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EVERY year around this time, the people who get paid to make the rest of us feel bad, publish the results of international educational achievements studies showing that, compared to kids living in China and Hong Kong and other places I can’t even begin to spell, let alone find on the map(like Ulan Baltor, for instance), our children are…well…dumbasses.

This is occasionally demonstrated by my lovely and intelligent daughter who, for reasons that escape me, sometimes experiments to see if it’s possible to skate by on looks alone and brings home a report card that puts me in mind of the ones I got when I was her age. Which, for the record, is not a good thing. I’m a guy who spent the 70’s dragging down the academic average of the entire Ontario secondary school system. Also, for the record? I wasn’t skating by on good looks.

Anyway, after my daughter brings home the kind of report card that somebody like Pam Anderson or a geranium would get, she usually manages to rectify her problem the following term after a conversation with her father that involves modern and compassionate child-rearing methods.

You know the methods. They’re probably the ones you use, too: screaming, grounding, and threats of terrible violence. Of course, the threats and violence are empty. See, because I worried about my daughter growing up to date boys who in any way resembled me, I saw to it that she studied karate. And, because I started worrying about this when she was FIVE, she’s been at it for about nine years and earned a brown belt last year, which means that if I REALLY annoy her, she can kick my but up and around my ears where I can wear it like a big, hairy sombrero. But I digress. (I’d like to apologize for the sombrero image. Some things just are too awful to put into print.)

(Another digression: why, if that image is too awful to put into print, is it in print? Because I’m getting’ paid by the word, pal, that’s why.)

Anyway, the international studies show our kids are idiots. Doofuses. Or maybe that’s “doofi.” Who knows? Who cares?

I know it’s hard to believe our kids aren’t doing that well, ensconced as they are in veritable educational palaces. Been to your kid’s school lately? You can’t even swing a dead cat without whacking two-and-a-half-grand worth of iMac or a disgruntled 70-G’s per year anum teacher who, having been struck by a dead cat, has to either call a wildcat strike or go on stress leave for two years.
    

Even the dead cats cost hundreds of bucks, given that our kids couldn’t be expected to just hack up any old feline. The dead cats they  in school have been cleaned and screened for diseases, and have red and blue latex injected
into the veins and arteries so our future young scientists/serial killers know which is which.
    

"...our kids are being aced out by foreign kids who are doing math by drawing in the dirt with a stick."

So we spend our billions and pay people big bucks to figure out how to spend our billions, and STILL our kids are getting aced out by foreign kids who are doing math by drawing in the dirt with a stick. And not a fancy $1,100, ergonomically designed, politically correct (pale green rather than sexist boy blue or girlie pink) schoolboard-approved stick, either. Just a freaking stick that somebody reached up and broke off a tree.

Of course, in our educational system, there’d be some kind of kinghell mother of a fuss over that now, wouldn’t there? Because, aside from producing kids that can’t do math like the stick-children in the Third-World, the Eco-Nazis have gone and taken over school curriculums.

Which leads us to the reason our kids aren’t kicking the butts of those kids from other countries in real subjects like math and science and English. It’s because they aren’t spending much time doing THOSE subjects. The ones I like to think of as the real subjects. My girl just brought home a list of elective courses that she spends at least half of her school day on. Here’s a sampling with actual quotes from the course curriculum:

1) ENVOE: Environmental and outdoor education. Units include: wilderness first aid, environmental ethics, trip planning, climbing, hiking, skiing, winter activities and kayaking.

Where I come from, this isn’t a course of study, it’s a freaking vacation, got it? It’s CAMPING! Environmental ethics? What the heck are those? And the ethics of camping are pretty simple. Clean up the campsite, don’t start forest fires and don’t poop on the trail. Not a course of study. Common sense.

2) German. The grade nine German program is meant to be introductory. The emphasis is on fun.

OK, at the risk of sounding like somebody who can’t let go of the past…the emphasis is on fun? The subject id GERMAN, isn’t it? When was the last time someone back from  a round-the-world trip made reference to Those Wacky Fun-Loving Germans?

3) Leadership/Service: Students will plan a major project for the school such as a Talent Show or Fitness Day.

Again, this is a course? When I was in high school, we had plenty of students willing to organize geeky events. They were called, shockingly enough, geeks, and getting to carry a clipboard and suck up to the teachers was its own reward for those creatures. You don’t need to worry about them. They grow up to (reluctantly, it is said) to participate in the Parliamentary pension plan as Alliance MP’s.

4) Design/Communications. Students will explore Internet graphics use and creation as well as electronic presentation.

Memo to school board: The dot.com revolution is over, babies. The companies all tanked. Aside from Amazon.com and eBay, the only people making money on the web are the people who run porno sites. So you’re training my daughter to do WHAT exactly? I’m waiting.

5) Drama: Students in this program will develop skills learned in Grade seven and/or eight drama.

You’re teaching adolescent children about DRAMA? Don’t think so. You want drama? Just listen to a 14-year-old girl on the phone. “OHMY-GOD! AND THEN TOMMY, YOU KNOW, HE LIKE PUT HIS HAND ON CHERYL’S…WELL, YOU KNOW! AND THEN, I CAN’T BELIEVE HE DID THIS….”

Adolescent children don’t need drama lessons. They need anti-drama vaccines.

6) Legal Studies: Students will examine the law from the perspective of a junior high school student. Students will cover…Young Offenders Act/Youth Criminal Justice Act…

Lemme get this straight. You’re teaching something from the perspective of a junior high school student? Do you morons know any ACTUAL junior high school students? A junior high school student is essentially, a self-involved psychopath. Your role as an educator is to get junior high school students to STOP ACTING LIKE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS! It’s to get them to act like responsible, taxpaying adults without hopes or dreams. Just like you or me.

And you’re teaching about the Young Offenders Act? This is like giving every felon in the country who can’t yet grow a descent moustache a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. We do not want to teach young criminals their rights! We want to leave them in a state of ignorance so maybe, just maybe, the cops will have a fighting chance with the little beggars.

The list of crap my kid can take at that will NOT add to a useful l skill-set goes on and on.

Hint to Educators: Just ‘cause you’re bored teaching useful stuff, and the kids are bored learning useful stuff, doesn’t mean you should quit teaching useful stuff.

Doesn’t mean you ought to teach them how to camp. I can teach my kid how to camp. I have taught my kid how to camp. And when we camp, we don’t sweat it when somebody breaks a stick off a freaking tree, got it?

If there’s anything my kid doesn’t know about drama, she can watch me and her mom fight. And when it comes to leadership, I don’t want my kid to be a leader. Leaders usually cause nothing but trouble. Trudeau was a great leader. He led us into national bankruptcy and gave us a piece of legislation that allows people to process kiddie-porn with impunity. Chretien is a leader. Don’t get me started. Teachers want to run a leadership course, run a course that teaches my kid to ignore leaders, OK?

Starting with you.