I’m surprised by how many kids, sometimes little kids, have told me some version of this: “My school is great. They give us lots of homework. It’s really challenging.” I’ve been amazed by how darn enthusiastic they appear that their teachers assign them a large volume of homework. [Read more →]
10. “Have you accepted Jesus into your life?”
9. “I’m kinda contagious, so it’d be best if you keep ten feet away.”
8. “I’m majoring in Whole Beef Butchering, so my homework might get a little messy.”
7. “Wanna see my Anthony Weiner impression?”
6. “No matter what you hear, don’t open that closet!”
5. “Who do you think is the cutest hunk in One Direction?”
4. “Seriously, my Silent-But-Deadlies have been known to peel paint off the walls.”
3. “I have a tendency to walk in my sleep and do this ‘stabby’ thing.”
2. “Do you want to be on the top or the bottom – and no, we don’t have bunk beds.”
1. “You got a real purdy mouth.”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
10. Advanced Keg Tapping
9. How to Make a Sock Puppet
8. Top Five Best-Selling CliffsNotes
7. Addition
6. Your Ass versus A Hole in the Ground – Comparing and Contrasting
5. Bong Maintenance
4. How Best to Invest Your Under-the-Table Money
3. Book Coloring
2. Candy Crush for Beginners
1. Team Mascots: Are Their Heads Really That Big?
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
10. The photo on the cover of the college catalogue was once Tweeted by Anthony Weiner
9. The school sells degrees on the Internet for $49.95 (plus shipping and handling)
8. The only books in the library are by James Patterson
7. Your admissions test was drawing a pirate and a turtle
6. ABC’s “The Lookout” has cameras all over campus
5. The football coach is Jerry Sandusky’s brother
4. Your grade is based on tipping the professor
3. The school mascot is Sammy the Slug
2. The much-ballyhooed “sports complex” is actually just a tire swing and some croquet hoops
1. Last year’s commencement speaker was Honey Boo Boo’s mother
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
I’ve never been into graduations. I am happy for the graduates who themselves are happy, and I like to see proud families, but the event itself never grabbed me. And now graduation fever has taken hold. Kids get a rite of passage ceremony for all kinds of things. We have kindergarten graduations and even pre-school graduations. School systems with multiple tiers have students who “graduate” from middle school or fifth grade.
No matter how plain-speaking we think we are, we all have our own form of professional jargon. I guess because I’m a word person, I find it interesting when I unwittingly fall into the jargon of my world and realize outsiders have no idea what I’m talking about. For instance, everywhere I go lately in my world of writing and technology, I encounter MOOCs. I say “MOOC” all the time, and I get about 10 stories/news items a week in my In Box about them. Yet, when I utter “MOOC” outside of work, people look at me strangely. [Read more →]
We have all heard people complain about American schools. A little too much, I think. In general, we do a pretty good job. I do, however, believe we often go about it in silly ways. If you ever want your confidence shaken, though, you should do something that I just did: do level-placement of high school freshmen for the upcoming year.
What we use are three things: middle school grades, previous standardized testing and our own placement test (standardized, as well).
On the application information form for some of the area schools, there is an spot in which the teachers can say whether they think the student is on a “high” level, a “middle” level or a “low” level, in a particular subject. Here is the worst case scenario that I have to deal with — and it happens quite a bit: [Read more →]
10. I Might As Well Be Dating Jody Foster
9. One Night On A Carnival Cruise!
8. Crepe Paper, Bunting, and Gym Sock Odor!
7. The Future Is Ours! (1% only)
6. The Blue Ball
5. Journey to the Center of My Pants
4. Chlamydia-Palooza!
3. Moon Over Gitmo
2. Memories To Last An Evening
1. I Might As Well Be Dating Manti Te’o’s Girlfriend
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:
Emperor’s Decree No.2013: The world is not a series of plastic chutes, lined up side-by-side and feeding into one another at prescribed intersections. The “real world” is a tangled jungle, rich with the heavy palm leaves and sketched over with arabesques of the vines of dark beauty and unpredictability. Therefore, we should go to school not to be ushered into the entrance of a plastic chute, but to be taught how to wield a machete; how to find our way by the sun; how to make shelter against an unexpected storm; how to appreciate the sunset even while the mosquitoes are sucking.
