Drive Slowly; School Is In

Illustration by Gordon Studer

School's back in most places, thank God, and we can send those pesky little rugrats inside again and get them out of our hair. After all, isn't that what school is for? It certainly can't be for teaching them anything, since they could learn a whole lot more spending a day of real life at home with Mom, learning how to cook, clean, write checks and shop for the family. Or at work with Dad, where they could learn how to schmooze with a team of coworkers, kiss up to the boss, attend meetings and maybe even do some real work. Instead, they are locked away in a minimum security prison for 7 or 8 hours each weekday. The younger ones are taught to sit still and suppress their natural boundless energy, and also color, which as we all know figures greatly in adult life, while the older ones are forced to memorize random facts that they will never need once they get out of there.

That being said, which is an annoying cliche but useful right now, I still remember a few of the things I learned in school:
1. The Three-Pronged Attack, which was important in the Civil War but may have been during the American Revolution.
2. X and Y--usually written as x and y--are important values in algebra.
3. President Lincoln freed the slaves, George Washington crossed the Delaware in a rowboat, and Ben Franklin invented electricity.
4. General Burgoyne did something quite impressive.
5. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman were two different people.
6. Never split an infinitive if you can help it. Dangling participles are also bad.
7. Amoebas reproduce by binary fission.
8. A body in motion tends to stay in motion until interrupted by an outside force.
9. No two pieces of matter can occupy the same space at the same time.

After that I majored in art in college, and I do know a ton about all that. The bottom line: Be careful texting, there may be a school bus stopped right in front of you.