I grew up with Depression Era stories from my maternal grandmother. The CCC was one of the Crown Jewels of her stories, although she hated FDR. In later years I talked with 2 older gentlemen in different areas who had been CCC workers. They told a not so glossy, warm or fuzzy story that included beatings, theft, sexual misconduct and some other not so nice tales. But, they got fed and got money to send home to the folks. Funny you never hear about much of that, but I suppose the winners do write the history.
I have never been good at making change. And I probably would have froze up like that counter girl these days. When we were homeschooling I was learning 7th and 8th grade math for the first time, or so it seemed. What we were taught, at least in my school, was nothing like what my kids were getting. I never had anything related to algebra, geometry or trig. In those days people that didn't "get math" were steered into a business course where math was adding, subtracting etc. I never took any course that had anything more complex than A + B = C. Not everything was perfect back in the day, and people were no more or less intelligent. We just used different methods and had different goals. That being said, if we were to strip our educational system of the useless trash and concentrate on EDUCATION, then yes, we'd be far ahead and we'd save oodles of money too.
