THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 2, 1994 TAG: 9408310045
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: JENNIFER DZIURA
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
FOLLOWING THE constant and linear course most of the world's 6 billion people fully expected it to, time has once again lent itself to that month we call September.
September, to some, is merely a continuation of the tedium that comprises cashiering at a fast-food emporium. But to those of us who are old enough to eat solid food and too young to legally consume alcoholic beverages, September is a peremptory condemnation to nine long months of higher math, jammed lockers and (for those who aren't clever enough to trek to Taco Bell) cafeteria dining. I find the latter notable because at no other place of business in any industrialized nation are the french fries allowed to fall haphazardly into the chicken soup and expand like forgotten matzo balls.
I suppose that we should be grateful for our public education system. In some nations, a young person can be beaten and publicly shamed for doing poorly in school. These nations, however, tend to be roughly the size of Delaware and are populated by individuals who still think themselves lucky to be able to purchase eight-tracks on the black market.
In the United States, a young person has several options, such as a) drop out of high school and be a social parasite, b) drop out of high school and work at Denny's, c) drop out of high school and form a band (yeah, that always works), or d) go to school like everyone else and learn to deal with the fact that, until you graduate, the faculty will not allow you to walk through any length of corridor without a hall pass, even though you sport no gang insignia and possess no weapons.
Another thing that particularly bothers me about those hallowed halls of education is the recent trend toward replacing laconic, descriptive class names with lengthy vagaries. I think this is rather an offshoot of the political correctness movement.
When handicapped people became ``differently abled,'' the name became not only ``more sensitive,'' but longer and more nebulous. The entire PC lexicon is that way. While our parents' generation was satisfied with ``woodworking'' and ``cooking,'' today's generation is enrolled in ``woods technology'' and ``foods management.''
What exactly, is ``foods management''? One can, after all, manage food in a multitude of different ways. The class's title could refer to cooking, stocking grocery shelves or the practice of storing and refrigerating large quantities of chimpanzee, elephant and penguin feed at the zoo.
And pardon me for being a perpetually negative and overly critical person, but I also think that the average diploma-wielding graduate has wasted a lot of time learning the location of the frog's oviduct and studying words such as ``turbid'' for the SAT. This time could have been much better used studying, perhaps, low-budget culinary management. Very few high school graduates actually know how to make soup from excess condiments and after-dinner mints, and even fewer know that a homemade V-8 Popsicle constitutes a healthful serving from the fruit and vegetable group of the Food Guide Pyramid. Nor do they know the pyramid was developed with the aid of massive federal funding, thus necessitating that we follow it assiduously, so our tax dollars will not be wasted.
And speaking of tax dollars, maybe we could use a few of them to federally subsidize a bamboo farm. American school systems could then purchase the bamboo and institute programs of ``peer caning,'' similar to ``peer tutoring'' except that the former causes permanent scarring. If juvenile delinquents were properly caned, hall passes would be rendered unnecessary, freeing an entire generation to walk calmly and quietly through the corridors without being apprehended by a woman sitting in the middle of the hallway grading remedial book reports.
However, you're back at school and so am I, and there's really very little that you or I can do about it but grudgingly purchase new multicolored poly-binders and resign ourselves to determining x and y or managing food, whichever makes more sense to you. by CNB