by Dave Barry
A Little Learning
Basic Frog Glop
A distinguished, high-level, blue-ribbon federal panel of people wearing suits recently released a report concluding that (and here I quote directly): “The American public-education system has done just about as good a job of educating the nation’s children as might be expected from a bucket of live bait.” The report presented some shocking statistics to support this finding:
For the past eleven years, American students have scored lower on standardized tests than European students, Japanese students and certain species of elk; Seventy-eight percent of America’s school principals have, at some point in their careers, worn white belts or shoes to school; Nobody in the entire United States remembers the exact date of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.
The bottom line is that the educational system, which costs over
$200 billion a year, is an unmitigated disaster. This is good news for everybody. It’s good news for those of us who went to high school back when the schools were supposed to be better, because we can feel superior to today’s students. When we go to shopping malls and see batches of teenagers standing around and laughing in a carefree teenaged manner, we can reassure ourselves by saying: “Those kids may be attractive and slim and healthy, and they may have their entire lives ahead of them and no gum problems whatsoever, but by God they never learned how to conjugate the verb ‘to squat’ in Latin, the way I had to when I was in school.”
The panel’s report is also good news for the kids, because it confirms their suspicion that they wouldn’t have learned anything even if they had been paying attention in class instead of trying to see who could most accurately guess how large, in square inches, the sweat stain under the teacher’s left armpit would be by the time the bell rang.
But most of all, the panel’s report is good news for the teachers, school administrators and other members of the American educational establishment, because as the people most responsible for screwing up the educational system in the first place, they will naturally expect to be given a great deal more money to fix it.
So everybody is pleased as punch to have blue-ribbon federal proof that the school system stinks on ice, and everybody is busy coming up with helpful suggestions for making the schools good again, the way they were when they were turning out real geniuses like the people who are making the suggestions. For example, President Reagan checked in from the planet Saturn with the suggestion that we need to go back to voluntary prayer in the schools. Now I think we can all agree that making our children pray voluntarily will certainly help, but we need to do more. We need to get Back to the Basics, back to the kinds of learning activities you and I engaged in.
For example, every student in the country should be required to read Ethan Frome unless he or she has a written doctor’s excuse. As you no doubt vaguely recall, Ethan Frome is a book you had to read when you studied early American novels because it turns out there were hardly any good early American novels. As I remember the plot, Ethan Frome falls in love with this woman, so they decide to crash into a tree on a sled. The sled crash is the only good part, and it lasts only about a page. But the way I look at it, if I had to read Ethan Frome, I don’t see why these little snots today should get out of it.
They should also be forced to disassemble frogs, the way we did in biology. Remember? You’d slice your frog up with a razor and root around inside, looking for the heart and the kidney and the other frog organs that were clearly drawn in several colors in the biology textbook, until eventually you realized that you must have been issued a defective frog, because all you could ever find inside was frog glop. So you just poked at the glop for a while and then drew the heart, etc., from the biology textbook. This taught you about life. When I was in school, I also had to do a worm, although I’m not suggesting that all of today’s students should have to do worms. Maybe just the really disruptive ones.
So that’s my back-to-basics program: Ethan Frome, frogs, and maybe some class discussion of the cosine. And any kid who doesn’t know the exact date of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent (December 24, 1814) will be held back for another year, or, if the Russians appear to be getting ahead of us in space again, shot.
Schools Not So Smart
One of the more popular ways to feel superior these days is to complain about the schools. We adults just love to drone on about how much better educated we are than our kids. We say stuff like: “These kids today. They get out of high school and they don’t even know how to read and write. Why, in my day we read Moby-Dick eighty-four times in the fourth grade alone.” And so on. Adults just eat this kind of talk right up.
Well, I hate to disillusion everybody, but it’s all a crock. We aren’t better educated than our kids: they’re just less drivel-oriented.
The main evidence adults offer to prove kids are less educated is the fact that Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores are declining. You remember SAT’S. You got your number-two pencils and sat in the cafeteria for two hours answering questions like this:
Fred wants to redo his bathroom in pink wallpaper, so he invites Sam over to help. If Fred’s bathroom is eight feet by five feet and has a seven-foot ceiling, and each roll of wallpaper is 32 inches wide, how long will Sam take to realize there is something just
a little bit strange about Fred?
SAT tests are designed by huge panels of experts in education and psychology who work for years to design tests in which not one single question measures any bit of knowledge that anyone might actually need in the real world. We should applaud kids for getting lower scores.
