Standard and Poorsch

Our economy rests on the quality of our workforce.  Wait, no....

Our economy rests on the willingness of consumers to overspend money they don't have on things they don't need.  Closer....

Public education is the factory which creates our workforce and provides conditioned low-information voters who can be easily crafted into anything the ruling party desires, such that power can be perpetuated through the utilitarian application of principles of democracy.

Our children are thus but cogs in the great wheel of mediocrity. 

*OR*

Is there an or?  Is it delusional to presume that teaching creative, independent thinking and work ethic, which are SO out of fashion these days can provide society with men and women who will stand against tyranny, work hard to make their sphere of influence a better place, and sacrifice temporary comforts for long-term outcomes?  Maybe.  IDK.

However, these are my thoughts this morning as I package my little product of the state as instructed to submit him for his MCT's (Mississippi Curriculum Testing).  Seeing as what they've mostly done for months is teach to the test, one would presume that the children will do well.  I have a special needs child though, so all bets are off and let's hope that the accommodations we wrote into the IEP last Spring are remotely relevant this Spring and things go well.

I can say this, though:  he has a cold and is Captain Nosedrool and hates sitting around and waiting and being off schedule.  The next three days should provide a good laboratory for what will go wrong in fourth grade.  *sigh*

So, good luck to the teachers whose jobs are ridiculously linked to these tests.

Good luck also to the students who must bubble-in page after page of information to prove that someone taught them things the state wanted them to be tested on.

Good luck to parents everywhere who look at this process with the appropriate level of cynicism and disdain.

I wish no good luck to those who seek power through mass thought manipulation and creation of dependency through under-teaching children so the children become controllable commodities.  Some years, I wish the children would all hide  silly hats in their back packs and get them out when the tests begin and throw paper airplanes and pull girls' hair and chase the boys screaming kid profanities...

Childhood used to be about learning what it means to playfully and sometimes painfully exist in a natural pecking order and flourish anyway.  Those were the days, my friends...  Remember when the weird kids were the ones who had NOT broken their arms falling out of trees?

To childhood:  "sumer is i-cumen in, lhude sing cucco!"  

UPDATE:  Or, in an on-going Divine lesson in HUMILITY, I could have all the dates wrong and MCT's might not start until NEXT WEEK.