Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Tag: education

  • Balloon Day

    The balloons filled the air, hundreds and hundreds of them squirming around each other in the wind. The sky turned red, yellow, blue, and green as they raced away. A cross current soon caught them, drawing them across the sky on their way to who knows where. Six hundred children gathered on the school’s back…

  • The $60,000 baseball cap

    When I was 17, I was very fortunate to be accepted into Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a school of science and engineering, one of the best in the nation. It was also one of the two most expensive schools in Indiana, competing each year for that title with the University of Notre Dame. Upon graduation,…

  • Schools driven by standardized tests take all joy out of learning

    I was in the third grade when Indiana’s standardized math and reading test, the ISTEP, was introduced in public schools. I remember parents expressing fears that these tests would be used to drive what was taught and to rate teachers and schools. I remember school officials swearing up one side and down the other that…

  • Balloon Day

    The balloons filled the air, hundreds and hundreds of them squirming around each other in the wind. The sky turned red, yellow, blue, and green as they raced away. A cross current soon caught them, drawing them across the sky on their way to who knows where. Six hundred children gathered on the school’s back…

  • I wouldn’t be a writer were it not for the computer

    Much hullabaloo was made in June when the Indiana Department of Education sent a memo to schools that made teaching cursive handwriting optional and emphasized teaching keyboarding skills. The decision touched a statewide nerve, and the responses were binary: hands were wrung, or relief was sighed. All of my sons, I’m sure, are in the…

  • Why New Jersey’s anti-bullying law is both too much and not enough

    A few boys started to pick on me a little when I was in the fifth grade. I was never a fighter; I always wanted to get along, and so I always tried to just laugh it away. Sometimes they were a little belligerent, and I tried to keep the peace by appeasing them. When…