Number 2 Pencil

All he has to know is how to fit 1 (ball) into 1 (goal)

Well, he doesn't get paid the big bucks to know math:

England football captain David Beckham confessed he is befuddled by his six-year-old son Brooklyn's maths homework in an interview.

Beckham, 30, admitted to being baffled when Brooklyn recently asked for help with a school assignment and had to turn to his former Spice Girls pop star wife Victoria to help out. "Their homework is so hard these days. I sat down with Brooklyn the other day -- and I was like, 'Victoria, maybe you should do the homework tonight'.

Is it a coincidence that Beckham is a star in a sport where the scores aren't very big numbers?

What if he'd gotten a stonehenge design instead?

Too much for the British:

SCHOOLBOY Daniel Artingsall has been banned from class after getting spirals shaved in his hair. Teachers decided it broke rules on extreme styles and said Daniel, 13, would have to be taught alone so he did not start a trend.

But his father Dean, 38, was astonished by the decision and withdrew his son from school.

As trends go, it seems pretty darn innocuous, especially when compared to past British tonsorial experiments. Or is the problem that it's not spiky or moppy enough?

Complete this sentence: "Coding is most accurate after ____ cans of Red Bull"

This makes sense; techies tend to be proud of their standardized test scores.

TGIAF

It's been a long, tough week - and it's not over yet. All the news is depressing. The miners wrote letters before they died, Ariel Sharon's stroke has already provoked nasty comment from Pat Robertson, and - ugh -American Idol is on the air yet again.

Thus, tomorrow I plan to surf this site, and this site only.

Please, you don't have to tell me - I know

I appreciate that my readership seems to have wandered back - I figured I lost everyone after my bouts of no-bloggage this winter.

But I still have to say that it sucks, on the day that I first got back to the gym after the Christmas gluttony, to see that I am once again upgraded to a "large mammal" in the TTLB Ecosystem.

Can't they rephrase that?

Update: Unbelievable. Now Trader Joe's is carrying Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzels. And Pecan Caramel Chocolate Pretzels. Is everyone against me?

It gets funnier the longer you think about it

Ha ha ha ha ha!

If you think that shirt if offensive, I suggest you NOT click on the "Baby Hell" link.

Quote of the Day

Here's what my fiance said, after he was stuck at the mall sitting in the food court next to three 10th-grade girls:

"You know you're getting old when you overhear a group of teenagers bitching about their teacher in public - and the more you listen, the more you agree with the teacher.

That's when you know - your parents' job is complete."

The brutal truth

Columnist Gary Brown still lives in fear of his "permanent record":

As it turns out, those mediocre math scores still might haunt me down the road.

“We were going to issue you a platinum card,” a credit card company might tell me in a letter, “but we notice from your permanent record that in your sophomore year of high school you got a ‘C’ in algebra, so we just don’t think you have the math skills to make the minimum monthly payment ...”

Right. I don’t think a “D” or even an “F” could prevent me from being “pre-approved” for two or three credit cards a week. Still, it seems that my permanent record from school nevertheless exists. An article in Sunday’s Repository reported that students’ permanent records continue to be stored in paper files, microfilm or digital disks...

No, I don’t fear that others will have the urge to try to tap into my permanent record. What I’m worried about is that someday I will see it.

Maybe I’ll be bored. Maybe I’ll be at some age when I want to tie up the loose ends of my life by renewing my knowledge of my past. I’ll ask to see my permanent record. I’ll scan my mediocre school grades. I’ll note my more or less average standardized test scores. I’ll look up my IQ — my God, how could it be so low?

Just when I’m feeling good about myself — I can, after all, remember jokes I hear at parties and most of the scores I see on Sportscenter — I’ll find out that, all this time, I’ve been incredibly stupid.

That kind of thing shouldn’t be recorded permanently.

There's nothing ''nerdy'' about mathematics

This Dave Barry column is 12 years old, but it's not exactly outdated:

Seriously, young people, I have some important back-to-school advice for you, and I can boil it down to four simple words: "Study Your Mathematics.''

I say this in light of a recent alarming Associated Press story stating that three out of every four high-school students -- nearly 50 percent -- leave school without an adequate understanding of mathematics. Frankly, I am not surprised. ''How,'' I am constantly asking myself, "can we expect today's young people to understand mathematics when so many of them can't even point their baseball caps in the right direction?''...

A shocking number of you young people are unable to solve even basic math problems, such as the following:

A customer walks into a fast-food restaurant, orders two hamburgers costing $2 apiece, then hands you a $5 bill. How much change should you give him?

a. $2

b. $3

c. None, because the question doesn't say you WORK there. You could just take the money and run away.

The correct answer, of course, is that you should give the customer:

d. Whatever the computerized cash register says, even if it's $154,789.62.

Are we sure he didn't write this column yesterday?

(Via Joanne.)

Felinically Incorrect

My mom just loooooves to yank my chain by sending me these kinds of jokes:

Little Nancy was in the garden filling in a hole when her neighbor peered over the fence.

Interested in what the little girl was up to, he politely asked, "What are you up to there, Nancy?"

"My goldfish died," replied Nancy tearfully, without looking up, "and I've just buried him."

The neighbor was concerned, "That's an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn't it?"

