The Biggest Practical Joke
Krayton Kerns
3.14.07
How is this for a great practical joke? Zip to McDonalds and pick up a couple Big-Mac wrappers, a drink cup with a lid, and a to-go bag. Once home, grab a pot full of dirt and grass clippings from your garden and head to your kitchen. With a little experimentation you can create a perfect mud and grass Big-Mac the exact size and weight of the real thing. To give your creation an appetizing aroma, sprinkle the top with onion salt and zap it in the microwave. Carefully wrap your Mac, place it in the bag and voila, you have a worthless replica of McDonald’s finest cuisine.
Drive to the street corner in town where the “Will-Work-For-Food” folks hang out and generously hand your trick McDonald’s bag to an unsuspecting vagrant. (Speed out of throwing distance before you chuckle or your rear window will wear the remnants of your prank) What do you think? Not very funny is it?
The Montana State Legislature, under the influence of liberalism, is preparing to pull a similar practical joke on every school kid in Montana; give them a fake Big-Mac solution to a very real problem. Here is how this one works:
Advances in technology have triggered an explosion of new businesses that thrive in a giga-byte environment. Math and science is the universal language of technology but Montana, along with much of America, is becoming speechless. In 1983 61% of the scientific papers published in Physical Review, the top peer-reviewed physics journal, came from American brain power. Today we contribute only 29%.
Testing in 2003 by the Trends in International Math and Science Study of 500,000 students from 41 countries has shown similarly frightening results. Of 8th graders tested, 44% of Singapore students tested at the advanced level in math; 38% of Taiwan pupils scored equally high, but American middle-schoolers were near the bottom at 7%. Does that have your attention?
Tracey Koon of Intel Inc. has summed it up by saying “it takes two things to manufacture silicone computer chips: Sand and brains. We have an abundance of sand, but unfortunately we have a shortage of brains.”
Exactly how we respond to this education failure is the critical sting of our legislative practical joke. Carol Juneau of Browning presented Senate Bill 390, an Act Increasing Funding of Indian Education for All, to the House Education Committee on 3-8-07. When added to current spending, Montana taxpayers would be investing $7.25 million in this program. As the school children of Asia develop their knowledge of math and science, Montana kids are stuck learning native survival and cultural trivia applicable to the challenges of the 1800’s. Liberalism promotes cultural diversity training and political correctness as subjects far more important than math and science. In reality such education is as useless as a mud-pie Big-Mac. Sorry kids, we are enslaving you to third-world jobs…and you must learn Chinese!
