Many years hence history will turn a fond eye back on the hazy days in the first decade of the 21st century, looking to assess the presidency of the courageous, near-prescient Bush II. At that time, it will become clear that Dubya’s greatest political coup was his “No Child Left Behind” plan. Not only is it a model of economic brilliance with its revolutionary approach to funding, but also its result will be the creation of a whole new class of U.S. workers.
If one wants to create a more perfect society, one must carefully allocate one’s resources, be they monetary or otherwise. Efficiency must be the byword here. There’s no need to waste time, money, or effort on superfluous activities, or the cultivation of useless skill sets.
One positive development has been the wide-scale elimination of needless classes in elementary education. Classes like music and art redirect essential energies into realms that, at best, serve as sop to the socially mediocre (bread and circuses). Computers, for instance, can easily generate music, music that is not only more mathematically correct, but also more profitable, given the increased amount of “songs” that can be moved into the market. Art, too, is better made by computers, or, if the proper software is unavailable or otherwise lacking, a highly-trained few who can generate the most art in the least time, with the maximum “inspiration quotient,” as it’s called (IQ being art’s ability to enable the worker to more happily go about his or her labor. Happy workers are effective workers, after all).
And let’s not overlook the elephant in the room here: artists and musicians are notorious troublemakers, irresponsible, intellectually lazy roustabouts who spend their time clogging the gears of the otherwise healthy machinery of American culture. I’m thinking of people like Jane Fonda, Paul Robeson and Bob Dylan when I say that, at root, the teaching of music and art to young children is a dangerous gamble, with our future as a society at stake.
Who knew that Dubya and crew would devise such a cunning gambit to defund education in this country, which serves to keep dangerous influences like music class, crack cocaine and finger-painting out of our schools; thus we eliminate this undesirable segment of society. Who knew that, here in Oregon, our fair state’s embrace of this shiny new paradigm would go to such heights? Perhaps it’s just as well that we be consistently at the bottom of countrywide school quality analyses: it’s well known that Oregon is home to hundreds, if not thousands, of dangerous, drug-addled criminals, shambling bleary-eyed from orgy to orgy, needles spiking their arms like tattered umbilical cords, looking for innocent young blond girls to rape. Parents, I warn you: keep your daughters out of Eugene at all costs, lest they fall prey to the miasma of patchouli-and-marijuana-smoke (“reefer” the dope-heads call it) and remain there forever, asses spreading into couch after couch all across Lane County. Not that Multnomah’s that much better.
So it’s a damn good thing that more schools are going to be closed here in Portland. Such multiplicity of schools as we have had here for decades merely offers a confusing choice to young parents, not to mention their small children. Who can tell one school from another? (Anyway, they all smell the same, just like you remember: chalk and cafeteria and windex). Better to consolidate. More efficient that way. Why do we need artificial stratification in our schools, by which I mean, why do we need “preschool,” “elementary school,” “middle school,” “high school” and “college”? Just think of the money we’d save in typesetting costs alone were we to consolidate these into one unified entity: school. That way we could have K to 12 schools, with an optional 13th through 16th grades, to be paid for by students themselves. This money can then be used to buy guns for our various crusades ?” oops, I mean wars to spread democracy.
Portland Public Schools Superintendent Vicki Phillips has proposed shutting seven schools over three to four years amid declining enrollment, and converting 17 schools to a K-8 format, but her suggestion is far too timid. As long as we continue to coddle our youth, we can be assured that the result will be consistently dire: “free-thinking” little reprobates hell-bent on scuttling any decent Christian social movements (like Boy Scouts, prayer in school, the Pledge of Allegiance, et al.), piercing and tattooing themselves indiscriminately while having unprotected gay sex at fourteen, inevitably to end up filling prison cells, homeless shelters and jack-shack employee lounges.
Friends, stop this nonsense before it starts! I beg of you, continue to de-fund education! Dubya’s New World Order depends on it!