back in the day

yesterday i talked to my geometry coach from high school. that's right, geometry "coach". back in the day there were a couple three wack classes at the ol' academy. my school has roots as a school for farm boys who wanted to get off the farm, and so sports were a bit more important than geometry. wait, let me rephrase that. sports were a bit more important than sophomore geometry, which was the "regular" math track. i was supposed to be in freshman geometry, but for some reason i ended up in the soph class when i was a frosh. the school does have a history in strong academics and college prep.

but i digress. this man was my geometry coach. he is true old-school gentleman. he is polite, caring, genuine. i had heard he retired, so i said, "i heard you retired." and he was like, "yeah, more like i was asked to retire." that didn't sound good to me. we talked about it for a while and the bottom line is the ol' academy has changed more in the past 5 years than it changed in the previous 100. the new administration does not care one whit about the long history of the school - they only care about the modern-day competition for student tuition dollars and therefore about measuring up against some external standard. coach geometry said that in less than 5 years there won't be a face left there i'd recognize.

it's a shame for the ol' academy and it's also a commentary on the state of our world today. we have no respect for history. hell, not only do we have no respect for it, we have no knowledge of it. we don't even remember things that happened a few years ago, much less REAL history.

history is the foundation of society and as with a house, if you ignore the maintenance of the foundation, the structure will collapse.