Hi blogsters:

I was sitting here messing with the numbers trying to get back into things after several days of not doing it, but one side of my mind was kicking around the issue of lottery funding of education.  It's an ongoing set of discussions on the threads, all facets of the matter.

A couple of decades ago I had the experience for several years of hiring newly graduated BS and BA rosy cheeks into a professional staff.  During that time I made a lot of false assumptions.  One of those false assumptions was that the people I had working for me could read and write in English sufficiently to author business letters.

One day I was subpoenoed to testify in a matter involving issues my staff had been peripherally involved in for several years and had written a lot of letters concerning the matter in dispute.

I spent a couple of days on the witness stand with attorneys holding up poster sized copies of letters written by my staff for me and the jury to try and decypher some meaning from.

The result was that when I returned to my duties a number of my staff members were given a choice of not writing letters or taking a night-course in remedial English.

Okay.  That experience is the launch-pad.

Those education dollars aren't resulting in students learning the basic skills in much of anything we'd qualify as an education.  But nowadays gambling money is being used to sponsor more of the same.

So how about this:

Let the schools offer courses in 'practical education' to help provide more dollars for education funding.

Offer courses in Lottery Odds.  V-trac.  Wheels.

Give them the means to hold their own against a casino.  Teach them whether to split a pair of 8s when they're looking at a dealer 10 on a blackjack table.  Whether to hit a 12 looking at a dealer 12.  Whether to hit a 14 looking at a dealer 12.  Whether to hit a soft 17.

Teach them stud poker.  Teach them the odds when they find themselves in the worst hand possible on a poker table..... a low full house in the first five cards looking across the table at trip Aces.  Teach them they got to bet them high and risk sleeping in the gutter.

Teach them to deal cards so they can get jobs in gambling joints when they get out of high school.

Those kids need to be taught something while they're in school.  Might as well make it something that will help them make more money for education.

Jack