Bob Schieffer's America

I just finished Bob Schieffer's America, a great book of his CBS commentaries that's wrapping up the tail end of my summer of reading. Among many interesting anecdotes, such as early video bootlegging, where reporters got a movie into a cassette form while in the middle of nowhere then watched it on their editing equipment, or the time he formed an "exploratory committee" for the hell of it and was sent $200, including a dollar with strings literally attached, was something I had never thought of before.

Before the equality of the sexes was any sort of value in this country, when women lacked legal protections against harassment and unfair hiring practices, there were two viable career paths that allowed for independence: nursing and teaching. Thus all of the women most interested in working were competition for a limited set of jobs, which meant that nurses and teachers came from the elite of half the country's population. And, because of wage inequities, the hospitals and schools didn't cost too much either.

It doesn't justify what happened, but perhaps the hale we find ourselves in in regards to education and healthcare is based more on expectations than reality. (which is not to say that we can and should *really* improve on these fronts.)