Succeeding Generations Add Educational Achievements

My father, who was born on a farm in Ireland, never got beyondthe fifth grade of a country school.

Whenever I asked him about that, he said his own father hadremoved him from class because he was needed in the fields.

My mother, born in the United States, got halfway through the12th grade before dropping out.

Two generations later, my wife and I will watch the first of ouroffspring get a postgraduate degree..

In the space of two generations, the family will have progressedfrom the fifth-grade level to everything short of a doctorate. Isuspect that's the way things are in a lot of families.

That's a lot of education, and indeed, there have …