Nancy patted down the last heap of earth and then replied, "That's because he's inside your stupid cat."

Drinks from the Dark Side

I like to think of myself as a discerning goth.

Not one who's going to be taken in by ridiculous ad campaigns or schlock disguised as cool stuff. I don't buy my clothes at Hot Topic, I don't wear fishnet gloves in the middle of the day, and I don't follow the latest trends that are being foisted upon the darkside crowd.

But then I discovered what a vodka-and-cranberry looks like made with Blavod, the black vodka:

Isn't that cool? I don't care if I'm now Ms. Cheesy Goth for buying black vodka. I like the way it looks - and it tastes pretty good, too.

I believe this is what we'd call "life skills"

How could I have missed this groundbreaking educational article from the Onion?

A Department of Labor report released Monday finds that America's high schools are not sufficiently preparing emerging dropouts for the demands of unemployment. In a letter introducing the report, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao explained that schools routinely fail to impart dropouts with the critical lying- and sitting-around skills they need to thrive in today's jobless market.

"Our public high schools place too much focus on preparing kids for professional careers," Chao said. "This waste of resources leaves our dropouts, the majority of whom have no chance of ever finding a job, wholly unprepared to sleep till 1 p.m., or watch daytime television while eating ramen noodles out of an upturned Frisbee."

According to the study, America's weakest academic performers also drop out of high school without ever having learned to steal beer money from their housemates' change jars or wash their hair with bar soap.

Or without having learned that napkins, toilet paper, and cleaning products need not be bought when the local McDonald's offers all of these household goods for free. Of course, I had to make it the point of being a broke-ass graduate student before I learned all that.

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings defended the nation's public-school system. "Educators do a lot to ensure that the most hopeless students slip through the cracks," Spellings said. "Arbitrary rules, irregularly enforced discipline, and pointless paperwork are just the first things that come to mind."

She added: "Easy grading encourages students to be sloppy and late handing in homework—a skill that makes future deadbeats very competitive in stonewalling landlords and bill collectors."

Thanks to all who sent this in - and if you see any humorless, whining articles in response, let me know.

The types of teachers

The Eduwonks note that cliques - and stereotypes - are just as prevalent among teachers as among students, as noted by Mr. AB:

...All this time did afford me the chance to spy on my fellow teachers and I’ve decided that teachers in professional development trainings can be categorized into the following 10 types...

Dumb David – David just doesn’t get it. You don’t understand how someone so slow can keep up with students. You feel bad for judging a colleague’s intelligence but geeeez. Dumb David’s come in two species: introverted (only revealing their confusion during group work) and extroverted (heralding their misunderstandings with loud and awkwardly timed questions.)..

Talking Terry – Terry loves to talk. In participative trainings, she’s that one, with her hand constantly in the air and with a suggestion or anecdote to follow every point. Non-participative trainings drive her wild, she whispers constantly and explodes with pent-up loudness during breaks.

Spot on. Mr. AB, who is a third-generation teacher, also has some sharp advice for any educator who is leading a professional development training session for teachers:

...We want to learn like we are in law school or grad school. That means no gimmicks, no games, no group work, and no, absolutely no, teacher-voice. If you could end that sentence with "Boys and girls," don't say it. Do not play chimes or a recorder to get my attention, do not make me sing, and do not make me sit on the floor. I teach elementary school, that does not mean I am in it! Only God, not the County Office of Education, can revert teachers to being children.

Good stuff. What is it about touchy-feely types and their love of sitting on floors, anyway? Is that somehow supposed to be more authentic, more emotional, more true to our childish roots? For someone with previous neck injuries such as me, it's just excruciating.

The "F" in "FCAT" stands for...

It's fitting that a very funny - and pertinent - commentary on today's testing craze should come from Dave Barry:

Here's a multiple-choice test: When should the school year start?

A. Sometime around Sept. 1, when most of the United States of America has started school for many decades.
B. On Aug. 8 -- also known as ''smack dab in the middle of summer'' -- when the average Florida classroom is roughly the same temperature as a pizza oven.

If you answered ''A,'' you are correct. If you answered ''B,'' you are an official of Miami-Dade or Broward public schools. These officials have decided that our children need to start school on Monday, when children from normal places are vacationing with their families, or attending summer camp, or lying on the sofa picking their noses and playing video games, which is what God clearly intended early August to be used for.

Among the children who will be trudging into Miami-Dade schools on Monday is my 5-year-old daughter, who enters kindergarten this year. When my wife told me the date our daughter would start school, my fifth question was: "Why?''

(My first four questions, in order, were: ''Aug. 8?'' ''Did you say Aug. 8?'' ''You mean, like, the eighth day of AUGUST?'' "Are they INSANE??'')

I found out that the reason for the extremely early start of the school year is -- as you veteran parents already know -- the FCATs. FCAT is an acronym standing for "(Very bad word) Comprehensive Assessment Test"...

The FCATs have come to dominate public education in Florida. At one time, the purpose of the public schools, at least theoretically, was to educate children; now it is to produce higher FCAT scores, by whatever means necessary. If school officials believed that ingesting lizard meat improved FCAT performance, the cafeterias would be serving gecko nuggets.

Life would be more entertaining if all education reporting was in this style.

A new system

Today's Non Sequitur: