Chez Gnu (1960-2002)

Written in what Gore Vidal has described as "the small and almost childlike letters of a total idiot," Chez Gnu's diary begins upon his arrival at the Coca Cola Junior High School in Sandusky, Ohio on September 1, 2001 and concludes June 25, 2002, three days after graduation. Chez left two diaries. The first was kept in a Scooby Doo spiral notebook out by the dumpster and the second was actually written with whiteout on the backs of the turtles in Mrs. Hagopian's Earth Science aquarium.
Chez's style is crisp and crunchy, highly literate and somewhat obtuse while at the same time exhibiting a martini-like sense of humor. It is interesting to compare and contrast the monthly analyses entered by Chez in his diary with say, a small patch of brown liquid under the sink. One can immediately notice the similarities and be awestruck by the differences. Chez often seems to ignore his daily impressions for a more hopeful summary of them. But Chez does not attempt to conceal either the course of his campaign, his growing desperation or his love of modern dance. The daily reports become increasingly sarcastic until towards the end he is considering just "paying for the damages and washing my hands of the whole thing until they are extremely clean". His courage, his mistakes in judgment, his naive and idiotic illusions and his disgusting personal hygienic practices are honestly set down.
Chez had a dream. A stupid, emptyheaded, absurd, moronic, feebleminded, ridiculous, rattlebrained, doltish, half-witted, foolish, irrational and senseless dream but a dream nonetheless.

Sept. 1

A new stage begins today. We arrived at the 7-11 at night. The trip was quite good and I even got the kosher meal by mistake. Upon reaching North Monroeville (appropriately disguised as matadors) Pachungo and I made the contacts and traveled by bus for two days. We stopped at the Flying "T" Truck Stop in Standardsburg and I told Pachungo to use the ladies room so as to avoid suspicion. Boy, was that a mistake. After the problem with the tampon machine, Pachungo had caused all eyes to be trained on us. The Proletariat began to wonder if we were involved in the making of an "indy feature" whatever that is. As a curious sidelight, the ineffable Tumaini quickly had them all sign a release and promised to keep their head shots on file. We were on our way again.
While heading toward the Parkertown Holiday Inn Bigotes, who had just discovered my identity, almost drove off a cliff leaving the Yugo stuck in the middle of a corn maze. We walked about 20 kilometres before Pachungo realized that we didn't have to negotiate the maze first, we could just walk through the corn in the direction of the busy highway we had been hearing for the past 14 hours.
Bigotes showed himself willing to collaborate with us on poker night but he is also loyal to Monje whom he respects and seems to like just a little too much for an Education Revolutionary. According to him Rodolfo feels the same way and so does Coco, but we must convince the group to fight for real education reform, not sit around all day wondering if "Monje likes me better or Tumaini".

Sept. 2

We spent the day in a tanning salon beside the arroyo, some 100 metres from the school. We were attacked by some sort of insects which are annoying but do not bite. Bigotes says they are called "cooties".

Sept. 3

An uneventful day. Tumaini and I surveyed the area, following the course of the Sulphur Brook Pipe Creek but we did not reach its source. It runs through an alley behind Kinko's and the area fortunately is little frequented. With proper discipline, a small recreational vehicle and a George Foreman Grill, one could possibly stay there a long time.
In the afternoon a heavy rain drove us back to the Red Roof Inn. I removed six ticks from my body.

Sept. 4

We did some good scouting of the school to prepare the area to be used as a campsite for when the six Morris Dancers of the second group arrive. The spot selected is about 20 metres from the Principal's office, on a small elevation of file cabinets. Close by there is a water fountain and vending machines. Pachungo is happy for the ease of access to water for now he can begin making his precious Jell-O.

Sept. 5

Some Janitors (or Custodians as the people around here call them) passed by our encampment today. These are the men of these halls of learning, young, old, married, unmarried, ideal for recruitment. They cordially hate their boss, Principal Marilyn Wyland and they report that there are houses 8 leagues away-- some with cable television! There is no other news.

