I dressed up as Walter White/Heisenberg from the show “Breaking Bad” for Halloween. Although I have nothing to do with the meth trade, I do have a number of factors in common with him. And while our common situations make only anecdotal commentary on education in the USA today, they nevertheless make an informed commentary.

I remember distinctly that I’d once dressed up like Walt in a CLEP Exam Prep class. Dockers, button-up shirt from a cheap store, and, above all, comfortable footwear. Teachers are on their feet a great deal, so they need as much comfort and support in that area as is possible. You want to make a teacher’s day? Give that teacher a gift card for a shoe store. The clothing is superficial, though. Let us get deeper into things.

In the first episode, Walt is slinging knowledge to a disinterested mass of faces. I’ve had that classroom, too. He’s obviously got a passion for his subject and a belief in its intrinsic value and that of knowledge itself, but the kids in that room don’t share that vision. While there’s a lot to be said for a broad education that offers a wide range of subjects to everyone in school, there’s also the counter: what is the point in learning all that stuff? Really?

If it’s worth knowing, it’s on the state-mandated standardized test, right? And if it’s on the state-mandated standardized test, it’s easy enough for people at or above one standard deviation below average intelligence to pass. While those students right around that one standard deviation below average are struggling with the content, those that are average or better are left adrift. They get asked to tutor those that aren’t as bright, do review after review, and then chastised when, out of boredom, they do something disruptive. Thanks to cell phones, disruptions tend to be quieter these days. Also thanks to cell phones, disruptions tend to be more widespread these days. But those are the options for our hapless average-and-better students in a mainstream classroom.

The next step up is a doozy: the AP track. College Board makes no secret of its pass rates. It posts them for all to see, and quite a few tests hover around the 50% mark. Even so, school boards and administrators think that hard work and gumption are the perfect tonic for getting kids to ace those tests. College Board differs, and has the data to back up its position from the outset. It offers a tool for recruiting potential AP students called “AP Potential.” I love straightforward names like that. AP Potential will look at PSAT scores to determine a child’s potential for passing a particular AP exam. Recruiters can select a pass rate for their classes. If one desires a 100% pass rate, AP Potential will offer up the names of students that scored very highly on the PSAT. If one desires a 50% pass rate, AP Potential will offer up the same high-fliers and then, working its way down the list of scores, will offer up an equal number of students that didn’t score as highly on the PSAT. Those guys are the ones College Board is essentially saying are going to fail to pass the AP exam. It’s not a matter of hard work and gumption: they simply don’t have the aptitude at that time.

No matter! Schools are ranked by the number of kids that take the AP test, regardless of outcome, so into those classes they must go! Although I haven’t yet seen an AP Chemistry section in Breaking Bad, I’ve taught enough AP sections to know right from wrong in setting up those courses. Too often, the AP class has the opposite of the regular class, with the students at or above two standard deviations above average intelligence doing fairly well and everyone else left in the dust. AP courses used to be offered as enrichment to students already familiar with the basic material. Now they are frequently the introduction to that material, which means that the less-apt students in those courses lack the fundamentals needed to flourish in that course. They go on to take the same course in college and typically do very well in the course, but it’s only after getting raked over the coals in an AP course and being part of the 50% of American kids that don’t pass the exam.

So there’s a huge chunk of kids in between the range from special education on up to above-average intelligence that aren’t really being served by the school system. I saw Walt trying to reach them, and I tried to reach them. It’s not really working all that well. I remember, once upon a time when I was in high school, that there were five different tracks for students, allowing for a spectrum of class offerings where students in the class were homogeneous with each other. Now, instead of showing the students that they’re individually important, we tell them they’re as unique as snowflakes and then warehouse them like commodities.

