I solve the school problem.

 

I have been out of school for a very long time.  When I took my last college class, computers certainly weren’t personal – they weighed five hundred pounds and drew about a million amps of current.

            This distance from the educational system combined with the experience of watching my kids go through it has made me an educational expert.

            Come on – you don’t think I’m an expert but you think the people in the educational system today are? I don’t have a graduate degree in educational whatsis, but just by applying common sense I could totally make our schools number one in the nation instead of number forty nine.

           

The gun problem

 

            This one’s easy. Any time a kid goes to school with a gun, his or her parents do serious time in prison. Not both of them – somebody will have to stay home to continue to raise little trigger happy junior after he gets out of jail – but either mom or dad will go to prison. Same thing for physical assaults on campus. If a kid beats up or bullies another kid his parents go to prison just like he does. That ought to make some parents sit up and take notice of what their little ankle biters are doing.

            Also, as an adjunct solution to the gun problem and the wider societal problem of people shooting people we will never again allow an excuse for doing it. I don’t care if you were raped by a minister dressed like a nurse when you were five. There is no excuse for shooting people, okay Cha-Che?

 

            The boredom problem

 

            The reason I didn’t like school while I was there is the same reason that kids don’t like school today. It is boring as all get-out. I would completely throw away any textbooks being used now. They were written by educators and because of that they are boring to the max. For reading material we could easily substitute a transcript of the Oprah show for a reading textbook.

            Imagine the fun our students would have if instead of reading about how a car worked they tore one apart in front of the school.

            Going to class, by the way, would be optional. Most classes are a total waste of time because the teachers spend most of it trying to control the four or five kids who clearly should not be there. I don’t just mean the out of control kid either. Scratch the surface of a misbehaving kid and you usually find an intelligent, bored kid. By the way, if the kid misbehaves more than a few times the parents will be required to sit next to the little darling every day in school for six weeks.

 

Lunch time is the right time

 

            No more cafeterias where people slop whatever slop they want to slop on a student’s plate. Kids who don’t bring their own lunch will be expected to make their own. Extend lunch time by thirty minutes a day and turn the kids loose on the kitchen. They may not learn how to read or write in our schools but at least they will be able to make a grilled cheese sandwich when they enter the big, wide world.

 

Libraries

 

            Quadruple their size. One hundred plus internet connected computers in each library. Divide the library into a loud section and a quiet section. Most kids read with the radio blasting but shun libraries because of the lack of blasting radios. Wouldn’t you rather have them in the library studying to the sound of loud music than not going to the library at all? Who started this “be quiet in the library” nonsense anyway?

 

Busses

 

            Sell all the busses. Kids should not have to wait outside in the rain and cold for hours and hours a week just so we can say we are racially balanced. I totally believe in racially balancing our schools. Do it with cars. Pick the kids up and drive them there in something with a seatbelt that doesn’t reek of depression and prison cold metal. The money we save on bussing everybody everywhere could be spent on a fleet of Lexus automobiles with decent sound systems.

 

Finally – Make School Voluntary

 

            We legally force kids to go to public schools today. The reason the schools are so mediocre is because they know they have a captive audience. Let’s face it – a lot of the kids get absolutely nothing out of the experience and some get killed. If school attendance was voluntary and not forced by the state the teachers and administrators would have to come up with a business and educational plan that would actually attract students.

            Right now the educators are all about attracting funding, not students. That is why they have campaigns to raise attendance. The reason they actually give in their commercials is that in order to get state and federal money we have to make our kids attend more. That is totally backwards.

            One last opinionated word: We should immediately turn down any and all federal funding for our schools. They are our kids, we should educate them. We waste more time jumping through hoops to please the federal government then we spend on teaching kids. No more teaching kids to learn a test so we can get more money. How sick is that?