Is it possible that teenagers would take the easy way out? Or is this another Bush misadministation masterstroke?? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/15/education/15GED.html?th According to NYT reporter Karen Arenson: Roughly one of every seven high school diplomas granted in the United States in recent years has gone to someone who has passed the tests, known as the G.E.D. And the proportion of school-age students taking that route has risen sharply. Nationally, teenagers accounted for 49 percent of those earning G.E.D.'s in 2002, up from 33 percent a decade earlier. Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York were among the states where teenagers accounted for more than half of those earning G.E.D.'s. in 2002. This begs the question of whether the teens are opting out of traditional high school because of the wonderful economic opportunities of the Bush regime's vaulted recovery and of course the love the child not the sinner aspects of No Child Left Behind (Why would only children be at the end of the line anyway?): Experts attribute the flood of young people in part to the difficulty in finding a decent job without a high school diploma, and in part to the increased difficulty of earning a traditional high school diploma in many states. In an increasingly high tech vs. service economy, one has to be concerned about the peculiarly American cultural value of devaluing education. Of course, some one has to ask the eternal question about human nature: "Would you like to supersize that?" Certainly the stellar credentials of Mr. Preznit speak to the value of education, hard work, and challenge... I mean just think about his successful career in the oil bidness. Ok, ok that is a bad example. Or surely Mr. Preznit is a good illustration of educational achievement, after all he went to what was once considered a good university. Damn, that's not going to work for my point here because his only "A" came from a teacher who did not grade anything. He was elected... Um, that doesn't work either. Gosh, dear readers, I am going to have to admit that Mr. Preznit stands as an eample of distrust and deconstruction (thank you French thinkers)of what was once one a core American value: Education. I wonder if that was one of the values ingrained in Mr. Bush that Karl Rove was referring to earlier this week?