Sept. 6

We set up an observation point overlooking the Gym so we can have some warning in case of any inspections or if the girls’ volleyball team is practicing. While two of us go scouting, each of the others remaining must spend three hours occupied with their respective educational reform pet projects. Bigotes keeps busy sabotaging the copy machine in the teacher's lounge while Monje writes sarcastic letters to the NEA and the AFT. Coco is trying to pass legislation that will allow the hiring of uncertified teachers and Pachungo has become quite adept at making Jell-O hats and hopes to someday create Jell-O shoes with suspended fruit in the style of Dutch wooden clogs. I don't really see what it has to do with education reform but if anyone can do it, Pachungo can!

Sept. 7

Everything has gone off rather well so far. We have arrived at the school with little difficulty. Half of the personnel is here. They also arrived without too much trouble but were somewhat delayed by a snafu in the paperwork for the llama. Ricardo's main collaborators will take to the mountains outside Mrs. Bohenke's 11th grade classroom but close enough to the payphone in case Monje has to cancel his podiatrist appointment. The prospect looks very good in this remote area between guidance and the cafeteria and everything indicates we can stay practically as long as we wish or at least until 6th period. The plans are to wait for the rest of the group and then pretend not to know who they are. Just before they get angry, we will say "Just kidding!" and allow ourselves a few moments of revolutionary laughter before returning to our labours; those labours being the pacifistically violent overthrow of the American public school system through the use of satire, common sense and wedgies. Viva la revolution!

Sept. 8

Today we engaged the enemy. The battle unfolded like this: at 7:25am, Marcos, Pacho, Miguel and Pombo created a diversionary tactic wherein they recreated the famous Abbott and Costello dialogue "Who's on First?" outside of Mr. Fidrych's homeroom. When the capitalist pig came out to see what the commotion was - I slipped inside and met the students of the revolution. I informed them that they didn't really need to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, "once is enough with a pledge" I said, "Otherwise people won't believe you at the next walk-a-thon." I then taught them how to read. After finishing with a rousing rendition of "The International", I told them their shoes were untied and escaped during the ensuing confusion. Back at base camp, we celebrated our victory with an impromptu talent show and Twinkies for dessert.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Know Chiuld Lef Behighnd

A long time ago, the federal government decided that our schools were not doing a very good job of turning out German rocket scientists. They knew this for a fact because the commies had managed to accelerate a 183lb. lump of metal named Sputnik up to 17,900mph with THEIR German rocket scientists. The U.S. meanwhile, had spent over 4 billion dollars and had been unable to make a rice krispie move much faster than 9.8m/sec2. The feds knew they needed some more smart people and they needed them pronto! Thus was born the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which allowed our Prez to throw money at schools like french fries towards pelicans. Now, instead of training young minds in all aspects of adulthood and citizenship, the job of the schools would be to create scientists, mathematicians, engineers and other assorted dweebs. Because, as we all know, Science and Math are "important" subjects that are actually useful in life as opposed to those "unimportant" subjects such as Art, Music and Philosophy which can only be used by sensitive undergrads to get the bra off an impressionable freshman Psychology major. This new paradigm of education did little to create German rocket scientists but much to create a lot of free time for beatniks and their hippie children which led to protesting the Vietnam War, joining the Weather Underground and kidnapping Patty Hearst.
The public schools were happy for the new source of revenue because now they could buy new ashtrays for the teacher’s lounge and get those really nice rulers with the metal in the edge which didn’t break the first time you smacked a kid’s ear with it. And they knew they’d be doing a lot of smacking if they were going to produce enough quality German rocket scientists to get an American to the Moon by 1969 by gum! Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell them that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to get involved in education or maybe somebody did tell them but that person didn’t have tenure so it probably wasn’t true. Either way, the money started rolling in and it hasn’t stopped since even though, to the best of our knowledge, very few German rocket scientists were created. Then again, maybe they were but no one would have sex with them so they died off eventually. What did everyone outside of education learn from the Defense Education Act of 1958? Lots of money thrown at a problem does not necessarily produce results.

