WASHINGTON—Faced with ongoing budget crises, underfunded schools nationwide are increasingly left with no option but to cut the past tense—a grammatical construction traditionally used to relate all actions, and states that have transpired at an earlier point in time—from their standard English and language arts programs.
A part of American school curricula for more than 200 years, the past tense was deemed by school administrators to be too expensive to keep in primary and secondary education.
“This was by no means an easy decision, but teaching our students how to conjugate verbs in a way that would allow them to describe events that have already occurred is a luxury that we can no longer afford,” Phoenix-area high-school principal Sam Pennock said. “With our current budget, the past tense must unfortunately become a thing of the past.”
In the most dramatic display of the new trend yet, the Tennessee Department of Education decided Monday to remove “-ed” endings from all of the state’s English classrooms, saving struggling schools an estimated $3 million each year. Officials say they plan to slowly phase out the tense by first eliminating the past perfect; once students have adjusted to the change, the past progressive, the past continuous, the past perfect progressive, and the simple past will be cut. Hundreds of school districts across the country are expected to follow suit.
“This is the end of an era,” said Alicia Reynolds, a school district director in Tuscaloosa, AL. “For some, reading and writing about things not immediately taking place was almost as much a part of school as history class and social studies.”
“That is, until we were forced to drop history class and social studies a couple of months ago,” Reynolds added.
Nevertheless, a number of educators are coming out against the cuts, claiming that the embattled verb tense, while outmoded, still plays an important role in the development of today’s youth.
“Much like art and music, the past tense provides students with a unique and consistent outlet for self-expression,” South Boston English teacher David Floen said. “Without it I fear many of our students will lack a number of important creative skills. Like being able to describe anything that happened earlier in the day.”
Despite concerns that cutting the past-tense will prevent graduates from communicating effectively in the workplace, the home, the grocery store, church, and various other public spaces, a number of lawmakers, such as Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, have welcomed the cuts as proof that the American school system is taking a more forward-thinking approach to education.
“Our tax dollars should be spent preparing our children for the future, not for what has already happened,” Hatch said at a recent press conference. “It’s about time we stopped wasting everyone’s time with who ‘did’ what or ‘went’ where. The past tense is, by definition, outdated.”
Said Hatch, “I can’t even remember the last time I had to use it.”
Past-tense instruction is only the latest school program to face the chopping block. School districts in California have been forced to cut addition and subtraction from their math departments, while nearly all high schools have reduced foreign language courses to only the most basic phrases, including “May I please use the bathroom?” and “No, I do not want to go to the beach with Maria and Juan.” Some legislators are even calling for an end to teaching grammar itself, saying that in many inner-city school districts, where funding is most lacking, students rarely use grammar at all.
Regardless of the recent upheaval, students throughout the country are learning to accept, and even embrace, the change to their curriculum.
“At first I think the decision to drop the past tense from class is ridiculous, and I feel very upset by it,” said David Keller, a seventh-grade student at Hampstead School in Fort Meyers, FL. “But now, it’s almost like it never happens.”
Source: The Onion
]]>“I’m somewhat out of my depth here,” said Bush, a longtime Fermilab follower who describes himself as “something of an armchair physicist.” “But it seems to me that, when reducing the perturbative uncertainty in the determination of Vub from semileptonic Beta decays, one must calculate the rate of Beta events with a standard dilepton invariant mass at a subleading order in the hybrid expansion. The Fermilab folks’ error, as I see it, was omitting that easily overlooked mathematical transformation and, therefore, acquiring incorrectly re-summed logarithmic corrections for the b-quark mass. Obviously, such a miscalculation will result in a precision of less than 25 percent in predicting the resulting path of the tau lepton once the value for any given decaying tau neutrino is determined.”
The Bush correction makes it possible for scientists to further study the tau lepton, a subatomic particle formed by the collision of a tau neutrino and an atomic nucleus.
Bush resisted criticizing the Fermilab scientists responsible for the error, saying it was “actually quite small” and that “anyone could have made the mistake.”
“High-energy physics is a complex and demanding field, and even top scientists drop a decimal point or two every now and then,” Bush said. “Also, I might hasten to add that what I pointed out was more a correction of method than of mathematics. Experimental results on the Tevatron accelerator would have exposed the error in time, anyway.”
