The other day I stopped into a café for coffee. I had my choice of cup sizes:

"Tiny": $1.15
Medium: $1.40
Large: $1.65
"Sooper Dooper": $1.90

When it was my turn, I said, "Tiny coffee, please".

Another woman in line asked if she could please see the "tiny" cup. I asked her, "Isn't it refreshing to see a small cup accepting reality and not demanding to be called 'Tall'?"

Last year, a study of California's public high school graduating class showed that fully 25% (!) of the students were issued diplomas SHORT OF mastery of the required material. In my day, those kids were left back. But today's teachers issue passing grades to reward merely showing up at their classes.
These MILLIONS of high school "graduates" are then free to attend so-called Universities (often Self-Esteemese for colleges, which is often Self-E'ese for High School remedial study centers). When they attain the high-esteem title "University Graduate", they can call themselves "professionals", it seems, at anything they do...I'm reminded of the Soviet Union, where plumbers and handymen were called "Engineers".

There was the story in the San Francisco Chronicle last week, applauding an inner city Oakland high school delivering a 100% graduation-rate: An outfit under the reformist policy of a nonprofit that is opening such "successful" "schools" across the country. According to this article, "Real world experiences are stressed as more important learning tools than direct instruction and testing", and "There are no final exams, no letter grades...students spend only three days a week in classrooms".

"I started liking school", said one "graduate", "because I got to learn what I wanted to learn", (leaving the "university" to teach her how to READ?).

One of the school's own first students, however, tells it like it is: "[S]he feels the school does not prepare students for traditional academic courses and standardized tests as well as the other schools do". 'Nuff said?

Maybe Starbucks' market research showed that its male customers, in particular, don't want to order anything called "Small", let alone "Tiny". Thus they can feel like tough caballeros when they order their 8 oz.-or-less cuppa "Tall" in the saddle. (Remember "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"?)

Leave it to San Francisco, and a local company herein, to take stabs at the Big Guns... OK: That's another story. Meanwhile we have a generation to educate.

Pass the Half-&-Half.