One Reason to Stay in School

     I heard that as far as the educational level of nations around the world the U.S. is rated number 17. That’s sort of sad, but before I get too excited, I would want to know who arrived at that fact, and how they arrived at that fact, who paid for the study, and what they mean by educational level. Not that I’m suspicious of gratuitous information, but, well, I’m suspicious of gratuitous information. 
     Part of what I heard was that Canada was higher on the list than the U.S. Okay, I can believe that as Canadians are big on education. Then I read about a Canadian young man who had ordered a fake ID on the internet. When it didn’t come when he thought it should, he went to the police to file a complaint. Maybe this fellow wasn’t part of the data base used by the study. If he was, and we still came in 2nd, I despair. 
     Which reminds me that I’m half Canadian, from my mother’s side which brings up another painful observation. My grandfather and grandmother Spady grew up and lived in Russia for some time before immigrating. I’ve always wished that while living with us before he died, Grandpa would have passed on to me some of what he experienced of that culture, taught me some words in Russian, and/or told me about the culture and what it was like living in Russia at that time. 
     Now I’ve just realized that I’ve not passed on to my girls anything of my Canadian heritage. Of course, they’ve never shown any interest, but if given some time I’m sure I could come up with several interesting stories about our connection to Canada. The first one that comes to mind is our relationship to Sergeant Preston and his great dog King, who was a Northwest Mounted Policeman of some renown. The Sergeant was the policeman, and no we aren’t related to the great dog King. 
     But I digress. Let me draw a conclusion as you’ll not get it from reading the above. Stay in school, so that once again, we, the U.S., can hold it’s head up in pride. At least beat those Canadians.