10% Off All Teaching

It's Presidents Day today, so Bison Daughter had the day off school. As a consequence she probably learned no less than on a typical school day, since they seem to be mostly concerned with class parties (involving excessive sugar consumption) and dressing up in weird clothes as a treat. In the coming weeks it seems that the little bastards will be given the opportunity to wear "Western Gear" to school, as well as going to school in their pajamas. (This I found especially strange, as it only ever happened to me once, in a dream from which I was very glad to wake up; it hardly qualifies as a treat.)

Just in case there was any time left at school which might involve actual learning, the teachers took the opportunity last week to hand out a fund raising project where kids are expected to sell "discount cards" to friends and family in order to collect yet more money. I'm not receptive to these things at the best of times, but it's not that long since I paid my property tax, most of which seems to go to the local schools, so my immediate reaction to being asked to pimp out my daughter so that they can have even more money to waste was "No. Fuck no. Fuck off. Fuckwits."

The basic idea is that you sell a card for $10 which entitles the purchaser to a number of "buy one, get one free" or similar offers at local businesses. These are mostly fast food outlets, which I find especially humorous; the school spends hours trying to educate kids about nutrition but then asks them to act as street dealers for addictive junk food just so they can extract more of your hard-earned money. This enabled me to explain the concept of "hypocrisy" to Bison Daughter, so I suppose it did constitute a learning opportunity. There's no way, even if I had any family over here (or friends, for that matter), that I would abuse that relationship to peddle them junk coupons. The company behind the whole scam knows fucking well that almost no-one actually gets round to redeeming them, so the school gets a cut for acting as the front for a hard-sell of worthless shite that no sensible person would buy.

People come round at work from time to time with this kind of shit: "Can you buy some candy for my son's baseball team so they can get new uniforms?" And these aren't poor people, scraping by and trying to give their kids a bit extra. They're comfortable middle class, minivan-driving, church-going citizens who seem to labor under the misapprehension that I exist merely to earn money for them to shower on their seemingly limitless progeny. Look, fuckstain, if you can't afford to have kids try using a condom. And since you have no problem driving to work in a new minivan don't come "office-begging" to me just so that you can save your own money.

I couldn't resist looking online to see what grants the school (actually, technically a non-profit foundation that was established to support the school) has made with the money raised. One project, which received a $500 grant, "will begin to educate and build positive lifestyle choices in our youngest students by reinforcing the importance of good nutrition and daily exercise." Better start by making sure they don't use any of the fast-food coupons then. In another case:

"Students will have fitness balls available in classrooms as an alternative seating choice in order to stimulate brain function and increase physical activity and conditioning. This grant will fund the purchase of these fitness balls."

Stimulating the brain by sitting in a different way? Do these kids have their brains in their arse or something? This all just goes to show: if you do give more money to your local school system there's the very real possibility that they'll just spend it on a load of balls.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison