No Child Left Behind

I can't believe that it is our very own Middling Elementary School that has figured out how to leave no child behind. Their plan is both brilliant and simple. Don't attempt to teach anything.

Mike's terse report on Day 4, the first full day of school, was:

The kids attitude seems about the same--they don't love, they don't hate. The academics continue to be non-existent.

I talked to Daniel and Logan's mom, Barbara, out front after dropping the kids off on Tuesday before hopping on the plane to London. If that sentence seems like a run-on, well, that is how that day felt. Anyway, my goal was to see if there was a nicer teacher I could transfer Clementine to. Barbara had appeared rather chipper about the school when I first showed up, but that facade crumbled the moment I asked about the principal. She said all the principal cares about is covering her own butt and she had left more than one conversation with the principal wanting to "punch her in the face."

I keep marvelling at how the teachers don't seem to understand that kids arrive at school in the fall excited to learn. What is the point of denying them that and boring them until they lose interest and no longer want to? I have always thought that John Taylor Gatto was a kook with a few interesting things to say, or at best an interesting guy with a few kooky things to say, but I am starting to wonder. He says that American schools have long had a secret 4th agenda.

Traditional forms of instruction in America, even before the Revolution, had three specific purposes:
To make good people
To make good citizens
And to make each student find some particular talents to develop to the maximum.

The fourth is to create consumers. Bore them silly is the mandate because bored people are excellent consumers. I thought this was crazy, but now... (It is almost worth following the link to see the baby in the McDonald's frenchfries hat.)

The other theory is that people used to being bored make good assembly line workers.