One day, I woke up and realized something: We need to teach kids subjects that actually matter worth a damn.
Most academia is great, don't get me wrong, but let's be honest--much of it has next to no real-world relevance for the jobs most of us will end up wasting our entire lives in. Your average managerial retard in a pinstriped suit isn't going to care if you know calculus, the theories of Kant, the average livespan of a planarium, or any of that other crap. Your life is deadlines, repetitive and menial tasks without end, networking, bullsh-t, decorum, obligations, toadying, and more bullsh-t. For this you get paid (note that the amount of bullsh-t you are expected to spread is typically directly proportional to how high you are on the corporate ladder--it's the necessary tradeoff for being a pain in the ass to your put-upon inferiors).
There needs to be a course in Common Sense. A School of Hard Knocks, if you will. Where all pretty notions of such nebulous fairyland crotch rot like "social justice" and "following your dreams" get tossed out, children's naivety and wills are snapped like twigs, and the real education will commence.
The ideal person to fill this position would be a crotchety old salt, between the ages of 65 and 80, with a full head of grizzled gray hair, an imposing stance, nicotine stains on the fingers from a three pack-a-day habit, a taste for Jack Daniels, a set of piercingly cold eyes, and a black cane. The applicant will be required to have held 20-30 years in a lower-level office or blue-collar position with very little or no advancement. The applicant will most likely be divorced, widowed, or at least been in a second or third marriage. No degree in Education is necessary--a life of real-world toil is all that is required (no lifelong welfare recipients, unionized or state workers, please).
Should the applicant posess this experience and is selected for the job at hand, the duties will consist of ranting like Howard Beale in the movie Network to a class of clueless, bright-eyed, and impressionable middle school students. The curriculum would consist of life lessons taught through sayings and aphorisms such as:
- The Perfect Is The Enemy of The Good
- Sh-t Always Rolls Downhill
- Nothing Is Ever So Bad That It Can't Get Worse
- The Only Color That Matters Is Green
- You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
- Life Isn't Fair
- Settle For Less
- If Your Spoiled Ass Won't Take The Job For $6.00/hr, There Are Plenty Of Undocumented Workers Who Will
In accordance with this, an entire textbook on Murphy's Law will be included.
Tests on the curriculum will be administered daily, each with 4 essay-length questions and 15 minutes to answer them in full. Students will either become successful burned-out zombies or suffer a nervous breakdown and start weeping uncontrollably. The weepers will be drugged or caned ("motivational exercises") until scores improve.
The final exam will be a research paper studying the lives of highschool dropouts, drug addicts, and undergraduate college students (interviews will be scheduled on students' own time). Students will then have to predict their future outcomes based on these samples. Visions of Bill Gates-esque grandeur and success mandate a failing grade. After the paper is completed, the students will have to give a presentation in front of the class on their conclusions, unannounced, with a 5-minute time limit. Going over that limit results in a drop in full letter grade every 30 seconds.
The end goal of this class is to prove that all those wonderful lies our teachers told us, that we would all be heads of state, astronauts, athletes, movie stars, scientists--were a huge crock of sh-t. The truth of the matter is, 99% of our best and brightest will end up cleaning bathroom floors, waiting tables, bagging groceries, licking a manager's boots, and throwing garbage in a truck. And if I can make at least one kid realize that his ultimate destiny is to be a janitor until he dies from a heart attack at the age of 50, and blow his brains out in the family bathroom with Daddy's 9mm, my work on this cold, ugly rock is done.
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