Our kids see a series of teachers for twelve-plus years. Each teacher has something to offer, either as an example of the good or as an example of the bad. Some teachers will make curriculum crystal clear; others will present lessons about life that are invaluable, even if at the expense of a perfect chemistry lesson. Twelve years of human interaction and assignments and grades are enough. We should, then, hand our kids the machete and let them loose to make their own way. They are not robots to be programmed but firework shells to be packed, fired off and watched in their hot-bright glory, bursting against the dark sky and falling in random patterns. We need to stop pretending we can turn out the perfect human being.
The Punishment: Legislators who continue to use standardized testing will have everything in their lives that brings them joy — everything that is not strictly necessary for their survival — taken away from them. After all, why waste time on things that don’t produce practical results?
Now, go forth and obey.
The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.
Part 6 (of 874) in an occasional series about how standardized tests are destroying education.
One frustration with standardized testing is its seeming inevitability. The bureaucratic, Kafkaesque testing structure. Your disagreements don’t matter. Your arguments and pleas don’t matter. You will be tested. But what if you didn’t have to take a standardized test? A growing number of parents and students are exploring that: Opting out of standardized tests. [Read more →]
It’s the end of the Spring semester, 2013. That means college undergraduates all over the country are freaking out over final grades. It’s odd how these grades become important to them at the end of the semester in a way that they weren’t at any other time during the semester, but I digress. What follows is a final email sent to my students this morning in response to a number of emails I received from them over the weekend: [Read more →]
What does it mean to write well? That the writing is clear? Eloquent? Powerful? Emotion-inducing? Connected? Ah, but there we get into it: Your writing’s value is connected, linked, intertwined with an audience. A reader. Someone who might think about what you’re saying. Someone who might, of all things, care. [Read more →]
Emperor’s Decree No. 2013: We don’t know when it happened, but, sometime over the last sixteen years, young people have completely dismissed the use of the definite article, “the,” before the word “prom.” The Emperor knows this, because he has been teaching high school throughout this period (call it a diversion from the rigors of Imperial Domination) and, sometime during this stretch, a linguistic shortcut took hold. No longer does a boy ask a girl: “Do you want to go to the prom with me?” No, now, it is, “Do you want to go to prom with me?” “How are you getting to prom?” “Are you going to prom?” “Shall we chip in for a limo for prom?” Gaaahhh!! This annoys the Emperor to no end. He tried to change this appauling habit, at least on a local scale, through his pedagogical efforts – nay, heartfelt entreaties – in the classroom; he even addressed this on the school’s television system, once, but, to no avail. (In fact, this only made things worse, because, now, students intentionally seek him out and ask him if he is “chaperoning prom.” Little snits.) The Emperor didn’t want it to come to this, but, it’s time for a decree. Let all of America’s youth take note:
The Punishment: Young people who leave out the definite article in discussing THE prom (and are heard by the Imperial Maintenance Men (they’re everywhere, sweeping) will be assigned to a type of grizzly, gray-stone-roomed detention the likes of which they have never known…WITHOUT THEIR CELL PHONES!!!!!! [Teens scream in horrified unison from the four corners of the globe…] Oh, we mean it. What now? Whuuuut?
Now, go forth and obey.
The Emperor graces the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.
