to teach...

to teach is a skill and a desire. As I am now a substitute teacher in my home town...I have a totally different perspective on education than I once held. I have been around education, particularly special education my entire life. I have worked with children with simply learning disabilities, to children with serious mental handicaps.

But, it wasn't until I entered a classroom as a leader, not an assistant or aide, that I realized the deficiency in our public education system. They will allow with, a recent college graduate, who fortunately has much more teaching experience that most in my position or age bracket, teach, or babysit a class.

I don't find this to be proposterous...but unusually trustworthy.

I'm not truly complaining due to the fact that this is one o the few employment opportunities I can arrange with little to no useful work experience. It is nice to know that the state of California sees the value in having a bachelor's degree, even if the majority of businesses seem not to.

With the economy in dire straits, experience seems to not only be the key to success, but mere employment. Many of my fellow recent graduates are maintaining jobs that do not require their available education level, merely because the market has such competition, and companies seem rather unwilling to provide the time, money and effort necessary to train and prepare a new hire for their position. They would rather plop someone in front of a computer screen knowing they could say "GO" and the individual would know what to do immediately.

This trend is rather unfortunate for my generation as the offspring of baby boomers in today's job market. However, with the baby boomers all creeping ever-so-closely to that retirement age, these corporations that have been employing this work force 30 plus years out of college, are facing a drop in the job pool. Once my parent's generation retires, they will have to bite the bullet and employ the lowly unskilled college grad.

The irony is with testing, curriculum and intense competition of enrollment in today's universities, I must toot my generation's own horn and say that I think we are smarter than our parents. The ever increasing requirements to graduate high school, to gain acceptance (even into state universities) is rapidly increasing due to the high volume of applicants. Every college is fortunate enough to claim that their exclusivity is at a record high. All I have to say is...thank our parents for shelling out the 2.5 kids their parents did before them.

My simply request is to the employers of this world. Knowing the high level of achievement required to graduate and even to gain enrollment in today's colleges, why have you not demonstrated acknowledgment of a diploma as a valuable enough achievement to find an entry level position in your firms and corporations? Obviously we are smart...and more than capable of learning. Chances are we learned more in our undergrad studies than you did in your master's program.

Think it over and get back to me.