March 20, 2002

The refrain is so common nowadays I'm not sure whether anybody really believes it anymore. "American schools are crap" is the irritating and repeating chorus chanted by newspapers and magazines and nonfiction books nationwide. Every year the people of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, my hometown, get to check the local paper to see which schools are on academic alert or academic probation. Then the people of Tuscaloosa get to issue a collective sigh. "Sigh," they say. "And those standardized tests are so easy they could be passed by a dunking bird with a number two pencil."

What's the problem here? What can the federal government do to make this better? If you said, "Two outdated computers in every class room," you hit the nail on the head.

Computers, you see, will solve everything. The reason American schoolchildren aren't doing so well in things such as reading the English language is because they don't have enough experience downloading porn on the Internet. Computers, after all, are amazing electronic devices that people use in actual businesses in America, and according to commercials on Fox, they do all your thinking for you. It's just a question of knowing how to use them.

Of course, there are a few problems with this theory. First of all, it's very difficult for teachers to use two computers in any productive way when the class contains 30 students and the computers come equipped with little more than Microsoft Works 3.0 and Minesweeper. Second of all, it's even more difficult for many teachers to realize that computers aren't plague-infested corpses that happen to be incredibly fragile and students are allowed to touch them and occasionally turn them on.

Well, so much for that theory. We'll have to think up something else. If the problem isn't a lack of old 486's, the problem must lie somewhere else. Hmm. If only there were a way to solve America's education problem by pouring money into it but not changing anything or making the teacher unions mad. hmm.

There's always new buildings. It may not actually have anything to do with the quality of the education, but the appearance of the building has a lot of psychological impact. When your school building is strung up with barbed wire and sports the latest in metal detector and security camera technology one tends to feel like one is in prison. This has a negative impact. What is much preferred is to paint the building entirely white with splotches of happy rainbow colors here and there, with lots of plush carpet and soft, inoffensive electronic tones instead of the traditional harsh bells. This has the effect of making one feel like one is in a mental institution. This is definitely the way to go.

The fact of the matter is that you can get a good education in a dirty one-room schoolhouse so long as you have a teacher who knows what she is talking about, a student who is willing to learn, and a book that hasn't been recently dropped in a bathtub. (Or you could even do it in the public library, according to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting ). The trouble is that public schools presently have few, if any, of these things (good teachers, good students, dry textbooks, and Matt Damon).

Although just about every single teacher I've had has been wonderful, I've been lucky. There are a lot of stupid and ignorant teachers out there. Not to mention a whole lot of students who don't have the slightest desire to be there and who would rather make life miserable for everybody else. The secret to improving American education is somehow getting rid of all these people.

You can't get rid of students, however, because of mandatory school attendance. So that leaves the teachers. Unfortunately, you can't get rid of them either because of the teacher unions (insert dramatic and evil music), such as the NEA (motto: Keeping Pedophiles Employed in Elementary Schools Since 1857).

Now, I don't expect teachers to be masters in their field, necessarily. But I do think it would be nice if every teacher demonstrated a certain level of competency in certain areas, such as writing complete sentences. There are large numbers of teachers out there who don't have the slightest clue what they are talking about.

Not that you would know it from watching TV shows such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Why is it that every time a TV writer treats viewers to a little snippet of school life, we see the following scene: the students are seated at their desks, mostly patiently paying attention, while the teacher lectures, saying intelligent things like "Now the Bubonic plague was actually introduced to Europe through what means? Anybody?" only to be interrupted by the ringing of the bell? This is an incredibly unrealistic portrayal of high school. If I were ever to write a school scene such as this, I would make sure to include a reasonable degree of verisimilitude (which is a fun word to say). Half the class would be asleep in ludicrous positions, while the other half would be talking amongst themselves. The teacher would be seated at the desk, drawing on a sheet of computer paper with the board markers (you think I'm kidding, don't you?).

Now, I understand that there are excellent teachers out there. I've had a bunch of them. But from what I've observed and what people have told me, they're probably not in the majority. So, there you have a solution to America 's education problems: fire the stupid teachers and repeal mandatory school attendance. How do ya like them apples?