'Deaccessioned'

"Idiosyncratic, Yes! Dated, absolutely! Some might find the tiles and rill in the Persian garden, the curved ridge and tiny raked Japanese garden, and the positively eye-popping English herbaceous border cliched, but my friends and I were charmed by their theatricality and found stepping back into this 60's time warp a heady experience." These words were commentary about the Doris Duke Farms and Greenhouses which are today to be transformed into environmentally different spaces thanks the changing wishes of her Foundation. Some greenery, the writer tells me, will be deaccessioned (a coined about 1970 to the retirement of - in some cases - museum artifacts.

Close to 1970, education in America began to be deaccessioned. until we have a system that - using the words of a local mayor to refer to contributions to the upcoming Fourth of July Red White and Boom fireworks show - is " ½ way short." Tell me, oh tell me why a school psychologist must be employed by a system that has a "trickle-down curriculum push," "functional behavioral assessment," "intervention with integrity," a goal of "inclusion" to "separate,""peer assisted learning" that is "researched based intervention"? Tell me, then tell me why students now possess less knowledge than ever when they leave grammar school, high school and college? "Tweak," "tweak," "tweak," was the favorite repetition of the professional counselor speaking about helping each individual student achieve self-esteem and success.

There were some "good ‘ole days " in spite of what politicians and educators today might think. Learning has been degraded into a politically-correct cliche when you reflect upon the motto that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste."