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There is probably nothing more exciting, intriguing or wonderfully amazing than handing any cashier $2.27 for a $2.07 purchase and watching them squirm in confusion as they try to find their laptop computer.

We have advanced considerably in our educational system!

Teacher training is more imperative than school supplies; it is now lagging, due to lowered "standards" for students.

I look at my nieces and nephews. Such fine children, as are so many. They followed the required demand for school supplies. A number of notebooks of specified size, differing colors for differing subjects, a number of specified pens and pencils, a calculator which must include processes to figure equations, etc.

Ah, the much improved learning process.

How can I speak of "the good old days", except that by the end of my high school years, I realized that my parents had learned more in a shorter time than I had learned from my entire educational background? In addition, we went to the same public school.

I went to school in a time of mid-transition. Computers were not available until college, and I was in college when a new and innovative program called "Basic" came into being.

I say "mid-transition" because it was the time when schooling was not only mandatory and every child deserved the right to an education, but every child also deserved the right to graduate. Unlike in my parents day, when you actually had to "do the math", we had to do the time.

I was what was termed a "straight A student". In a time when letters, not numbers where used for grading purposes. A time that produced a "sliding scale", for grading had become the means for "fairness" not "learning" in the system. "Sliding scale" meant that if the top student in the class was actually "dumb as a door knob", that student was the "A" student and basis for the grading system for that particular class.

If you really were not quite sure of the subject, manipulation worked.

Pay attention to the Algebra/Trigonometry teacher. Be sure to have a "perplexed" look on your face. As the teacher spoke, you suddenly created a look of understanding. As if, the teacher had just lighted the bulb of wisdom about the subject at hand. Now, you were a "teacher's pet", always given a bit of an edge in grading because you obviously were a good student and a "learner".

Then, there came Mrs. Gettler. A teacher from the "old school", she

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