Over a most excellent fried filet of flounder, I struck up a conversation with the owners---Angel and Carlton Boutwell---about the education of their 10 and 13-year old daughters...as well as their views on education in general.  Angel and Carlton were 16 when they married.  Excepting a brief move to and stay in Georgia, she has worked at this establishment since she was ten years old....from doing the basics to now owning the place.  They have some strong views on schooling.

When they married at 16, she was not pregnant but was ostracized at school none the less.  She reports one teacher telling her outright, "you do not belong here."  She felt so unwanted that she decided to drop out.  He, on the other hand, graduated from the local high school.  They are both intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate individuals.  They both value education.  They both have high expectations for the education of their daughters, as well as for a niece who lives with them.

Angel and Carlton feel---as do MANY folks I have met over the first three weeks of this journey---that our schools are lacking in discipline and structure.  They feel that their school is too "touchy feely."  Respect for educators, by both children and adults, is too low to maximize effectiveness in their opinion.  They decried the practice in their local schools of the students calling their teacher by Mr. or Mrs. (insert) 'first name.'  So I would be called "Mr. Dan" rather than "Mr. Martin" there.  They felt that the principal should not be high-fiving the students and otherwise engaging them in a manner that is below the status and dignity of the office.  There should be a distance between the students and their principal.  Students should know that being in the principal's presence means something greater than a casual interaction.  I had to gulp and tug on my shirt collar, as I am one of those principals who engages the students in ways they decried.

They celebrated the structure of the schools their daughters briefly attended in Georgia.  They appreciated the ability grouping those schools employed.  They feel---like MANY---that the obsession with standardized assessments and accountability measures is actually hampering our schools.  One example Angel shared is how teachers are being stressed to the point of exhaustion and, as a result, a negative energy trickles down to the students in many ways.  We are human after all, Angel asserted, so how can we expect the exhausted and stressed teachers she knows to consistently overcome that during interactions with students? 

Beyond that, she asks, what are we teaching these students?  How to take tests?  I hear that a bunch.  All educators do.  She noted that when testing time approaches, the schools totally change their character in a last ditch effort to remediate and otherwise focus exclusively on pass rates.  Students are pulled from classes.  Special schedules are instituted.  Etc, etc.  I can attest to that tendency.  As an administrator, I have been part of that practice.

Is this what we are doing with our standardized assessments and accountability systems in American schools?

BTW, I enjoyed my conversation with Angel and Carlton.  Their food is really, really good.  I respect them.  If you find yourself around Hosford FL on Highway 20, two-miles east of 267, I recommend you eat at "Angel's Seafood By The Dam" ...just south of the dam!

I had several such lengthy conversations about education along my ride from Destin to Ocala on Day 12.  So much so that I rode in 'deadly darkness' through rural lands into the night.  A couple of hours after dodging a possum on a lonely rural road---which was the closest I've ever come to hitting a live ground animal on the cycle---I wearily pulled into the driveway of Bev and Steve McCarthy in Ocala, Florida.

---

Riding stats: Day 12---325.9 miles, 5 hours and 50 minutes of moving time, 5 hours and 55 minutes of stopped time, 55.9 moving average miles per hour, 27.7 overall average miles per hour, and 81.2 maximum speed.