Now this is a stimulus package we can all get behind. Proving that time spent in a teacher’s college equips you for just about any job up to and including cleaning up behind the elephants at the circus, a Fulton County, Georgia high school and middle school will pay (bribe) students the princely sum of 8 bucks an hour to, you know, LEARN.
Where was this program when I was in high school? If it’d been in place back then, I can guaran-damn-tee you I’d have put at least an extra couple hours a week into the effort it took me to pull all those vocational school-worthy Ds and Cs I was busily raking in at the time. Yup, trust me: Sixteen bucks can buy a lot of Mountain Dew and Suzy Qs, folks. And maybe that’s why I ended up riding in the stinking-of-diesel-fumes troop compartment of a U.S. Marine Corps amphibious tractor from time to time, which actually ended up doing me a helluva lot more good than I can see this little exercise in educational experimentation doing for today’s scholastic underachievers.
What’s next? Paying high school kids actual money to play football, instead of in dates with the hottest cheerleaders the school has to offer? Strike that. Stuff like that only goes on in the movie versions of what high school football looks like. Except in Texas. If you’re a hot-shot pigskin playin’ fool there, you’re a literal god, man. A GOD.
And how come the eggheads in this school aren’t getting a little baksheesh for the effort they’ve put out, huh? I’m pretty sure more than a few of them are pulling in high-Bs or straight As while working part-time (or full…it’s a tough old world, nowadays) in some sweatshop fast-food joint or corner gas station, where the danger of getting robbed and shot approaches one-hundred percent the longer you work there (say, two whole days). How come we don’t reward those who’ve already shown the ability to overcome?
I’m all for encouraging our kids to buckle down, hit the books and get good grades. That way, you go to college and have a chance at becoming the next Bill Gates. Oh, I forgot; he dropped out of college. Okay, how ’bout Steven Jobs (founder of Apple)? Nope; he bailed after six months. Alright, damn it! At least graduate from high school like Andrew Jackson, that crazy sonofagun on the U.S. twenty-dollar bill. Besides being one of the most psychotic U.S. presidents in history, he also looked great in that movie, “The Buccaneer.” My memory’s hazy but I think it had something to do with how the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost 14 games in a row, or something. Anyway, he was also their coach, which was way cool. And an actual high school dropout in real life.
What’s the point I’m trying to make with all this history citing stuff? I’m not really sure, but I think it’s that maybe we shouldn’t be trying to make teaching the learning-challenged kids among us an exercise in payola. That, and the fact that 8 bucks is waaaay too little to sit in a classroom, listening to some Ben Stein type drone on about quadrilateral equations or some such other dreck when that girl from the “Hot for Teacher” video’s available for private tutoring. Now, THAT’s a stimulus package I can really, really get excited about.
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