Fermilab director Michael Witherell said the president was being too modest “by an order of magnitude.”
“In addition to gently reminding us that even the best minds in the country are occasionally fallible, President Bush has saved his nation a few million dollars,” Witherell said. “We would have made four or five runs on the particle accelerator with faulty data before figuring out what was wrong. But, thanks to Mr. Bush, we’re back on track.”
“It’s true, I dabbled in the higher maths during my Yale days,” said Bush, who spent three semesters as an assistant to Drs. Kasha and Slaughter at Yale’s renowned Sloane High-Energy Physics Lab. “But I didn’t have the true gift for what Gauss called ‘the musical language in which is spoken the very universe.’ If I have any gift at all, it’s my instinct for process and order.”
Continued Bush: “As much as I enjoyed studying physics at Yale, by my junior year it became apparent that I could far better serve humanity through a career in statecraft.”
While he says he is “flattered and honored” by the tau-neutrino research team’s request that he review all subsequent Fermilab publications on lepton-path determination, Bush graciously declined the “signal honor.”
“This sort of thing is best left to the likes of [Thomas] Becher and [Matthias] Neubert, not a dilettante such as myself,” Bush said. “I just happened to have some time on the plane coming back from the European G8 summit, decided to catch up on some reading, and spotted one rather small logarithmic branching-ratio misstep in an otherwise flawless piece of scientific scholarship. Anyone could have done the same.”
Source: The Onion ]]>
I know you love to read, and I think I have something you’ll really, really dislike. I just finished this book called Dog Days, by J. Phillip Edward, and it changed my life. I’ve never read anything that so perfectly captures the shallow things I think and feel every day. You absolutely must borrow it.
I know you’re a busy person, but this book is just incredible. (To me, that is.) I mean, it blew my mind. I haven’t read a book this meaningful since Catcher In The Rye back in high school, when I stopped reading books assigned to me by people with good taste. If you just give the first few cliche-ridden pages a try, I swear you’ll be so put off, you’ll want to throw it away. But I won’t allow that, because I’ll continue to hound you about it for weeks.
Look, I have it right here, and I think it’s perfect for me. It’s this incredibly trite story about a man who can’t connect with people, so he creates a world where he talks to his pets. Then, after a while, they start to talk back to him, only you don’t know if they’re actually talking to him or if it’s all in his imagination. I mean, like I said, you probably will be able to put it down after the first few pages. After that, it really doesn’t pick up.
I really wish you’d read it, because I’ve been dying to discuss it with somebody. My mind has been reeling ever since I finished it. It’s like a combination of William S. Burroughs’ stream-of-consciousness and J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy sensibility. It’s a little “out there,” and the narrative is a total mess, but it kind of just barely makes sense once you’ve finished and digested it.
Yes, it is a “pointless pile of claptrap.” But why would you say such a thing? That kind of cynicism is just the sort of thing this book talks about. It says that people like you mask your real feelings with sarcasm and are incapable of genuine human expression. If anyone really needs to avoid this, it’s you. You won’t change your tune once you get to the part about the kleptomaniac monkey in the candy store. Or the part where the protagonist tearfully confesses his failings to a cat he’s dressed as his mother.
Well, okay, I’m just going to leave it here, and you can pick it up. Go ahead. I’ll turn my back so you won’t feel guilty or foolish. My back is turned. Do you have it? No? I can’t believe you’re so closed-minded! The predictable twist ending alone is worth the 572 pages you have to plod through. Actually, it’s not, but it was to me.
Dog Days is so much more than an endless string of cliches with a gimmicky ending slapped on, seemingly from out of nowhere. The characters are forgettable, too, failing to leap to life off the page. Like Salty, the wizened sea captain whose life of loneliness parallels that of the nameless protagonist. Or the ghost of Eva Braun, who tempts him and tries to keep him from doing good. It’s a rich tapestry of bizarre, poorly established characters, implausible plot developments, and thinly veiled autobiographical conversations that a dumb guy like me can’t help but fall in love with.
