It’s real good to no that in this crazy world that our childrens is all getting topnotched educations so they can be moe intelligenter. U can cholk that up to some grate teechers!
SNACK TIME
“Whoever eats this dead fly, I will give them an ‘A’ on tomorrow’s test,” said an algebra teacher (not named in reports) at Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, California, in November 2009. Most of the kids cringed, but a student named Stephen Zeldag took the dare…and swallowed the fly. That night, Zeldag didn’t study, thinking he’d earned a free pass, and the next day, he got only 9 out of 46 problems correct. The teacher held up his part of the bargain by writing, “Here is your A,” on the test paper…but he put an “F” in the gradebook. “I really didn’t think he was joking,” said Zeldag. At last report, a school investigation was pending.
In May 2009, every student who attended the junior prom at Warwick High School in Lititz, Pennsylvania, was given a commemorative shot glass. “We couldn’t afford to give out anything as extravagant as picture frames or money clips,” said a member of the prom committee, which included students and several adults. Assistant principal Scott Galen said that he never knew what the kids would be given; on the order form he approved, it just said “prom souvenirs.” School officials acknowledged that giving out shot glasses to high school students “might have sent the wrong message” and promised, in the future, to find out exactly what they’re approving before they approve it.
Mary Segall, a high-school choir director in Phoenix, Arizona, was put on administrative leave for taking 40 students to lunch following a class trip in December 2009. She claimed that the restaurant she chose was the only one downtown that could accommodate such a large group. “Nonsense,” said the school’s principal. “This is a big city; there are plenty of eateries downtown to choose from.” So which restaurant did Segall take the kids to? Hooters.
Gee whizz: 93% of surfers admit to having peed in their wetsuits at least once.
In April 2007, a drama teacher at South Park School in Vancouver, British Columbia, had her 6th- and 7th-grade students reenact the Virginia Tech massacre, the worst school shooting in U.S. history—which had occurred only a few days earlier. After receiving numerous complaints, the school’s principal agreed that it was a “totally inappropriate lesson.” The teacher (not named in press reports) countered that the exercise was merely designed to “give the kids an opportunity to address their feelings about violence.”
In 2008 John Freshwater, a public middle-school science teacher from Mount Vernon, Ohio, used the classroom’s high-frequency generator for a totally different kind of science lesson: He burned crosses onto several students’ arms. He’d been reprimanded before for teaching creationism and refusing to remove a copy of the Bible from his classroom, but the branding incident was the last straw—he was suspended without pay. A friend of Freshwater defended him: “With the exception of the cross-burning episode, he is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district.”
To inspire girls to work harder, in January 2010, administrators at Crosby Middle School in Hitchcock, Texas, brought in a motivational speaker named Shirley Price, a local woman who had overcome physical handicaps to earn a doctorate. But, according to school superintendent Mike Bergman, “Somehow, Shirley got it in her head that students were having sex on campus and went into a profanity-laden speech about sexual-type things”—including, reportedly, graphic tips on various sexual techniques. Bergman later sent a letter to the students’ homes apologizing for the “off-target and objectionable” speech. Price maintains that her comments were taken out of context, and that she merely told the girls to abstain from sex. But that didn’t satisfy many parents, who demanded the school give their girls counseling. Said one mother: “She violated my daughter’s innocence!”
2009 scientific study: Bad driving is genetic. (About 30% of Americans have “bad driver” genes.)