Brenda jokingly said she received the last good public school education.  She was educated on a single city block in Sacramento, CA.  All the teahers talked to each other.  The material in one school year lead logically to the material in the next school year.  The public school educational system was in tact.  After graduating from McClatchy High School in 1960, Brenda continued on to college, majoring in chemistry, adding minors in math and English.  She earned a Lifetime Standard Teaching Certificate in science, English and mathematics from the University of San Francisco.  When she landed her first teaching job, she knew what school was supposed to be like, so she recognized something had already gone terribly wrong. 

 

Programs such as new math and whole language were taking their toll and students were entering high school without being property prepared to succeed.

 

The education system had entered an experimental period in the sixties and it was continuing into the 70's when Brenda went to work.  Experimentation and nonsense replaced the tried and true.  The public school educational system would begin a decline from which, to this day, it has not recovered.  Now even the teachers and administrators were prepared by the poor school system so they don't even know what is wrong or missing.  Education has become a lost art, like quilting.  There are few who remember and are qualified to teach the others.  And, as time marches on, those who know what good education is are retiring and dying out.  Even Brenda herself will one day be gone.

 

Because of the lack of quality of education, Brenda was unhappy teaching in the public schools.  She had been teaching in public school seven years when there was a teacher's strike. 

 

Oceana High School in Pacifica, California was a happy place, set high on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  But the Jefferson Union High School District was troubled.  Like citizens of a country torn by revolution, all the schools, every teacher and all the students were drawn into battle.  The strike was over quickly.  There were both allegations the District and school board had lied and allegations the American Federation of Teachers had engineered the strike to begin with.  As in war, the citizens were never given the full truth.  Issues were left unresolved and the teachers found themselves in another strike the following year.  Brenda became a union leader, a building representative and strike captain.  She created strategies and moves that caused serious upheaval on district campuses.  The strike dragged on for weeks and weeks.  Finally, a sit-in was staged and teachers were arrested and jailed, including Brenda herself.  The bitter strike ended.  The teachers did not get everything they wanted.  The District and school board were war-torn as well.  Brenda could not bring herself to resume her job and resigned her position as teacher of science and math.  She was told she had "post traumatic stress syndrome" and she was prescribed pills, which she did not take.  In her mind the war was not over and isn't over yet.  She had been fighting for quality of education and, when the strikes were over and the quality of education continued to be on the decline, she could no longer be a part of it. 

 

Since Brenda left the public school sector in 1978, she has witnessed the further decline of the public school  Additional math and science teachers have left the profession.  Public schools are now in the hands of the incompetent, the uneducated and the unimaginative.  Where talent once reigned, political activists have moved in.  The public schools are quickly becoming centers which teach students what to think, not how to think.  Brenda has watched this from the sidelines and has been powerless to even try to correct it. 

 

Little did she know, by 2008 she would be worried about the entire country, not just education.  Not only have public schools been taken over by those who would grab power, but she has encountered an army, so to speak, of petty government officials who, having been given a little power, think nothing of abusing it.  When in elementary school, Brenda had been told of terrible things that were found in the USSR:  beauraucracy and propaganda.  Now she sees it everywhere here in the United States of America.

 

To reduce the fruit fly count a scientist may release sterile fruit flies into the population.  This renders many interactions between the fruit flies non-productive.  Like the sterile fruit fly, hiring or electing a person to serve in government who does not have that burning desire to serve the republic, disables interactions between the citizen and the government official.  Brenda began to notice that government personnel spoke with accents and did not seem to have been born in this country.  Further, they did not seem to care about serving the public.  In addition, they did not seem to give the American citizen the service expected, but, on the contrary, had the attitude that the American citizen had to get in line with everybody else.  Brenda knew this was bad for the country, but was powerless to change the situation. 

 

She noticed many things.  Teachers were hired that were politically correct and not educated.  University professors taught politics rather than history and truth.  Employees in the Department of Motor Vehicles were hired because they could speak Spanish and not because they cared about serving the country.  Everywhere Brenda turned, a person who did not have English as a native language and who had emigrated into the country from some communist dictatorship, was put in charge.  People who did not have the essential survival instinct to preserve, protect and defend our republic were put in charge of county records, criminal cases, voting registration and the like.  Every time Brenda found she needed help from the government someone would respond with an accent and an attitude that, just because Brenda was an American citizen, did not mean she got special treatment. 

 

It began to look, from Brenda's point of view, as if something much larger than just education was going on. 

 

She decided to write her story.  This story is about how Brenda encountered petty beaureaucratic nonsense and outright abuse of power from so many in so many way over the next decades.  She has come to wonder if those that understand the constitution, what makes this country great, are a disappearing, just as the good teachers have gone away.  Who will remember to preserve and protect the country?   Is running a healthy republic also a dying art?