Well, if you change your mind, I’d be happy to loan it to you. That is, if I haven’t loaned it to someone else by then. Right now, I’m reading the new John Gray book, which you’ll find every bit as bad as you expect. I’ll have to get it to you when I’m done
Source: The Onion
]]>Written by hard-working but “rather thick” student Erin Grupman for Beth Parker’s English class, “The Character Of Hamlet In William Shakespeare’s Play Hamlet” kept the teachers thoroughly entertained during their lunch hour.
“‘Hamlet is a character in a tragedical play of the same name, Hamlet, which was written by William Shakespeare, and Hamlet also stands as the protagonist of the play,’” Parker, 39, solemnly read over the laughter of her colleagues. “Wait, wait, shut up, it goes on: ‘Hamlet, who is portrayed here as a very emotional soul, is a daring, brave character, who some believe has a bad temper.’ I would say Erin is definitely on to something here.”
Among those in the lounge were social-studies teacher David Archuleta, speech teacher Gene Ringheiser, and history teacher and girls’ basketball coach Kay Burroughs. Each took turns reading aloud from the paper and providing his or her own derisive side commentary.
“I’m no Hamlet expert, but I think the best part is where she says, ‘Hamlet thought that he was bound up inside a nutshell, which was Shakespeare’s way of showing us that Hamlet was symbolically nuts,’” said Ringheiser between bites of a tuna-salad sandwich. “Boy, you have to wonder what kind of horrendously incompetent teacher is responsible for producing students who write this kind of junk!”
Taking mock offense at her colleague’s attack on her teaching abilities, Parker retaliated by throwing a non-dairy creamer at Ringheiser.
Grupman’s paper elicited howls not only for its barely coherent thesis, but also for its pitiful punctuation.
“Listen to this: ‘When we first see Hamlet comma he is getting over his father’s death comma which some say comma indeed comma was a shock to Hamlet comma and he could not get over it when he sees his father’s ghost comma which comma wants revenge,’” Burroughs read aloud during her turn. “If you ask me comma this paper sucks pretty bad.”
The educators’ fun was briefly interrupted by the arrival of Adam Sigler, an idealistic algebra teacher known to take a dim view of student-bashing. Upon entering the teachers’ lounge, the 24-year-old Sigler poured himself coffee, exchanged brief pleasantries, and then promptly exited the room, enabling his less respectful colleagues to resume reading.
“Is he gone? Good,” Parker said. “Okay, I love this part: ‘Then, Hamlet is arguing with his mother, and thinks there is a rat, or maybe Claudius behind the drapes, so he stabs through them, and sleys [sic] Paulonius [sic], who is really his girlfriend Ophelia’s dad.’ You know, I think most Shakespearean scholars would agree with Erin’s assessment that the dramatic high point of the play is when Hamlet sleys Paulonius, his girlfriend’s dad.”
According to education expert Dr. Judith Berman-White, mercilessly mocking students behind their backs may seem unprofessional, but is a vital part of teaching.
“Teachers, like doctors and policemen, have stressful occupations that necessitate the periodic use of levity as a coping mechanism,” Berman-White said. “They have to be able to blow off steam somehow. How else can they be expected to teach sub-literate, mildly retarded kids like Erin Grupman all day long without losing their minds?”
Source: The Onion ]]>
Johnson reviews an underlined passage in her copy of The Berenstain Bears Get The Gimmies (below).
“The Berenstain Bears Get The Gimmies is my favoritest book ever,” said Johnson, hugging the dog-eared book to her chest with both arms. “The Berenstain Bears taught me about not being greedy. I used to have the ‘galloping greedy gimmies,’ but not anymore.”
Johnson received the life-altering 32-page book, one in a series of more than 50 written and illustrated by Stan and Jan Berenstain, as a gift from her grandmother.
“Gramma Gloria gave me this book,” Johnson said. “I used to go to the store with Mommy and want more and more. Now, I pick out one thing I really, really like.”
“I know lots of stuff I didn’t ever know before,” added Johnson, who first began reading at age 3 and three-quarters. “You can ask Mommy or Daddy or anyone at school.”
While she still looks at Get The Gimmies “every single day,” Johnson asked her parents to buy her more books from the Berenstain series.
