all about South Carolina
Today I learned that South Carolina has an honest-to-gosh speed trap town in the Pee Dee part of the state, or whatever you call it. It's on the way to Myrtle Beach from Charlotte, NC, and apparently the cops searched a lot of cars for drugs, including one of a pregnant woman, an incident which, as mentioned in the article, seems to imply that pregnant ladies are by definition purer than the driven snow. But they also took vehicles in exchange for dropping charges, and they got themselves a $21,000 truck out of it. The money is, however, all accounted for, so it's not like they had Boss Hogg over there, but I just thought things like that only happened on tv, like people having affairs*.
On that same website I learned that according to researchers working with Education Week, South Carolina has an estimated 52.5% high school graduation rate, which is the lowest in the country. If you ask South Carolina, their Department of Education reports 78%, and they don't use the word 'estimated.' Several other states have similar discrepancies. They say it's because different states have different standards, and the researchers didn't take that into account in their projections, but this should not be that hard a calculation. Where did all these people take math, anyway? Sou... never mind.
In other South Carolina education news, I found this interesting article about time-release public school Bible study. Ok, it's really called 'Released Time,' but it allows students to get credit for off-campus religion courses offered by religious organizations.
One district will offer its own history electives that will use the Bible as a history text. I took courses like that in college, and it's fascinating. There are all kinds of interesting stops and starts, and I have to say the story about Tamar the rape victim being married off to her attacker as his punishment made a huge impression on me. They surely didn't talk about that in the church I went to. But we, as a culture, got here from there, and if you don't know where you, as a culture, came from, that would make you lost. Also, you need a good grasp of the New Testament so that any time anything weird happens, you can claim it's a sign of the Apocalypse, but I may be biased, given my propensity for announcing that items generally considered safe will kill you.
* I rode on a commuter van in and out of Boston every day for a year and a half, and one day, toward the end, six or eight of us were stooging around on the corner waiting for the van, and someone wondered aloud if these two fellow riders who weren't there yet were having an affair. Another rider said yes, reporting that she'd heard it straight from one of the participants. You never saw any more stunned group of people in your life. Bankers, stockbrokers, and a couple of nerds, all of us with our chins on the pavement.
On that same website I learned that according to researchers working with Education Week, South Carolina has an estimated 52.5% high school graduation rate, which is the lowest in the country. If you ask South Carolina, their Department of Education reports 78%, and they don't use the word 'estimated.' Several other states have similar discrepancies. They say it's because different states have different standards, and the researchers didn't take that into account in their projections, but this should not be that hard a calculation. Where did all these people take math, anyway? Sou... never mind.
In other South Carolina education news, I found this interesting article about time-release public school Bible study. Ok, it's really called 'Released Time,' but it allows students to get credit for off-campus religion courses offered by religious organizations.
One district will offer its own history electives that will use the Bible as a history text. I took courses like that in college, and it's fascinating. There are all kinds of interesting stops and starts, and I have to say the story about Tamar the rape victim being married off to her attacker as his punishment made a huge impression on me. They surely didn't talk about that in the church I went to. But we, as a culture, got here from there, and if you don't know where you, as a culture, came from, that would make you lost. Also, you need a good grasp of the New Testament so that any time anything weird happens, you can claim it's a sign of the Apocalypse, but I may be biased, given my propensity for announcing that items generally considered safe will kill you.
* I rode on a commuter van in and out of Boston every day for a year and a half, and one day, toward the end, six or eight of us were stooging around on the corner waiting for the van, and someone wondered aloud if these two fellow riders who weren't there yet were having an affair. Another rider said yes, reporting that she'd heard it straight from one of the participants. You never saw any more stunned group of people in your life. Bankers, stockbrokers, and a couple of nerds, all of us with our chins on the pavement.
posted by missmolly at 11:11 AM
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