Walking down a lane through the camp where I was working the summer of 1989, near Roanoke, Virginia, I bent over, picked a dewberry, and stuck in my mouth. Another staff member immediately became alarmed and asked me if I knew what I had just put in my mouth.

Hailing from the arid southwest, perhaps our lush natural landscape was somewhat overwhelming for him, but to assume that a mountain boy would be unfamiliar with edible berries native to Southern Appalachia would have been insulting enough if it were not for the regional stereotypes, based on assumption, that were thrown up to me numerous times that summer.

All too often it seems that as a people, we are assumed to be not only ignorant but stupid. The presumption defies commonsense. Successive generations of mountain people survived partially because they knew what they could and could not eat of nature's bounty.

Unlike blackberries, dewberries do not grow in clusters. Some plants are male. Others are female. The females, of course, bear the berries.

Unlike dewberries, blackberry briars are asexual and can be self-pollinating depending on how the pollinator flies. Blackberries ripen throughout the month of July in East Tennessee. As any mountain youth, who has spent any time in a blackberry patch picking the delicious summer fruit, knows that within the same cluster in which berries ready for the picking can be found there are likely to be berries that have not ripened as well as some that may be overripe. Some berries on the same cluster may never ripen.

Even when fruit bearing plants are pollinated by different varieties of the same species there will be no difference in the fruit, but the seed will carry a different genetic code.

Here in lies a lesson from the blackberry patch. Very few variables are involved as to why berries within the same cluster ripen at different rates while some never ripen at all. Obviously soil and hydration are not factors. Differences in sunlight and shading are negligible. Minor genetic variations are possible depending on the course of the pollinator, but would have no impact on the fruit.

Like blackberries in a cluster, children within a classroom, a school, or a school system cannot all be reasonably expected to meet the same developmental milestones at the exact same time. Some will race ahead while others, no longer how long they remain in a traditional educational setting, will never meet some milestones. This upcoming election season offers us the opportunity to take the very politicians, who have mandated a system of achievement test to be used to compare the effectiveness of teachers, schools, and entire school systems, to the proverbial woodshed when we cast our ballots. There are more variables between children than can be identified much less tracked and charted.

The handwriting sample accompanying this column, a page from a booklet I wrote and assembled as a child, is from what must have been one of if not my first attempt to write local history. I found two such booklets in my Mother's things years after her death. I remembered writing them, but hadn't thought about them in years. One was a history of LaFollette. The other focused more on the area between LaFollette and Demory with an emphasis on Whitman Hollow.

I was not able to date them specifically, but they were written close to if not past my ninth birthday (July 29, 1970) based on a reference to a May 1970 death in the family. Obviously, my written language skills were several years below grade level. Although I showed an early interest in writing history, I expect that many people would have quickly ruled out the possibility of any future success as a history writer.

As I prepare to celebrate yet another birthday, I am reminded that the expansive increase in knowledge of learning differences is not reflected within our public educational system. Were we to collectively acknowledge the reality that not every child can be expected to meet the same academic milestones at the exact same time, based on age or grade level placement, it would invalidate the model that the state has implemented for the evaluation of teachers, schools, and entire school systems.

Interpretation of Writing Sample

Mr. LaFollette

Big Creek Gap went just as usual until Mr. LaFollette came and built the LaFollette House. He started a iron furnace. People came to work. Then he named it LaFollette.