“I used to really like Clifford [The Big Red Dog] books,” Johnson said. “I guess they’re still good, sorta, but the Berenstain Bears are the best. I like the way the bears look, especially their noses.”
Delighted by the positive influence of Get The Gimmies, Johnson’s parents purchased their daughter 14 more books from the series.
“These books really speak to Melody,” said Johnson’s father Gordon. “We overheard Melody calling her brother’s room a ‘dust-catching, wall-to-wall, helter-skelter mess.’ That’s from The Berenstain Bears And The Messy. Melody’s very bright for her age, you know.”
“‘You can’t have fun or relax in a room that’s such a terrible mess,’” Johnson recited. “I mesmerized [sic] that part, so I wouldn’t forget it.”
Johnson frequently offers others snippets of the Bears’ wisdom.
“I was playing in the sandbox the other day,” Johnson said. “Spencer was making fun of Kate’s dress. I remembered when Brother Bear learned his lesson in Too Much Teasing. Brother thought it was fun to tease, until someone teased him. Then it was no fun.”
“I told Spencer he should read Too Much Teasing, and then he wouldn’t tease anymore,” Melody said. “But he just called me a rotten egg. I tried to give the book to him so he could borrow it. But he wouldn’t take it. It’s a good book. It’s funny, and it’d teach him a lesson.”
Some of Melody’s other friends have been more receptive to her testimonials about the life-changing power of the Berenstain Bears. Best friend Angie Bishop started reading the books after Johnson recommended them at a recent sleepover.
“I read Get The Gimmies as soon as Melody told me about it, and I really liked it,” Bishop said. “I went to the library and got lots of other ones, too. I’ve been reading them all week. My favorites are The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners and The Berenstain Bears Visit The Dentist. Others are super good, too.”
Added Bishop: “Melody found them first. But I think I understand them a little better. I’m like Sister Bear. She says something and I think, ‘That’s what I would say.’”
Johnson, who has been reading above her grade level for the past two years, does not view reading as a contest.
“I’m happy to have the books,” said Johnson, who reports she used to take things she was given for granted, but no longer. “Like in Count Their Blessings. There [are] lots of good things that you want to happen, but you probably already have a lot of good things, so remember to be happy about those. That is just so true.”
Johnson’s mother agreed that her daughter’s outlook has changed for the better.
“Not only has she learned a lot of life lessons, but she also learned to ride a bike without training wheels,” Carrie Johnson said. “She never fights nap-time anymore, and she’s making great strides with her violin playing. I haven’t seen her this inspired since last year, when she was blown away by getting to shake hands with the Three Little Pigs at Storybook Gardens.”
Source: The Onion ]]>
A sampling of the Department of Education study’s findings.
“For years, countless educators have asserted that books give readers a chance to journey to exotic, far-off lands and meet strange, exciting new people,” Education Secretary Richard Riley told reporters. “We have found this is simply not the case.”
According to the study, those who read are not transported to any place beyond the area in which the reading occurs, and even these movements are always the result of voluntary decisions made by the reader and not in any way related to the actual reading process.
Phoenix-area 11-year-old Jennifer Gleason, who did not move in more than two hours of reading The Wizard Of Oz.
“People engaged in reading tend to be motionless,” Riley said. “Not moving tends to make it easier to read.”
In various field experiments, the study found that young readers are particularly susceptible to the reading-travel myth. One test subject, 11-year-old Justin Fisher of Ypsilanti, MI, began reading a fantasy novel by C.S. Lewis under close observation. After 40 minutes, the only trip Fisher took was to the bathroom, a journey he himself initiated because he “had to go.” Further, at no point did Fisher’s voyage to the bathroom involve evil witches, messianic lions or closet portals to other universes.
“I just stayed in my chair without moving that much,” Fisher said. “I think I scratched my head a couple of times.”
Another case documented in the study was that of San Diego 13-year-old Liz Kent, who read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Over the course of more than three hours reading the pirate-adventure tale, at no point did she make a new friend or travel to a distant land.
The study did note one exception to the findings, citing situations in which people read on buses, cars, trains or planes. Even in these cases, however, the reading-travel link is tenuous at best.
