I'm in Florida, and I'm a teacher.

Has the ratio of smart kids to stupid kids changed? I'll never see 49 again, so that puts me over the hill in the eyes of many, but I think we were smarter in my day. I blame TV, consumerism, and uninvolved parents, and not necessarily in that order. Sorry, but families worked better when Mom (or Dad, I suppose) stayed home and reared the kids and made damn sure they did their homework. And kids were smarter when they didn't have so much god damned television so they played more and read more. Why do I finger consumerism? Because back in the day, if you couldn't afford something you just did without it. Now, both Mom and Dad work in order to afford the big screen, or the house they can't really afford (don't get me started on the real estate debacle). So who's minding Junior? MTV, that's who. Which would be OK, if Junior was studying MTV with a critical eye. But most Juniors are not. They are passive receptacles for the ideas of others, and they are not critical. They have few opinions, if you define "opinion" as a thought-out position. They have reactions, of course, which they flatter themselves as being opinions, but they are not. I keep telling the kids, fine, play the games, but learn to write the games as well. Most will not. We're teaching our kids to be consumers and not producers. How long can a nation of consumers hold out? What happens when the money runs out? Who knows...we can't even count back change any more.