Presented without comment, because this is a family blog

The fine folks who run the public schools at Pittsburg have just solved that problem they used to have about how their kids weren't learning anything or doing their work, and therefore were, you know, failing their classes.

There's nothing I think I could manage to say without profanity and thus it is nothing that I will be saying. Other than this: I am shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that the Superintendent, when pressed to defend the indefensible, uses the excuse-all phrase, "It's a fairness issue." Ah, yes, good ol' American "fairness," without the appeal to which no injustice or idiocy can be perpetrated in the modern U. S. of A.

P.S. I can't stand not to point out this second brilliant quote from the Superintendent...okay, he doesn't deserve that title; so he shall henceforth be referred to herein as the Subintendent. So let it be written; so let it be done. I can't stand not to point out this second brilliant indirect quote from the Subintendent:

[The Subintendent added] that low percentage scores sometimes are given to students because of their attitude or work ethic, rather than their level of accomplishment.

And God forbid -- God forbid, I say -- that students should learn in school that a good attitude and a good work ethic will prove indispensable in every imaginable useful endeavor they might choose to essay in adult life. Punished for a bad attitude? Punished for laziness? In a school? What's this world coming to? Why, if you tolerate that, the next thing you know somebody will start expecting the Subintendent himself to work hard, perform well, and maintain a good attitude...and, um, let's just head that undesirable development off at the pass, shall we? Or else he might have to get a real job in which the response to one's failure to achieve the stated goals of the position (like, you know, getting kids educated and prepared for success in life) is to either get fired or else solve the problem, rather than simply waving a magic wand and saying, "From now on we will pretend that the goals have been achieved."

Bastard.

Oops. I knew I shouldn't have let myself comment.