On the Education of Children

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What is it that stirs man’s mind with the hunger for knowledge? Moreover what is it that creates lust for the arcane matters of algebra, literature, history, biology, and keyboarding? The goals of modern education run contradictory and tragically asymptotic to our most basic drives—to eat, sleep, and fornicate with as little effort as possible. Some time ago, arrogant humans determined specific methods which cruelly mold children into beings forever reminded of their own mortality through a pseudoscience as laughable as astrology or meteorology. We created walls where our instincts stunningly stub their toes at every turn while acquiring cursed sentience. Educators call this method of madness pedagogy: the deceitful practice where undeveloped minds are adulterated with facts and theories through lecture, demonstrations, worksheets, and most revoltingly, “games.”

Imagine performing dentistry on a stage. On thirty homeless drug addicts who are convinced the “exit” door leads to the coked-up slopes of Mount Heroin, but can only struggle against the straps of their chairs. And you are naked. This is the reality of the first day of school for teachers. The students revolt against every authority in their lives using the totality of their beings. This is natural: it is man’s natural state, to revolt against his own mortality, to blast these rules that injure him so, the laws of physics be damned. It turns out nature was our first teacher, lovingly doling out broken limbs, deforming flesh, maiming those who dared to climb too high, steal the food of superior predators, or jump blindly into gorges. Experience it seems leaves the most profound impression in our minds and this is the fundamental precept of Constructivist Pedagogy. Every lecture, worksheet, or activity must be experiential in nature. Is there really any better way to teach binomial multiplication than by lining up children as if they are expressions in parentheses, then have them act out the F-O-I-L method, combining with other students across the parenthetical gulf, showing for good and all that man still holds sway over the distributive property? Reading that question again, there does not seem to be an alternative capable of competing. Forcing the children to combine with other children they may find attractive or repulsive is an experience enjoyed by all on some level and reveals to them the ugly injustices of pure, rigorous mathematics. It also produces socio-emotional scarring which also occurs during the forced revelry of Valentine’s Day; hence explaining educators’ inequitable rates of salary.

But what of those who still “don’t get it?” What avenues of knowledge are available for them? Constructivist methods force educators to evaluate why lessons don’t work with particular students and to individualize the lesson. So uh, “it depends.” Suppose they lack motivation. Bribing with candy always works—and I’m not even trying to be funny. Complete problems, answer questions, write out flashcards—all are deserving of a chocolate delight. Research has shown that this works on students of all ages and even office rats are led by the snout with donuts. Demographics are also in play with this reward system: students judged to be ghetto prefer tamarind and candies of sour constitutions over sweets, as sugar only placates those who can’t keep it real. Knowing these subtleties is what separates highly qualified instructors from the idealistic fools overrunning schools today. National education reform is the only way to correct this misappropriation of candies, yet the myopic, right-wing, Texas-Christian, oil-baron, carpet-bagging obstructionists in the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers consistently declare the issue as “tangential.”

Sometimes candy fails. A child may demand a sweet before negotiations may begin. Unfortunately, modern American culture has emasculated most men, replaced dutiful soldiers with empathetic-to-a-fault women as our national heroes, and edified children as beings beyond criticism. It is no wonder our educators quickly become nothing more than overly grateful geysers of contraband to these malevolent overlords. These Candy Czars employ as many as 4 to 6 fearless hench-children to peddle their winnings. Currently, lollipops are found to sell from $.25 to $.50 on the black markets, netting these tyrants infinite profit as they lost nothing to acquire their goods. It is within this nefarious environment that other degenerative activities take place. In my last visit to an institution, girls aged no more than 8 years old offered handcrafted tokens of love in exchange for candy. I said I didn’t have candy, turned away from them and heard the whores shrieking with despair. I later found several of these tokens being tallied by Andrew “Sweet Tooth” Casanova, a 9-year-old prodigy of douchebaggery. We know how far these activities can go, but how can education temper avarice?

Like disgusting moles on your face, these children must be uprooted, gouged out, or burned down with tweezers, nail clippers, or soldering irons. However, children are inferior to moles, as they lack moles’ inexorable courage and will cower when threatened. Due to the draconian policy the American government has regarding injuries to children, it is worth an aspiring educator’s time to study these laws only insofar as advantages may be drawn from them. One must know only enough to twist facts, but never enough to be aware they are lying. Children’s feelings of superiority over adults are beyond arrogance, yet this façade is easily rent asunder with an adult’s cool gaze of conviction. Declare that all clocks in Australia spin counterclockwise—defend the assertion with the fact that their Southern Hemisphere inversely experiences the Northern Hemisphere’s seasons, and mammals such as their platypus lay eggs. Reveal to them esoteric knowledge of the Victorian Moose, a pouched, camel-humped omnivore whose herds dominate Australia’s Western Plateau. Aboriginals depend on the magnificent beast not only as sustenance of their being, but of their culture, as it provides powerful hormones via consumptions of its genitals. These hormones endow the aboriginals with their dark hair as well as an uncanny sense of direction, allowing them to navigate the horizonless savannah. Americans will believe anything about Australians, so long as one includes information everybody knows, which, in aggregate, may be found in the celebrated Crocodile Dundee Trilogy. In this way, you may test your resolve against the will of children and adults. What does this have to do with threats? Nothing really, but if a student dares to antagonize an instructor, it is the instructor’s duty to teach the student illiteracy, pseudo-math, false histories, and opportunistic and immoral behavior, so as to lay fissures onto his knowledge of society. For their insolence they must be stripped of their chance to function in our culture. One may also accelerate this process by not focusing on the offending child, but by turning his peers against him.

Scenario:

Instructor: “Why are you talking back to me, Derek?” (Analyzing the class) “Do you want everybody except you to get a zero for today?”

Of course the answer to these questions is irrelevant. Give everybody a zero for the day, tear up their worksheets or activities and have them spend the rest of the class with their heads down on their desks. Further interruptions result in the destruction of previous grades—but not of the offending child’s. Remind the other students how special Derek is, how fortunate he is to have friends who will bear his cross. These things have a way of fixing themselves.

Yet, what does all of this expenditure of energy net us, our society, humanity? The answer to the why of education lies not in researched, proven, and procedurally defined equations. It is in the heuristic journey, the holistic result achieved by adult and child, male and female, alpha and beta, master and student, winner and loser. Learning is a struggle, a struggle where one finds out if they are indeed a winner or a loser. How does one determine their place? Re-read the third sentence of this paragraph and if you were educated at all during your life, the relativistic analogy reveals the answer to at least one of life’s greatest questions.

—JCR

ESSAIS