A MODEST PROPOSAL
Pay to Play
A Simple Solution for our Public Schools.

by Paul de Valera

Education is a sham! I'm so tired of trying to educate people that resist every attempt to learn to use their brain. Most people want to be stupid since it's easier than actually thinking. Thinking may actually make you lose sleep, or get you to do things besides catalog sports statistics and episodes of "Friends" in your head.

After many years of working in hundreds of classrooms in Southern California, I have some insight as to where the problems in contemporary public education lie. So here's my spiel:

Education should not be free. That's right, you should have to pay.

Instead of people like myself, that have wisely chosen not to reproduce, being taxed to educate the offspring of those that have not, the ones that choose to breed should be charged a "child education tax."

This tax should be paid every year from when the child spurts out of the womb, until each is 18. It would apply to all children, so the more kids you have, the more you'll pay.

In addition to this tax, you must pay to send your child to school. It would not be a huge amount, and don't think that poor families can't pay $100, or even $500, a year for their kids, too. If kids can prance around in $250 shoes and $100 pants, parents sure as hell can pay for them to go to school.

The main reason for this fee would be to force the parents to take an active role in their child's education. School is free, so it has no value; people take things that they obtain freely for granted. If parents were forced to pay, they would have concern in the quality of the education that their child is receiving. It's that simple. Dollars turn apathy into interest.

This system will generate a lot of money for the education system as well. Each child's family would be putting money into the system for the first five years of their child's life, even before he's in school. This arrangement may also act to deter some people from having as many kids as they do, overcrowding the system and diminishing the quality of education for everyone.

In a way similar to certain European countries, we should also have two branches of education: an academic one, and a school of the trades. By the time children reach the eighth grade, they should be suited for additional academic study. If not, they should be taught a trade so they can make a living for themselves.

It's an unrealistic notion that all children can (or should) go to college. This romantic ideal seems pervasive in the LAUSD environment. To assume that every kid can have an academic education is unrealistic to say the least: it's downright foolhardy.

At least 90% of all shop classes in the LAUSD have been shut down. But not every kid is going to go to college. Some will be welders, or carpenters, or whatever, but they won't be going on to a college. Some kids aren't cut out for a degree in math, or science. Some kids will be good at building houses or building gates.

In addition to the above, all extracurricular activities should be removed from the normal education program. If there are no shop classes, then the jocks should not get new jerseys every year. So much money is wasted on sports in the off-chance that one of these kids will make it to the professional leagues. A school has a better chance of a jet liner crashing into it than a member of the student body rising to jock-mo stardom. You want to play sports? Fine, do it on your own time.

Not only the jocks get the axe, but the brains, band nerds, political suck-asses, and every other extra-curricular activity, gone. You want to do speech and debate so badly? Then go form your own club. You want to play an instrument? Learn on your own time. Besides, the band gets no love from me because they are the soundtrack for the jocks. And art? Outta here; go make lame-ass paintings and bad drawings on your own time (just like I do).

Extra-curricular means just that: above and beyond; the extra curriculum. You shouldn't be allowed to get out of class because you have a game, or because you're going to go argue with a bunch of other egg-heads about shit that you'll never do anything about anyway. So they should all be banned.

Sex Ed. as well should be the parents', not the state's, responsibility. A school's job is to teach you how to use your head, not to teach you values. That responsibility lies upon the shoulders of the parents.

Stick to the basics: Math, Science, Grammar, History, English, and Reading Comprehension. And yes, Grammar, English, and Reading Comprehension are different things. Everything else can be done on your own time and your own dime. Why should we finance jocks to go on date rape sprees with our tax dollars? Why indeed.

The next thing would be to get rid of stuff. Computers? Go to the library or go to a trade school if you want to learn. Most people don't want to use a computer as the tool that it is; they just want to send each other useless e-mails and chain letters. So we should sell them all back. They are more of a distraction than a useful tool in the classroom. They always need to be guarded and monitored, and that monopolizes the teacher's class time.

Computers are worthless in the classroom setting, and television is even more useless. Don't you think kids watch enough TV? I mean look at them, walking billboards for corporate America without an original thought in their heads. Every classroom has a TV, every one, and we should sell them too.

Other things to get rid of are golf carts for fat-ass administrators. Give them a bike instead. They will be in better shape and not have to buy so many pairs of fat-ass Docker pants.

Groundskeepers should be given the boot, as well. Do we need grass and trees to teach people how to use their brains? No, we don't. School is boring and unpleasant, so why try to candy-coat it with groomed shrubs? Make the students maintain the grounds if you need to have grass, trees, and other things for them to throw their trash behind.

Also, get rid of the food, especially the soda dispensers. Do kids need to be hopped up on sugar the whole time they are in school? No, they don't. They should bring their own lunch, brown bag it and that's it. A school is there to educate, not to participate in malnutrition and the ram-rodding of corporate America down these kids' throats. Teach the kids to be prepared and to get their own shit together instead of making it convenient for them to get fat and dumb while filling the school's coffers.

So, we've eliminated all the personnel and materials for: Sports, Music, Art, Speech, and Debate (and other such nonsense), groundskeepers, cafeterias, shop classes, computers, televisions, and lame-ass golf carts. Not bad, it's a start.

The next thing is to not take any shit from kids. They want to ditch? Flog them in the quad during lunch. They don't want to be there and are thus causing problems? Fine, kick them out. Send them home. No education for you and your parents will still have to pay for their kids to go to school even though they can't come back.

Kids get too many chances as it is and they should get none. They are in school to learn. If they want to mess around and waste everybody's time, then they get the boot. If a child is troublesome, give them a good beating. Next time, the kid and their parents get a good beating. If that doesn't work, then kick them out. Done. Get lost. Have a nice life, but don't come back.

If the consequences were swift, severe, and unbending, everyone would realize that causing problems would only get you a good ass-whooping. Yes, school would be harder to get through, but the ones that made it would have a diploma that was actually worth something again.

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