We have a peculiar relationship to facts. Dickens’ Prof. Gradgrind and his love of facts. Star Trek characters Spock, Data. “Just the facts ma’am.” We like facts. We’re nervous about facts. We believe in facts. [Read more →]
So where do you keep your hoes, if you are lucky enough to have any in the first place or you have a living environment that requires (or at least facilitates the use of) them? [Read more →]
I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:
Emperor’s Decree No. 04 AMP: Lately, there has been a great deal of talk about arming teachers — for the protection of the children and so forth. This debate may continue, but the Emperor sees another reason for arming teachers — particularly instructors of adult education (night classes, certification classes and so-forth). Recently (not that he needs it, you understand, but because it pleases him to do so) the Emperor has been attending a particular class and he has drawn this conclusion: the majority of adult-ed. students are egocentric idiots who just want to hear themselves yammer. “I know you already said that the State has not determined what will happen as a result of this situation,” said one graying woman with glasses perched with planned randomness on the top of her head, “but what will happen?” How the professor didn’t respond by smashing her on the bridge of the nose with the spine of his laptop, the Emperor does not know. The professor is to be commended for his patience. But I think we all agree that the woman really deserved to be Tasered. In short, in the future: asinine question = intense electrical shock. Likewise, anyone who raises his or her hand, gets called upon and then opens with “I have a question…” will feel the white-hot fangs of high-amperage at the hands of his instructor. “OF COURSE YOU HAVE A QUESTION, YOU LUMMOX. THAT’S WHY WE RAISE OUR HANDS IN CLASS!” GZZZZHHHHHHH. Perhaps, after pondering for a moment amid the mingled scents of burnt flesh and ozone, the next moron in line will think twice before blurting forth his own extraneous, time-devouring, attention-sponging ejaculation.
The Punishment: Professors and instructors who do not comply shall simply be doomed to keep as they are: suffering at the hands of those over whom they should hold dominion. (It really is an opportunity not to be missed.)
Now, go forth and obey.
The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning
In a recent article in The Atlantic John Tierney took a hard, unsubtle look at AP courses, straightfowardly titled, “AP Classes are a Scam.” [Read more →]
10. “Is Joan Rivers still around? We dated in high school.”
9. “Yes the voyage was long and arduous – kind of like Jet Blue with legroom.”
8. “If I knew it was going to lead to Jersey Shore, I would have stayed in Spain.”
7. “Did anybody ever find the East Indies?”
6. “How would I get to the city called ‘Me, Ohio’?”
5. “We had a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on the Santa Maria, as well.”
4. “Where can I get my hands on that iPhone 5?”
3. “My God! All you Indians have gotten so fat!”
2. “I’m 561 years old. Shouldn’t somebody be calling the Guinness people?”
1. “Why do Republicans keep asking me why I didn’t fall off the edge?”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
I’ve been called a grammar nerd, but I don’t mind. It’s something that’s important to me, and having put myself so far into debt by chasing my degree in English, it pains me every time I catch a glimpse of society’s lax attitude toward proper grammar. The fact that as technology has progressed, the general population’s understanding of basic grammar has severely declined, is no secret to anyone. But it’s embarrassing — seriously. Almost daily, I see people making mistakes with very basic things, like periods and comas. Typically, when I call somebody out on it, I get a response that’s something like, “Dude, whatever, it’s just a Facebook post.” But it’s not just a Facebook post. It’s putting yourself out there for the world to see with a giant sign around your neck that says: I Haven’t Learned Basic English Yet. It’s really not even that hard. Here’s the difference:
10. The “school nurse” is just a cafeteria lady with access to the Internet
9. Instead of buses, anyone who lives more than a mile from school is issued a large plastic hitchhiking thumb
8. Gym class consists of walking on treadmills that power the ovens for home economics
7. The restrooms have a cover charge
6. The guidance counselor has been replaced by Siri
5. The art teacher is selling tattoos at five bucks a pop
4. Every lunch consists of Mystery Stew
3. Music class is nothing but YouTube videos
2. Any spare fingers that wind up on the shop class floor are recycled to the cafeteria
1. They’ve just reclassified pepper spray as a vegetable
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