When you and I were in high school, we thought we had to learn all that crap so we could get into college and get good jobs and houses with driveways. The problem is that so many of us went to college that college degrees became as common, and as valuable, as bowling trophies. Kids today are smart enough not to waste brain cells trying to figure out how long Train A Will take to overtake Train B just so they can go to college. That’s why so many colleges are desperate for students. Any day now you’ll be watching a late movie on UHF television and you’ll see this ad:
“Hi! I’m Huntingdon Buffington Wellington the Fourth, dean of admissions at Harvard University. I’ll bet more than once you’ve said:
‘I sure would like to go to a big-time Ivy League university, but I lack the brains, the background, and the requisite number of dinner jackets.’ Well, this is your lucky day, because Harvard University is having its semiannual Standards Reduction Days. That’s right: we’re admitting people we once wouldn’t have allowed to work in our boiler room. And for the first one hundred applicants who call our toll-free number, we’re offering absolutely free this honorary degree written in genuine Latin words.”
Another reason you shouldn’t feel better educated than your kids is that almost everything your teachers told you is a lie. Take the continents. I bet they told you Europe was one continent, and Asia was another. Well, any moron with a map can plainly see Europe and Asia are on the same continent. I don’t know who started the lunatic rumor that they were two continents. I suspect it was the French, because they wouldn’t want to be on the same continent with, say, the Mongolians.
And what about those maps they showed you? Greenland looked enormous, bigger than Russia. If Greenland were really that big, it would be a Major Power. All the other nations would stay up late nights worrying about it. But the truth is Greenland is smallish and insignificant. The other nations rarely even invite it to parties.
So don’t think you’re so smart.
Why We Don’t Read
Every so often I see a news article in which some educator gets all wrought up about the fact that people don’t read books anymore:
WASHINGTON (Associated Press)—Noted educator Dr. Belinda
A. Burgeon-Wainscot, speaking before the American Association of People Who Use the Title
‘Doctor’ Even Though They’re Not Physicians, but Merely Graduate School Graduates, Which
Are As Common These Days As Milkweed Pollen
(AAPIVUTDETTANPBMGSGWAACTDAMP), said today that people don’t read books anymore. At least that’s what we here at the Associated Press think she said. She spoke for about two hours, and used an awful lot of big words, and frankly we dozed off from time to time.
Well, I am not a noted educator, but I know why most of us don’t read books. We don’t read books because, from the very beginning of our school careers, noted educators have made us read books that are either boring or stupid and often both. Here’s what I had to read in first grade:
“Look, Jane,” said Dick. “Look Look Look. Look.”
“Oh,” said Jane. “Oh. Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh. Look.”
“Oh,” said Spot. “Oh my God.”
Now I’m not claiming that we first graders were a bunch of geniuses, but we didn’t spend the bulk of the day saying “Look,” either. We thought Dick and Jane were a drag, so many of us turned to comic books, which were much more interesting and informative. When I was in first grade, the Korean War was going on, So I read comiC books with names like
“GI Combat Death Killers,” featuring American soldiers with chin stubble who fought enemy Communist orientals with skin the color of school buses. These comic books had lots of new and exciting words:
“Commie attack! Hit the dirt!”
BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA
“Grenade! Grenade!”
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMKABOOOOOOM
“Joe! They got Joe! Eat lead, you reds!”
BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA
“Aieeeeeeeeeeee.”
And so on. This is how we developed our language skills. If we had stuck with Dick and Jane, we’d have sounded like morons.
After the first grade, our schoolbooks got longer, but they did not get more interesting. The history books were the worst. Take, for example, the Civil War. I think we can safely assume that the Civil War was fairly lively, but you would never know this from reading elementary school history books:
THE CIVIL WAR
“The Civil War was very serious. It was caused by slavery and states’ rights, and it resulted in the Gettysburg Address.
Discussion Questions: How serious was the Civil War? Would you feel nervous if you had to give the Gettysburg Address? Explain.”
The other big problem with history textbooks was that they always started at the dawn of Civilization and ended around 1948. So we’d spend the first three months of each school year reading about the ancient
SUMerians at a leisurely pace. Then the teacher would realize that time was running short, and we’d race through the rest of history, covering World War II in a matter of minutes, and getting to Harry Truman on the last day. Then the next year, we’d go back to the ancient Sumerians. After a few years of this, we began to see history as an endlessly repeating, incredibly dull cycle, starting with Sumerians and leading inexorably to Harry Truman, then going back again. No wonder so many of us turned to loud music and drugs.
Things were a little better in English class, because we didn’t have to read the same books over and over. On the other hand, we had to read
a lot of books nobody would want to read even once, such as The Last of the Mohicans, which was written by James Fenimore Cooper, although I seriously doubt that Cooper himself ever read it. We also read a batch of plays by Shakespeare, which are very entertaining when you watch actors perform them but are almost impossible to understand when you read them:
FLAVORUS: Forsooth ‘twixt consequence doest thou engage? Wouldst thou thine bodkin under thee enrage?
HORACLES: In faith I wouldst not e’er intent fulfill, For o’er petards a dullard’s loath to till.
(Shakespeare wrote this way because English was not his native language. He was Sumerian.)
