I moved away from San Francisco, but this isn't to say the friendship was insignificant. I almost feel a little guilty when I think about how my seven-year-old self might regard me now, plotting how to best harass incoming Thacher freshmen. She resides in the back of my mind and abuses me regularly about my day-to-day decisions.

    "What's your problem?" she demands, never one to beat around the bush. "I mean really, what's your problem?"

    "It's not that I'm going to be a condescending jerk because they're younger than me," I insist, but my excuses always seem flimsier when I say them aloud. "It's just because I'm genuinely cooler than them! I swear!"

    "And how will you know you're cooler than them?"

    "Well, you know..." I trail off, scratching the back of my head. "Because they're younger."

    "You're a joke."

    "Joke!" I exclaim angrily. "Hey now, I'm FIFTEEN AND THREE QUARTERS! You're SEVEN! So why don't you shut up and go play with your dolls or something, I don't have to listen to you."

    What a piece of work is man!

    Like most people, I was a little sickened by the lip-syncing gag pulled by the Chinese at the Olympic opening ceremonies. On top of bringing back painful memories of the Ashley-Simpson-on-Saturday-Night-Live fiasco, I was depressed at how starkly shallow the incident was, that a person's humanity could be so readily sacrificed in the name of vanity. (Dig them rhymes! I could be a rapper if I wasn't doing this crazy blog thing.)

    However, being a big proponent of the "morality is relative" theory, I suspect my response to the incident may be distinctly western. I'm no expert on Chinese culture, but I think it's interesting to consider that the two girls and their families consented to this arrangement - that it was by no means forced on them, and both parties have expressed pride at being part of the ceremony. From what I've gathered, most of the outrage stems from American and European spectators, and I think it's plausible that we are applying our own ethics in a situation where they are irrelevant.

    Since the Renaissance, western culture has been very individualistic. Americans and Europeans tend to place emphasis on personal worth and achievement a lot more than their Eastern counterparts, so it makes sense that we would be disgusted by the incident - but I'm not sure if the Chinese feel the same way. Neither of the girls seem to be traumatized or upset over their roles in the ceremony. To the contrary, they are honored. If no one was hurt, is there really a problem?

    Yes, I'd be enraged if someone tried to pull that sort of stunt on me or someone I knew, but that's the culture I've been raised in. People are all different and perceive situations in different ways. What is injustice to us may not be elsewhere, and if people are content with their lives I don't see any reason to pass judgment or interfere.

    I have always been a little confused at the prospect of English and history standardized tests. Sure, I can buy that there might be some merit in evaluating a kid's reading comprehension, but, ultimately, I don't really see how it's going to do anyone any good. When I first started writing for The Star, I was greeted with a fair amount of skepticism from some readers -- it appeared there was a contingent of people completely unwilling to believe I'd written my pieces by myself, and while at first this left me completely aggravated, I eventually came to understand why. America might have a high literacy rate, but when it comes to actually conveying thoughts on paper, a lot of people -- adults and teenagers both -- are shockingly inarticulate. And this, I believe, is where the precious state-mandated multiple choice standardized tests are failing students. While they are easy to prepare for (because most of the material is based in rote memorization) and easy to grade (a machine does all the work!), they fail in teaching any real critical thinking, and as much as I liked bubbling in my knowledge about who the third president was, or how old a person has to be to run for senator on my eighth-grade history examination, I think I would have benefited a lot more from being asked to write an essay. Yes, an essay! A glorious and miserable essay with a thesis and a conclusion and paragraphs and paragraphs of analysis and evidence and, you know ... thought! Real intelligent thought! Thinking in school, what a concept!

    I think the two main arguments against essay-writing in school are as follows: They are hard for students to write and hard for teachers to grade. This is undeniably true, but instead of allowing ourselves to take the easy way out, we need to collectively raise our standards and make the changes necessary to really help kids learn as much as possible. Too hard for someone to grade 35 essays in a timely manner? Give more tax dollars to the schools and mandate smaller class sizes! We should never underestimate the importance of teaching our kids to formulate arguments and articulate their points. In fact, I would call any school that doesn't center its curriculum around critical thinking a waste of time -- and, unfortunately, as things are in public schools today, we are left with a whole lot of kids wasting their time. Let's not underestimate the importance of our nation's future and call for reform in public schools today!