School Days...

Ruth isn’t among the students at top of her college classes, she is the top of her class. This from a girl who never even graduated High School.

Carla home-schooled our daughters, loosely following a state approved curriculum. Actually what they did is called “unschooling”. Ruth did go to public school occasionally though, in and out as she pleased. She even joined the Winter Guard team in High school to be with other girls, twirling flags at football games. But when that ended, she decided that she couldn’t take one more boy dressed in camo gear, driving a flatbed truck with monster tires and a dog cage for hounds in the back. Too much Bubbaville going on, and way too much “sit down and shut up” time in public schools.

She did get her GED though, one of the highest scores in Florida on the reading and writing parts. That was all I wanted Carla to concentrate on with both girls. I figured they could learn anything they wanted from that point on. 

We lived in the woods of Virginia with no TV until Ruth was around 9, so the library was a much used resource.

Now at age 36, Ruth’s experience in sponsoring a wonderful Syrian family over the last two years has prompted her to pursue a degree in Sociology, with an eye on her Masters. She tells me that she sits in the first row, front and center, and waves her hand in the air obnoxiously whenever the professor asks for someone to answer the latest homework question. One professor announced “Will whoever got an A++ on the paper I just returned, please stand up and read it to the rest of the class? Show us how it’s done.” Ruth was the only student above a “C” grade.

She loves it, is excited by the material, and is going to college at the right time in her life and for the right reasons. In my family, education and good grades were everything, but I was a disappointment to my father. Apparently that “good grades” thing skipped a generation.

I wish my Dad was still around so I could sit her down next to him and say: “Tell him, Ruth”.

This is a picture of Ruth with a professor who teaches “Social Problems and Injustice” on a day when the two of them just happened to wear the same style hat.