wombat_socho

End Them, Don’t Mend Them | The Weekly Standard:

America’s public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation. The country was half turnip-head hillbilly and half slum trash from foreign refuse heaps. Public schools were supposed to take this mob of no-account pea pickers and bumbling greaseballs and turn them into a half-bright national citizenry. It worked, causing six or eight generations of public school kids to rush home to their shanties or tenements shouting, “Everything’s up-to-date in Kansas City!” or “Mom, Dad, this is America, quit boiling cabbage!”

Public schools helped create the idea of America and inculcate Americans with a few rudiments of knowledge. To judge by that very American item, the Internet, a few rudiments is all anyone cares to have. As for the idea of America, everybody’s got it now, all over the world. I’ve had a cab driver in New York who got the idea of America in a country so remote that not only had I never heard of it, neither had he. I don’t know if this cab driver’s reading level was at or above proficient, but his math skills were well-displayed on the taxi meter after he took me from JFK to Manhattan by way of the Brooklyn Belt Parkway. I’ll bet he sends his kids to private school.

A cogent argument for closing all the schools, firing all the teachers & administrators, and giving people the $15 grand they're pissing away on the foregoing. Couched in humor, of course, this being P.J.

Kinda-sorta related: Comic Sans Has Had Enough Of Your Attitude.

(h/t GVDL, who moonlights as The Most Interesting Man in the World.)

» The U.S. Economy Needs Fewer Public School Jobs, Not More - Big Government:

Teachers unions, the Obama administration, and most Democrats in Congress want to spend another $23 billion that we don’t have to shore up public school employment. If we don’t go along, they tell us, it’ll be a “catastrophe” for American education. With fewer teachers our kids will supposedly learn less, further crippling our already wounded economy.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Yeah, it's always "for the children", isn't it? What BS.

This is kinda long and introspective, but at least it's not emo. If you're not much interested in what's going on in my head, move along. There's nothing for you to see here. On the other hand, if you want some context for things that are going on here and elsewhere in my life, this is a good place to start.
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Today's half-day assignment was with a sixth-grade English class* and went surprisingly well. Kids buckled down, did the assigned work, and caused me no problems worth complaining about. This was good, since for some damn reason I couldn't get to sleep last night and doubt if I got more than three hours of sleep. Anyway, it was only half a day/two classes. Since the school finally paid me for my stint in December, I put half a tank of gas into the Sportage, did a little grocery shopping and then came home for lunch. After doing some minimal stuff with internet spaceships and chatting with friends online, though, I'm pretty tired and going to crash early.

Adding to today's general happiness, the weather was really nice today. Sunny and in the 50s, so I turned off the heat for a little while and aired out the apartment. Nice while it lasted.

*Alexandria's schools are organized differently than most systems: elementary schools run from K-5, middle schools are 6-8, high school freshmen are in their own annex to the high school, and T.C. Williams High School has sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Spent the day at the same middle school I subbed at last month (and in October), covering for the same teacher I subbed for in October. Many fewer problems than last time, probably because some of the kids were also in Mr. Perkins' class last month and have gotten it through their heads (possibly also spread the word) that I am Not To Be Messed With. Aside from one bloody nose (not my fault) which was dealt with expeditiously using a couple of Kleenex, basic first aid techniques, and a pass to the school clinic, the day was pretty uneventful. Attendance was taken, students were briefed on the lesson plan for the day, and I spent the rest of each period wandering the classroom in a largely successful effort to keep the noise down to a dull roar and the kids focused on work as opposed to socializing. I had the most trouble in the one class where I had a co-teacher. *rolls eyes*

With any luck, tomorrow will bring news of H&R Block training this week and maybe some hours into the bargain. I have bills to pay and a huge gaping hole in my checking account, so the sooner some money comes in the happier I'm going to be.

Finished my first day of subbing, covering for a language arts teacher in one of the two middle schools. Since the Kia is hors de combat until Carlos can figure out what's wrong and fix it, I took the bus over there and back, which involved a fair amount of walking on top of all the walking I was doing in class. (The kids stay quiet and on task so much better when I loom over them.)* By and large it went well; most of this teacher's classes were Honors classes and those kids were generally well-behaved with a couple of exceptions that I left notes about. One kid in the last period got on my last nerve, wandering around messing with the others, and so I invited him out into the hallway where one of the regular teachers proceeded to realign his headspace with some impressive non-obscene language before taking the little troublemaker down the hall to the vice-principal. On my return the rest of the students were noticeably quieter.

Missed lunch at the school, wound up walking a couple blocks to Subway (needs must when the blood sugar drives) and then another couple blocks to the Braddock Road Metro, where I took a bus to the Alexandria Hospital. I was hoping to catch a Metrobus down into Foxchase, but instead of waiting 45 minutes I just walked it, since it was all downhill. My legs may forgive me, but not today. :(

Was going to make chili tonight but instead I think I'll just fry a pork chop or two, nuke some veggies, and crash.