It’s torture for the kids and it’s a beat-down for the teachers. Teachers teach because they want to reach out to kids and show them a bigger world. They want to guide and inform. They don’t share the vision of the state that mandates their primary duty is to provide custodial supervision of minors during campus hours. They are insulted by a system that tells them to either offer up a minimum of information and then drill it until everyone has memorized it or to turn on a firehose of facts and analysis without regard of a student’s ability to receive that much information that quickly. Increasingly, school districts are reaching for canned information so that teachers have less and less discretion in the classroom. Why? It’s so that the district can absolve itself of responsibility in the event a student fails to pass a test. If the teacher didn’t present all the canned material on time, then, obviously, it’s the teacher’s fault for the student’s failure: certainly not the district’s.

And, yes, I see that in Walt’s face. Maybe the actor just copied other teachers he saw without knowing everything that went into the outward appearance but, like the clothes, it’s a dead-on portrayal.

It’s also one of the reasons I left teaching.

I suppose I should write more about that subject, now that I’m able to look back on my decision with some time intervening. I had a number of reasons for leaving the profession, and many of them stem from administrative and legislative decisions that have an adverse impact on the entire educational system.

Since I’m doing a long haul every day in to work, I needed to get some new tunes for the trip. I am thrilled that I treated myself to Deep Purple’s latest studio disc, “Now What?!”. I loved “Purpendicular”, enjoyed “Abandon”, but was disappointed by “Bananas.” “Rapture of the Deep” let me know that “Bananas” was a slight mis-step, but I still wasn’t 100% satisfied with it as a put it on and leave it on disc, the way I felt about the best DP offerings. Happily, “Now What?!” returns to that set-it-and-forget-it level of quality. I can put it on and relax, knowing full well that every track hits on all cylinders.

There were times listening to it when I thought it sounded like a Yes album or a Pink Floyd set. It’s Deep Purple through and through, but they band has chosen 2013 as the year to really open up on their progressive side. I’m not complaining: I think the result is marvelous. But if you’re looking for the straight-no-chaser rock and roll of “Machine Head” or the MkIII lineup, this is not the album you’re looking for. If you enjoyed the more introspective and moody tracks from “Fireball” and “Who Do We Think We Are!”, then this is the one for you.

Lyrically, the disc has many dark moments – comments on current financial practices providing the fuel for those statements. “Blood From a Stone” pulls no punches and “Uncommon Man” is filled with acid. “Hell to Pay” is a chorus rocker from 1983 that manages to fit in well with the progressive mix on the rest of the album. How did they do that? And “Vincent Price” is straight out of The Damned’s goth playbook, but, again, it fits masterfully. These gramps with amps certainly remember how to craft a great hard rock album with richness of content that keeps a listener coming back for more. I may still pick and choose from the last two of their studio offerings, but I really think I got this lineup’s best efforts since “Purpendicular” on these tracks.

If you like classic rock, but are tired of the same thing over and over on the radio, then get this disc and get into some great tracks that should be all over the airwaves. That they are not has more to do with robot-generated playlists and MTV not showing videos than the merit of the songs themselves. I don’t know how many more albums Deep Purple has left in them, but I’m glad they got this one out. 10 out of 10 on this one, because I like DP with prog flourishes.

Robert S. McNamara once said that a salient cause behind the failure of American policies in Vietnam was our inability to understand the motivations of our opponents there. We understood our opponents in the Cuban Missile Crisis, so nuclear war was averted there. We did not understand Vietnam, so we failed in our goal of securing a friendly, democratic government there. We now find ourselves in a new struggle with Russia, this time involving Syria. Proper understanding of the situation there is going to be vital if we want any hope of a peaceful resolution that all parties find acceptable.

Understanding Russia is simple in this case: they need to sell gas to Western Europe to survive. A pipeline from Qatar to Turkey through an Assad-less Syria is a cut across Russia’s throat. Who does Russia sell its gas to if not Europe? How does Russia survive if it does not get money from the sale of gas?

With survival on the line, Russia will risk even war to keep that pipeline from happening. Do we in the USA understand that? Are we in the USA willing to risk even war so that Qatar can sell gas to Europe and al-Qaeda can add Syria to the list of nations it has a free hand to operate in?