Anyway, that’s why I think people don’t read books anymore. The sad thing is that there are many fine books around, just waiting to be read. You can see them on convenient display racks at any of the better supermarkets; they have titles like The Goodyear Blimp Diet and Evil Nazi War Criminals Get an Atomic Bomb and Threaten to Destroy Uruguay. These books are easy to read, and minutes after you read one you’re ready for another. What we need is some kind of federal program to get people interested in them. Maybe the President could read some of them aloud on national television (he is very good at reading aloud). Or maybe we could give people an additional tax exemption for every book report they attach to their income tax returns. Whatever we do, we should do it soon, to get people out of the habit of getting all their information from television and poorly researched newspaper columns.
What Is And Ain’t Grammatical
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: “Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America,” or “Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.”
The truth is that grammar is not the most important thing in the world. The Super Bowl is the most important thing in the world. But grammar is still important. For example, suppose you are being interviewed for a job as an airplane pilot, and your prospective employer asks you if you have any experience, and you answer: “Well, I ain’t never actually flied no actual airplanes or nothing, but I got several pilot-style hats and several friends who I like to talk about airplanes with.”
If you answer this way, the prospective employer will immediately realize that you have ended your sentence with a preposition. (What you should have said, of course, is “several friends with who I like to talk about airplanes.”) So you will not get the job, because airline pilots have to use good grammar when they get on the intercom and explain to the passengers that, because of high winds, the plane is going to take off several hours late and land in Pierre, South Dakota, instead of Los Angeles.
We did not always have grammar. In medieval England, people said whatever they wanted, without regard to rules, and as a result they sounded like morons. Take the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who Couldn’t even spell his first name right. He wrote a large poem called Canterbury Tales, in which people from various professions—knight, monk, miller, weever, riveter, steeler, diver, stevedore, spinnaker, etc.—and on and on and on like this:
In a somer sesun whon softe was the sunne
I kylled a youn e birde ande I ate it on a bun
When Chaucer’s poem was published, everybody read it and said: “My God, we need some grammar around here.” So they formed a Grammar Commission, which developed the parts of speech, the main ones being nouns, verbs, predicants, conjectures, particles, proverbs, adjoiners, coordinates, and rebuttals. Then the commission made up hundreds and hundreds of grammar rules, all of which were strictly enforced.
When the colonists came to America, they rebelled against British grammar. They openly used words like “ain’t” and “finalize,” and when they wrote the Declaration of Independence they deliberately misspelled many words. Thanks to their courage, today we Americans have only two rules of grammar:
Rule 1. The word “I’me” is always incorrect.
Most of us learn this rule as children, from our mothers. We say things like: “Mom, can Bobby and me roll the camping trailer over Mrs. Johnson’s cat?” And our mothers say: “Remember your grammar, dear. You mean: ‘Can Bobby and I roll the camping trailer over Mrs. Johnson’s cat?’ Of course you can, but be home by dinnertime.”
The only exception to this rule is in formal business writing, where instead of “I” you must use “the undersigned.” For example, this business letter is incorrect:
“Dear Hunky-Dory Canned Fruit Company:
A couple days ago my wife bought a can of your cling peaches and served them to my mother who has a weak heart and she damn near died when she bit into a live grub. If I ever find out where you live, I am gonna whomp you on the head with a ax handle.”
This should be corrected as follows:
&nb
sp; “If the undersigned ever finds out where you live, the undersigned is gonna whomp you on the head with a ax handle.”
Rule 2. You’re not allowed to split infinitives.
An infinitive is the word “to” and whatever comes right behind it, such as “to a tee,” “to the best of my ability” ... “tomato,” etc. Splitting an infinitive is putting something between the “to” and the other words. For example, this is incorrect:
“Hey man, you got any, you know, spare change you could give to, like, me?”
The correct version is:
spare change you could, like, give to me?”
The advantage of American English is that, because there are so few rules, practically anybody can learn to speak it in just a few minutes. The disadvantage is that Americans generally sound like jerks, whereas the British sound really smart, especially to Americans. That’s why Americans are so fond of those British dramas they’re always showing on public television, the ones introduced by Alistair Cooke. Americans love people who talk like Alistair Cooke. He could introduce old episodes of
“Hawaii Five-O” and Americans would think they were extremely enlightening.
So the trick is to use American grammar, which is simple, but talk with a British accent, which is impressive. This technique is taught at all your really snotty private schools, where the kids learn to sound like Elliot Richardson. Remember Elliot? He sounded extremely British, and as a result he got to be Attorney General, Secretary of State, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Vice President at the same time.
You can do it, too. Practice in your home, then approach someone on the street and say: “Tally-ho, old chap. I would consider it a great honour if you would favour me with some spare change.” You’re bound to get quick results.
It Takes A Lot Of Gaul