*windelina, I don't have your bubbly personality, so I have to rely on presence. ;)

Called in to Accountemps (all three NoVa offices) this morning and made sure they were showing me as active. ACPS never did get around to calling me today, so I'm going to follow up with them tomorrow and find out what's clogging the gears. I also headed over to the management office to hand in my lease renewal paperwork and complain about my living room window. It's been nice during the day lately, so I figure I might as well get it unjammed now...what the hell, it's been almost two years, I ought to be able to enjoy it before next spring. Confirmed that there is a DirecTV hookup in the building so I don't have to deploy my own antenna, which would be in radio defilade anyway since I have a north-facing basement apartment. I won't need that until next spring either, but it doesn't hurt to plan ahead.

Saw Game 5 of the World Series down at Shooter's tonight; it went much better than the preceding two games in Philadelphia since the Phillies staved off extermination 8-6, partially due to the awesome pitching of Cliff M.F. Lee and partially due to Chase Utley's two dingers, which moved him ahead of Reggie Jackson on the WS homers list. For once Charlie Manuel remembered that Brad Lidge is shitty, and called in Ryan Madsen to close the deal in the 9th. Madsen made things unnecessarily exciting by giving up hits to Posada and Gojira Matsui before getting Jeter to ground into a double play and striking out Teixeira, but he got the save, so it was all good.

Minor personal accomplishment - got my alt into Goonfleet and out of the Tribal Defense Forces, where he'd been grinding missions for loyalty points. Normally I would have podjumped to Goon space, but i decided to take my little missile boat and run for it. Surprisingly, I managed to run the 56-jump route through Gallente and Amarr space without getting blown up and/or podded. Also, there's some drama involving a friend of mine who's risen to a position of some responsibility in the Swarm and the new spy master/counterintelligence chief, who I used to think well of until he had a major attack of bitchiness at my friend's expense. Maybe next time he'll remember to fuel his own damn towers. :)

Went over to Alexandria City Public Schools' main office this morning to turn in all my paperwork and get fingerprinted, which means that if everything goes smoothly (no reason why it shouldn't) I'll be an active member of the substitute pool starting Monday. Hopefully I'll have better luck with that than I've had with the various temp agencies.

Been on quite the reading jag lately, which considering how much time I'm spending with my feet up isn't too surprising. Today I finished S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers; yesterday I wrapped up his Helot War trilogy with Go Tell the Spartans and Prince of Sparta, both of which are co-written with Jerry Pournelle. I've also been browsing through Total Baseball, mostly looking at horrible teams like the A's, Browns and Phillies from the 1940s and 50s. Actually, since the Browns became the Orioles in 1953, there's not much to look at, but what's there is morbidly fascinating.

Speaking of baseball, I finished sixth in the fantasy league fsf_rapier started, which puts me two places behind him and one behind luned, though it really wasn't that close. luned's Rivendell Rangers led my Dukes by 10.5 points at the end of the season, mainly because my pitching blew chunks. I had the league's worst ERA and WHIP, to say nothing of Batting Avergae Against. The only pitching category I did well in was saves, where I was fourth. The offense was similarly bad: league worst AVG and OBP, mediocre HR and RBI - at least we led the league in steals, which is just ridiculous since that's not the kind of team I like. :(

Maybe next year I'll do better, after I pick up the Sporting News guide and figure out who all these damn players are. Also, I need to just leave my pitchers alone until June; I got rid of Scott Baker, Justin Verlander, and Cole Hamels, all of whom started badly and finished great. :(

My eyes are telling me I spent too much time staring at this screen today, so I think I'll post this and go to bed.

I sure hope I impressed ACPS* with my zeal for the job as opposed to my illiteracy when I showed up this morning for in-processing - one week and twenty minutes before I was supposed to be there. :headdesk: At least I had all my papers done and ready to roll.

*Alexandria City Public Schools

Called the advice line yesterday to check on the Clindamycin dosage, which I erroneously thought was 9/day instead of the more reasonable 6/day (RX actually said three pills every 6 hours) and they said someone would call me back. This morning my primary care doc called and said yeah, they messed up the RX: it should have been 12 pills a day. OMFG. I think I'm just going to go on the BRAT diet for the duration.

Meanwhile, I woke up with what I thought was a cold, but it seems to have passed. Still feel kind of bleh, but I need to go out and get stuff printed out today since I need to turn in a ton of forms/transcripts/stuff when I go in to get fingerprinted by the Alexandria City schools tomorrow.

Ironically enough, the day I turned the heat on, we're expecting a high in the 70s. Indian summer?