God Strings...

[ItsNotGonnaBeAlright]

If you've ever wondered what the state of public education was these days...

My stepmother is a science teacher in a Winston-Salem, NC high school. The other day, one of her senior honor students pipes up and asks why the sun doesn't fall out of the sky. She looked at him, dumbfounded, and asked if he was serious. After all, this is someone who had spent twelve years being educated and as of spring will be expected to be a functioning independent adult.

Unfortunately, he was serious. So my stepmother, being the smart ass that she is, decides to have some fun. She says "Well, there's a string wrapped around the sun holding it up and God is holding the other end so it won't fall." This should have been it right? A few giggles around the class, a short REAL explanation, and then life goes on. Well, not really. The class was silent for a moment, then another student raises his hand and asks, in a very serious voice "But won't the string burn up?"

Keep in mind here, seniors in high school.

After a few more seconds of silence, a female student throws in her two cents. "No, stupid, it's a God string. They don't burn." The entire class breathes a sigh of understanding and begins talking about how dumb they felt for not understanding this.

My stepmother, after she wiped away her tears of laughter, then spent thirty minutes of her honors biology classtime explaining basic astrophysics.

[RedMage138]

honors biology is a freshman level class...

[Happy Panther]

I need someone to snopes that

[Jase]

That's always been my understanding of it. What's the big deal?

[Panthers128]

Nearly all people I've met have a basic understanding of gravity and the solar system and I'm from the triad. As an educator, perhaps your stepmother should have spent time explaining to them these things instead of wasting their time with jokes.

[Towelboy]

jase and i are confused...is there a string or not?

[Zod]

perhaps your stepmother should have spent time explaining to them these things instead of wasting their time with jokes.

I was thinking the same thing. In an educational setting, poking fun at any questions is fairly ignorant no matter how rudimentary.

[Zod]

jase and i are confused...is there a string or not?

If Jase asks you if you want to search for the string...

don't do it.

[Epistaxis]

We had honors "track" programs that ran from 9-12 grades.

As to the original post......damn. You would think they would have at least caught a few minutes of History Channel or Discovery stuff on celestial mechanics, if somehow it wasn't covered in Elementary School or Jr. High Earth Science.

I guess I should point out that in the Chicago public schools, they would just be happy to have decent attendance.

[bubbadawg]

my oldest daughter is a teacher for elementary kids in Asheville. She asked the class one day if they knew any of Aesop's Fables. A kid in the back raised his hand with " Excuse me Ms. Cashion, don't you mean Akon's Fables?"

Sad yet true

[Towelboy]

The Ant and the Grasshopper - 2009 Version

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and storing supplies in preparation for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool, and laughs, dances and plays the summer time away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper appears at a press conference with actor Martin Sheen, who demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR and MSNBC all run segments on the evening news showing stark images of the shivering grasshopper, accompanied by video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast as the story quickly becomes national news.

On The View, self-described Shiksa non-grata Joy Behar screeches, “How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?”

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and the audience is moved to tears as they sing “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

Jesse Jackson and Reverend Jeremiah Wright stage a demonstration in front of the ant’s house, and all the networks are there to cover it. Jesse Jackson has the group kneel in prayer for the grasshopper’s sake, while Reverend Wright tells the press that the ant invented winter as part of a right-wing plot to exterminate all the grasshoppers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in an interview with Larry King, claims the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant. Enraged, with her spittle dotting King’s tie, Pelosi vehemently decries, “It’s time he paid his fair share!”

The Obama/Biden administration puts pressure on the EEOC, which soon drafts the “Economic Equity Grasshopper Act,” retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The Bill is quickly passed by Congress after glowing endorsements from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and even posthumous support from the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) denies allegations by FOX News that he offered to get the ant out of his tax troubles in exchange for sex.

The ant is fined heavily for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs to work at the ant hill he started from scratch. With his credit and reputation ruined, the ant hill is soon out of business, and the ant’s home is seized by the Internal Revenue Service for non-payment of back taxes.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recruits her old Whitewater law firm to represent the grasshopper pro-bono in a defamation lawsuit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of Federal Judges. All grasshoppers, the Judges were appointed by President Bill Clinton after a purported “exhaustive nationwide search,” which was actually a short list of card-carrying ACLU grasshoppers, and no judicial ants.

The ant is assigned the same lawyer O.J. Simpson had in Las Vegas as a public defender, and a request for a change of venue is denied. In a 7-0 decision, the ant loses the case. The ant’s unemployment benefits are garnished, and he is ordered to pay all his remaining liquid assets to the grasshopper as compensatory damages.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper drinking Crown Royal and finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow. The story appears as one paragraph on the bottom of page 17 of the New York Times, next to an ad for adult undergarments.

The grasshopper is later found dead in a drug-related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who now terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood. They have no jobs, money or credit, but are able to obtain a mortgage for the home under guidelines mandated by the Obama/Biden administration, which guarantees equal-opportunity loans for low-income spiders.

[Jase]

It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the Octopus. All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. Then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns and also he got a race car.

Is any of this getting through to you?

[Scrumtrilescent]

The exit exam for HS shouldn't be pass/fail, it should be live/die.

[dimbee]

I'm surprised she didn't get fired for mentioning teh God in a public classroom.