Time marched on but our schools still rode in the horseless carriage. Hippies got into teaching because it was "groovy, man" and you got the summers off. Students were told to question everybody else’s authority and "call me Dave". These yarnheads forced the old and sick onto the ice flows of early retirement. Latin teachers were the first to go followed by administrators who knew someone who knew someone who had actually known John Dewey. Next came Mrs. Zamanigian who failed you if you only got one wrong on your multiplication tables. Gradually, spelling bees and dodgeball were outlawed as "negatively reinforcing self-esteem activities" and replaced with more "at task" activities such as "share bear" and sitting on a hard chair for six hours at a time listening to Ms. Freerainbowhug wax poetic about something called the underground railroad which, you are shocked to find out, has no Morlocks and even fewer horsepower. We should have all marched into their classrooms right then and put an end to that nonsense but we didn’t and their demon seed would come back to haunt us in the 1990’s. What did everyone outside of education learn from this new pedagogy? Demanding and knowledgeable teachers are often the best teachers.
Next came the Age of Theories. Whole language vs. phonics, Classical Education vs. Frisbee Golf and who can ever forget the monumental brouhaha which was Didactically Oriented Systems of Axioms for Elementary Geometry vs. Look, A Square! As teachers began losing the respect of their students because, let’s face it, unlike Ichabod Crane, they were not the brightest people in the village anymore; they felt the need to create the illusion that learning was somehow akin to alchemy and only THEY knew how to work the lodestone. Thus, schools of education bloomed. Now, one no longer needed to acquire mastery of a subject in order to become a teacher. You could walk right down to your local state college and major in education even if you were as dumb as a sack of dumb hammers. You would be taught the latest theories of cognitive development, learn how to create lesson plans and sit at the feet of master teachers who, while not ever having actually taught in a real school, had many friends who were teachers. You would graduate with a degree, which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, to anyone who cared to notice that you had paid your tuition. Now it was time to get into teaching, snag tenure, coast for 10-15 years, become a principal and retire from a job well done. What did everyone outside of education learn from this? Schools of education can’t make silk purses out of sow’s ears. What makes a good teacher? Knowledge of the subject at hand and high scores on verbal aptitude tests. Simple as that.

The field was now plowed and the seeds of our present situation could be planted. Television failed from its early promise and became a mugwump wasteland which would undermine parental authority and lobotomize our children. In the good ol’ days we had secrets which we kept from the young until they had earned that particular rite of passage. Now with television, everything was out there: from sex to murder and cannibalism. Unfortunately, seeing something is not quite the same thing as understanding something, and our kids grew up thinking that they knew everything but they lacked the maturity and wisdom which would only come with age, booze and a divorce. Parents also should share some of the blame for the sorry state of our society by remaining children themselves. They refused to grow up and accept the responsibilities of adulthood and parenthood whilst livin’ in the ‘hood. Even the "good" parents were culpable by refusing to set limits, instill civility and manners and wanting to be a best bud to their child instead of a parent. Finally, the schools themselves and especially the teachers are the biggest reason for most of the problems we face as a society today. Quite simply, they have not done the job we paid for. Somewhere along the line, they forgot that their purpose was to create a life-long learner not produce fodder for the cannons of industry. The schools have followed the whims and orders of Business and assumed that the goal of education was to provide the local widget factory with entry level widget technicians. Business, much like the Army doesn’t want free-thinkers and poets, they want you to have that report on their desk by 4:00pm or else.

Schools stopped asking "why" a long time ago and they’ve spent the last twenty years chasing their tails and digging themselves in deeper. It’s time for a revolution in education. You know it and I know it. What are you gonna do about it?

NEXT: But wait! It gets worse….