Are we really in a crises?

I recently began recording Oprah every day on my DVR, and I watch it in the evenings when nothing is on. Oprah is the perfect kind of show for recording, because she has so many damn commercials and you can skip right over them and get to the "meat" faster.

Recently, a friend of mine and I were chatting about one of Oprah's shows and my friend shared with me that she'd stopped watching it. She said she got tired of watching and hearing how this subject was the most important of our time, and then watching the next day to hear Oprah claim something else was the most critical issue facing us today.

I can kind of see what she is saying. When O has a movie cast on to feature the film, she speaks of the movie as if it was the best movie ever made. I've seen some of these flicks, and would highly disagree in some cases. I'd appreciate it much more if she's just cut-to-the-chase and say, "My new best friend Julia Roberts has an about-average comedy out, but go and see it because I said so and I'm Oprah." You know, people probably still would go see it. The woman is that powerful.

Yesterday, Oprah had hip-hop video models and how they're treated as sex objects. It's hardly a topic that affects a large segment of our population, but again she treated the topic as if it was (in some of her favorite words) "an epidemic" in our country. So, I started seeing why my friend got sick of watching, actually. (Later, she had a segment about teen girls and sexuality that was quite good, I have to add...)

And, then there's a show like today, where I watch with my mouth open and my heart aching for what I'm seeing. O has joined forces with Bill and Melinda Gates to expose the crises of inequality that goes on in our public schools between the poorer school districts and those wealthier ones. The footage she showed was appalling to me. The drop-out rates were very disturbing, and then there was a little short segment that really reached out and grabbed me.

They featured a small-town girl who had graduated valedictorian of her class with a near-perfect GPA and dreams of Harvard or Ivy League schooling and medicine in her future. The girl had grown up in a very poor family and in a school district that was also quite poor. She'd taken every advanced class she could take to prepare herself for college. After graduation, she found that her chances of being accepted in an Ivy League school were zero to none. She chose a good state college and was excited about her new classes.

The girl went to this school and found herself miles behind the other students in science and math. She went from feeling smart and ready to take on the world, to barely being able to grasp what was going on in the classes.

Why did this speak to me? No, I was not valedictorian of my small town school. But, we were in a poorer school district. I didn't have computers in school until I was in high school and I then took two classes on very basic skills. I was surprised when I got to college and found my new peers and friends who were from larger city schools all had very good computer skills. My language classes, where I'd made straight As in high school, I was really struggling with in college. Struggling to PASS, which was something I had never experienced before in my life. The same happened for me in science and a few math classes. Suddenly, I felt like I wasn't one of the good students anymore...where I'd always been considered that in my school. And, I was angry that I'd been cheated of learning all the things these other kids had learned. There are still a lot of areas that I fall behind on, when conversing with people, and I find myself feeling embarrassed and stupid all over again.

Tomorrow, O plans to feature Bill Gates and his wife and hear about the movement they're trying to enact in this country to change our education system. Among the studies listed on today's show was this little gasp-inducing fact:

"Just 20 years ago, American students were among the best in the world, routinely coming in first in test results. Now, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, students in the richest country on earth are in 24th place in math."

This completely scares me. Yes, I have the fortune of saying that my kids will go to one of the affluent suburban schools like the ones showed on her show today. They will have opportunities that a lot of kids do not have. But, does that make what is going on something that I should just ignore? It doesn't affect me or my kids, but does that mean it isn't going to affect the world my kids will live in as adults at all?

I come from a family of educators. When it came time to pick my career, I chose Journalism to study. At the time, I never considered teaching. Deep down, I think it was because I just couldn't pick teaching. My whole life I'd been asked/teased by my classmates, "Are you going to be an English teacher, like your MOM?"

I love to write and am glad I worked into the career that I did. But, a little part of me knows that I might have been more suited and happier in a teaching career. At every job I have ever held, I've ended up being the writer who trains a lot of the new people and teaches them the ropes. I have loved every minute of that time.

When I hear stories like O's today, a very real part of me wishes I could go back to school to teach. I know what it is like to be that child with a mind full of dreams sitting in the rural school without a computer and not knowing that she's so far behind a lot of kids who live in wealthy areas. Somehow, I'd want to help that girl reach her dreams and not have that feeling of being cheated when she sees what a lot of the rest of the world has learned behind her back.

This, quite possibly, could be an issue that might change my political affiliation as well. I've been right in the middle for years, but this might push me a direction I might never have imagined I'd go.

One thing is for sure, this time I feel O is right when she calls this the most critical social issue of our times. And, I will be watching tomorrow's show to learn more too, and thinking of how I could help change what is going on.

Did you catch the show? What do you think?