“Many people enjoy reading while traveling,” Riley said. “But it is important to note that the traveling always results in the reading, and never the reverse.”
As a result of the study, it is expected that many young people will call into question what Riley termed “the empty promises of library posters and other pieces of pro-reading propaganda.”
“I hate it when you get excited about a place and then you don’t go there,” 10-year-old Ashley Brandes of Atlanta said. “Reading sucks.”
Source: The Onion
“It was pretty good, I guess, but I just couldn’t get all the way through,” said Thompson, 32, who was given the seven-chapter, heavily footnoted “Dear John” missive on Feb. 3. “I always meant to pick it up again, but then I got busy and, oh, I don’t know. He’s talented, but his letters can sometimes get a little self-indulgent.”
Foster, the award-winning author of The Broom Of The System and the 1,079-page Infinite Jest, met Thompson in March 2001 through mutual friends.
A political-science professor at Illinois State University, where Wallace teaches creative writing, Thompson said pages 4 through 11 of the letter chronicled the deterioration of the relationship “fairly well.” She specifically cited Item 64, on page 7, from the section, “How I Can Tell Things Have Changed”:
“It used to be that if you were away from the table or in the next room or otherwise unable to witness this admittedly unsavory and wholly intrusive activity on my part, in little spasms of unhealthy obsession I would peek into your Day Runner Personal Planner so as to gauge how much together-time we would have during the upcoming week at a glance; lately, however—if you are at all able to move past this revelation of my no-two-ways-around-it unforgivable and unjustifiable invasion of privacy and on to the rather telling point—I have found myself either viewing the week-at-a-glance in actual anticipation of our time apart or, even when opportunities for unfettered peeking presented themselves, ignoring your Day Runner Personal Planner altogether such as just last week when, stooped in rummaging position, I opted to remove from your bag and guiltily read cover-to-cover a copy of Fine Cooking magazine, therein choosing to glean particulars about the cultivation, culinary traditions, and preparation of white asparagus over those of our precious little time together.”
An excerpt from the break-up opus.
In addition to compiling the many reasons why the relationship was no longer working, Wallace’s letter featured sections on “Why We Could Never Grow Old Together,” “Ways It—Us, The World, And Everything—Has All Changed,” and “Things I’ve Never Told You (That Will Certainly Change Your Mind About Me).”
“One thing I found annoying was that you had to read all the way to the middle to figure out what things on the first page of the letter were talking about,” Thompson said. “For instance, he kept referring to somebody named The Cackler without explanation until page 11, at which point I finally found out that The Cackler is my friend Renée—essentially forcing me to read the whole first 11 pages over again. And then there are all the footnotes. I always felt he overused those in his valentines, too.”
Thompson said she believes Wallace penned the breakup opus during a January lecture trip to the University of New England in Biddeford, ME.
“When he came back, he handed me a big manila envelope,” Thompson said. “He said that during the trip, he confronted himself about some things he’d been avoiding, and that he needed to start living his life in a whole different way. He said the contents of the envelope would explain everything. I was just like, ‘Okay, whatever, David.’”
Thompson said she did not immediately open the envelope.
“I assumed it was one of his tomes about, I don’t know, the reasons why he isn’t going to eat processed sugar anymore, or why he threw out his TV,” Thompson said. “Or something like the one where he said, in 88 numbered points, why he didn’t want a birthday party.”
“Or, God, I almost forgot,” Thompson added. “There was the letter where he explained how he now wants to be called ‘Dave’ and included a page-long description of every single ‘Dave’ and ‘David’ he’s ever known in his entire life.”
On Feb. 5, two days after receiving the letter, Thompson received a voicemail message from Wallace asking her what she thought of it. The message prompted her finally to open the envelope and “crack” the letter. That evening, Thompson slogged through the first 20 pages of the dense, complex Breakup Letter For Claire–Rough Draft, eventually putting it down to begin making dinner. The next morning, she moved the letter from her coffee table to a desk drawer, where it still remains, unfinished.
“Maybe I’ll pick it up again,” Thompson said. “I’d sort of like to see how it ends. Then again, knowing David, it probably just leaves a whole bunch of loose ends untied.”
Source: The Onion
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