UnNews:Oregon stiffens graduation requirements

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

19 January 2007

Brian Bolster: "They better let us opt out, or we will cop out or pop out or mop up or something."

KNAPPA, OR - Oregon’s State Board of Education has stiffened its requirements for high school graduation, angering parents and educators at the local level, who contend that such matters are their responsibility, not the state’s.

“Oregonians believe in the local control of their schools. We don’t like Washington, D. C. interfering with us, and we damned sure don’t want the state messing with our kids,” Superintendent Izzy Spacek told Unnews’ reporter Lotta Lies.

High school principal Myer Myerson agreed. “Parents, teachers, and administrators are indignant, frustrated, and irate. How dare those clowns in Salem tell us what’s best for our children, our students, our future citizens? It’s outrageous. It’s intolerable!”

“We won’t stand for it,” Mrs. Anna Bolster declared. “My son is my son, not the state’s guinea pig.”

The state took action after Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, complained during a speech to the nation’s governors that high school graduates lack the skills that would make them valuable assets to his corporation. “They should know what ‘delete’ and ‘insert’ mean,” he argued, "and they should know that pressing the escape key allows them to exit an operation.”

“They want us to teach kids math and English,” Spacek said. "They want us to teach students to read, to write, and to think. It’s preposterous!”

“Our kids aren’t geniuses like Bill Gates,” Mrs. Bolster pointed out, “and we’re not raising them to become cogs in his computer or whatever you call those chippie things, the Intels or whatever.”

The state, Myerson suggested, needs to allow students to opt out of difficult classes such as arithmetic, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. “Otherwise, we may put undue pressure on kids who lack coping skills sufficient to handle such stress.”

“If we can’t opt out, we’ll just drop out,” Bolster’s 14-year old son, Brian, threatened, “and live on Welfare.”

Gates said, “Today’s dropouts are tomorrow’s Apple Computer employees.”

Source

• Lotta Lies "Students threaten to drop out if they can't opt out" Instant News, 1.2 minutes ago