Land of Confusion

While traveling toward Hartford on Route 2 last week, I looked over to my right and saw an interesting - if confusing - sight. A white SUV was moving in the right lane -nothing unusual about that. It was a Pratt and Whitney security officer driving the truck. Again, Pratt, the jet-engine maker, is in East Hartford, so one might expect to see a Pratt vehicle on the highway.

What was odd, though, was the make of the car - a Toyota.

With American companies constantly concerned about foreign "outsourcing", I was surprised to see that Pratt and Whitney, owned by United Technologies, based in Hartford, purchased a Japanese car for its security fleet. I would have thought that they would buy American.

But perhaps Toyota had the lowest bid. Still, you would think that a large American company would purchase a Ford or a GM vehicle, or some other American vehicle. Maybe Toyota or some cousin company in Japan purchases Pratt products, I don't know. But I found this peculiar.

Another thing I found peculiar was a short blurb I read recently in a magazine that reported students who were home-schooled performed better than non home-schooled students on standardized tests. This was baffling, since a major reason why parents home-school their children is to avoid standardized testing.

I'm not sure about the validity of this study. How many students who were home-schooled and then switched to public schools were included?

While I support public education - I am a public school teacher, after all - I understand when parents choose to home school their kids. I didn't used to. But school districts, even the supposed "better ones", are increasingly under pressure to meet state and national standards, and it's getting more difficult even for the independent educational mavericks to ignore ridiculous federal and state policies. Independent schools, I think, are a good way to go, since home schooled kids tend to lack some important socialization experiences. But independent schools are expensive, and they can be elitist.

These two examples are but a small illustration of how we live in a "Land of Confusion," a place that doesn't always make sense. Perhaps we need to think a bit more about what we do before we do it. To quote the Genesis song of the same name:

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth living in.