2004-01-25 - 10:08 p.m.
Great Moments in Stupidity
Albuquerque, New Mexico, Saturday, January 24, 2004:
The Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Directors announced yesterday that, given the abundance of computers available in all the "media centers" (libraries) in all APS schools with on-line capability, printed material has become obsolete and unnecessary. Therefore, APS will be discarding, selling, and/or giving away ALL of it's printed books published before 1993.
Yeah, you heard that right. Every goddamn one of them. I didn't make this up either. I'm paraphrasing an article from yesterday's Albuquerque Journal.
Apparently real books take up too much space, and reading them takes up valuable time that the kids could instead be spending finding ways to circumvent the parental safeguards on those computers so that they can access their pornography more easily.
That's just what we need- more fucking excuses to sit kids in front of computers staring at LCD monitors. (and yeah, i realize the ironing that i'm using an online diary to bitch about this, so you can shut your fucking mouths. At least i've read a real book, which will soon be more than you can say for anyone coming out of the Albuquerque school system.)
People ask me sometimes if it's true that New Mexico now ranks dead last in the nation in public schooling. And when i say yes, they go, "really? what makes them so bad?"
Well, Virginia, to be perfectly honest, it's because the Board of Directors consists of the biggest group of assholes and retards ever assembled in educational history. People so short-sighted that they decided to save a little shelf space in their libraries by getting rid of ALL THE BOOKS!!!!
THAT'S WHAT A GODDAM LIBRARY IS FOR, YOU ASSHOLES!
Fuck, why stop there? Since we no longer have books, we have no need for the barcodes and scanners that folks like my mom did all that goddam fundraising for you to be able to buy, so those can go too.
And hell, now we don't need librarians. Instead, when kids need help finding the book their looking for, or doing research on a project, they can call fucking Gateway tech support and talk to one of their people. Talk about cost cutting. These measures will free up hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that can be put to where APS has always decided the district needs the most funding- the salaries of the goddam administrators, because that's where 90% of APS' funding winds up going anyway.
Damn. I'm so mad I think i'm actually foaming at the mouth right now. I was laughing about it earlier, but the more i think about it the more i think my head is going to explode.
My mom always used to say that she was very confident that Emily and I would do well in life, either because of the school system we were in, or, as is clearly the case now, in spite of it. And I would like to take this time out to thank my mom for caring enough to make sure that emily and i got the most we could out of what little education was offered to us. I'd also like to thank the teachers (most of them) for trying their best despite working for the shittiest administration in the history of education.
Each year, all the high school sophomores in New Mexico take the Sophomore Competency Exam, a general test of basic knowledge deisgned to measure...well, their competency. If you don't pass, you can't get a degree from your high school till you do. Each year, roughly 40% of sophomores fail this exam, so each year, in an effort to get more kids to pass, they...
wait for it...
this is good...
They MAKE THE TEST EASIER!!! When I took it, we nearly got booted out for laughing to goddam hard. This was an actual question from the exam i took, i shit you not-
If A+B=13, then B+A=?
No, i'm serious. That was on the math portion.
And 40% of the kids didn't pass this test.
Next time I go home i'm gonna shred and burn my high school diploma. It means appromixately dick to anyone anyway.
Later,
Ken
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