In high school, having grown up near Salt Lake City, driver's education was taught as a class during the normal school day. From what I understand now other parts of the country don't typically teach driver's ed during the school day. And, as someone working in education reform, I'm frankly quite disgusted with the idea that part of the school day is used to teach something so wholly unrelated to college readiness, or even just toward being a well rounded person. But, Salt Lake City also has seminary class as part of the normal school day which might be fine if they taught multiple religions but of course they don't. You want to take seminary you have one religion to choose from and guess which one. But, I digress. My point is this - in my high school driver's ed class I learned something that I've applied to my life and not just my driving habits and that is the IPDE process.
There are many people who may not recall/were never taught this very valuable life lesson so I would like to remind/educate those people now.
I - Identify
P - Predict
D - Determine
E - Execute
That is, one should identify a possible situation, predict any possible outcomes, determine an action, and execute accordingly.
In driving this applies to potential road hazards, merging onto the freeway, changing lanes, potholes, etc. In life this applies to confrontations, discussions, job applications, friendships, etc. In the 14 years since my enlightenment I've found that this simple procedure saves time and lives, which may mean that driver's ed taught in high school has at least one redeeming quality.
IPDE - learn it, love it, live by it.
1 comment:
Excuse me while I play the apologist, but just some points of clarification—
Seminary is considered release time, which is available to any student, and taken advantage of by many non-LDS students, as well. It doesn’t count toward graduation, though some other release time activities can be, such as certain employment. Other religious studies can be done during release time, also. The LDS church is the only one I know of, however, that buys up property adjacent to the schools to provide buildings for those studies. Here is an article from the ACLU on the subject:
http://www.acluutah.org/seminary.htm
Though I have no doubt that to those non-LDS students the omni-presence of the Seminary building, and the large portion of the student body trekking out there throughout the day, would serve as a daily question of “fairness”. Whereas random students going to random other release time activities, looking no different than someone leaving the campus for lunch, would be far more inconspicuous, and [perhaps] less insulting at times. No argument that is a definite uniquely “Mormon Belt” quirk.
As for Driver’s Ed, I was also surprised when I first left Utah and found out that most everywhere else the teaching portion is done in the private sector. I took it in the summer, so didn’t get credit for it, but it was awfully convenient to have it at the school. Though I don’t remember that acronym, mostly I remember a football-coach-turned-instructor yelling at some girl for nearly killing the rest of us on a back road near Kennecott. IPDE does seem to cross over into life better than my memory from the course. Oh, and watching Red Asphalt II.
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