BY DAVE BARRY
This Dave Barry column was originally published August 11, 1985
If you read the newspaper, you know the American education system has gone past the point where it is simply failing to educate our young, and is now actively reducing their intelligence. Hardly a day goes by when you don't see an article like this:
WASHINGTON -- The National Association of People Who Worry About These Things (NAPWWATT) today reported that this year's graduating high-school seniors are even dumber than last year's, many of whom are still stumbling around the back of the auditorium trying to get their commencement gowns off. NAPWWATT reported that 66 percent of this year's seniors failed a nationwide scholastic test consisting of the question, "What does a duck say?"
This is pretty pathetic. When I was in high school, we were expected to know what a duck says. Oh, sure, I've forgotten a lot of this stuff, but at least I used to know it, which gives me the right to express smug contempt thinly disguised as grave concern for the young people of today.
I become especially concerned when I compare American students with those being cranked out in countries like Japan, where, as part of their final examination, each high-school senior must construct a working duck from raw protein. As a result of this kind of schooling, Japanese students enter the corporate job market fully prepared to perform complex technological tasks, whereas American students need months of training just to learn to operate the little locks on the bathroom stalls, which they are unfamiliar with because the doors have been ripped off all the stalls in every high school in America since 1963.
Who is responsible for this situation? There are no easy answers, of course, but in my particular high school, I suspect it was either Jimmy Stephenson or Joe Maglio. But I frankly fail to see the point in jabbering about minor bathroom vandalism from two decades ago at a time when our educational system, the very teeth of our democracy, is being undermined by the gum disease of mediocrity and stands in desperate need of the unwaxed dental floss of reform. Strong metaphors, you say? I say a crisis like this demands strong metaphors.
Ask yourself this: If the young people being educated today lack even the basic skills they need to compete in the job market, what does this bode for the future of America as a nation? I'll tell you what it bodes: It bodes that you and I won't have to worry about losing our jobs to some young, well- educated little snotnose, that's what. We'll be able to get drunk at lunch, abuse our Xerox privileges, and hold contests to see who can burp the loudest at staff meetings, and our companies won't dare fire us because the only alternative will be to hire incompetent recent graduates who are forever stapling important contracts to their own clothing.
So I see no urgent need for us to rush out and reform the educational system this instant. I think we can afford to wait until the fall of next year, which is when my son will enter first grade. Like any responsible parent, I want my son to get the best possible education, because I am sick to death of having to read his Masters of the Universe comic books to him. All the male characters wear loincloths, all the females have breasts like grain silos, and all the dialogue sounds like this (from The Stench of Evil):
SKELETOR: Stinkor, with your powerful SMELL, I would like you to spread your FOUL ODOR where the air is clean, and bring MISERY to a place that is full of happiness!
STINKOR: YES! YES! I revel in all that is FOUL!
Our goal as a nation must be to develop, by next fall, an educational system that will teach my son how to read this drivel for himself, ideally on his first day. To achieve this goal, I propose the following reforms:
- RESTORE RESPECT TO THE TEACHING PROFESSION. The teaching profession feels that we members of the public don't respect it. Education professionals have taken to writing long, pouty letters to the editor, similar to the ones you sometimes see from the funeral-director profession, about how teaching is a profession, dammit, whose members are very professional, and sometimes even carry briefcases. Often these letters wax irate about the fact that the average teacher makes less than the average member of some non-professional occupation that teachers look down on, usually garbage collector. Now some of you may argue that this is only fair, since the average garbage collector probably collects some garbage during the course of the day, whereas all these studies suggest that the average teacher has no more impact than if we stuck an illuminated beer sign up in front of the classroom, but I say we have our priorities all screwed up, as a nation. I say we need to correct this imbalance immediately. I say we lower the average salary of garbage collectors.
- FIGURE OUT A LEGAL WAY TO GET CHILDREN TO PRAY IN SCHOOL WITHOUT DIRECTLY ORDERING THEM TO DO IT. This is a top educational priority, which is why it occupies roughly 90 percent of the Supreme Court's time, and virtually all of the various state legislatures' time except for pay raises and designating the official state insect. In the latest action, the Supreme Court reviewed a new Alabama law in which every school in the state was required to begin the day by having a mime troupe go around to the classrooms and enact a brief drama wherein a "student" fails to pray and consequently fries in hell. The court struck this law down, but on the grounds that the troupe did not have enough minority representation, so we're getting darned close to a solution on this one.
(c) Dave Barry This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary links to this column at