Today was the first day of school for my high school. I did an icebreaker activity for part of each class period. The students were in groups and answered various questions about themselves. One of the questions was, "Have you ever been to a foreign country?" One kid (a white kid by the way) thought Mexico was a state instead of a foreign country.
All I did is say, "Mexico is a state--hmmmmm." in a very dry manner. Several students ribbed him in a good-natured manner and we moved on.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for putting him in the meat grinder and serving him in the school cafeteria... God knows he'll provide way more meat than those gym mats.
When I was thirteen, a girl in my class could not point to Australia on a world map. At one stage she even pointed at Great Britain. At that age it's easy to have huge holes in your knowledge and not even realise it. Until you have to stand up in front of the class and point at a map.
So what ended up happening with her? Let me guess, it went a little something like this: After graduation she went off to beauty school in California to become a stylist. She got a little behind with the rent and met a really nice girl named Trixie. Trixie introduced her to a little something we call stripping. At first it was just to pay the bills but eventually she got caught up in the scene and had some newer, more expensive habits. After a string of low budget pornos shot in Tijuana she had finally hit rock bottom, or so she thought, that's when she met a man that went by the name Storm Rucker. Storm introduced her to all new levels of degredation eventually discarding her drugged out, soulless body somewhere near Juarez. She is now nothing more than another crackwhore willing to suck a dick for a dollar fifty and a snickers mini. How's my aim?
One of Sis's friends got out of the magnet school and moved to a regular school to have easier classes. She's a sophomore; half her classmates are 16, and about a third are driving to school by themselves now. For their first English class activity, I shit you not, they did finger painting. It was one of those "Tell me what you did in the summer" types of activities. Her next class? Flower arranging.
Ummmm....yeah. I haven't done fingerpainting since I was four, and never did any sort of art work EVER for ANY English project. Man, I'm so glad I decided to teach music, so I don't have to care about their intelligence.
I had an ex-roomie who is a math teacher at a Jr. College in Arizona. Once she announced to her class that there would be a sub next week because she was going back to see friends in New Mexico. After class, a female student came up to her and said, "So are you gonna have to change your dollars into pesos?" My friend said "No, I am going to New Mexico." The student, without even a blink, said "Yeah, so are you gonna get pesos?" I weep for the species.
Years ago, I was discussing the declining quality of pre-university education with one of my lecturers. He told me the previous year he had a student come up to him and ask: That was a first year undergraduate physics student in one of the most prestigious universities in the country.
