While education money is tight right now all across America, parents in the State of Georgia needn’t worry. By combining math with any number of other subjects, some cash-strapped Georgia teachers are finally able to stretch those education dollars and still give the kids some quality education.
Take math and history, for example. In Clayton County, Georgia, 9-year olds are not only learning their fractions, but also learning about slavery in the south. One extra credit question drives the point home, i.e. “A plantation owner had 100 slaves. If three-fifths of them are counted for representation, how many slaves will be counted?”
That homework assignment follows a similar one in Norcross, Georgia earlier in the year where a teacher was clearly trying to teach multiplication skills and using slavery as a teaching tool, as in “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”
And, not to be outdone, even a third-grade gym teacher decided that simple dodge ball wasn’t teaching the kids anything constructive and came up with a slave game where, as one student told her mother “some of the kids were slaves while others were the slave catchers.” We all know how important physical education is.
All this got us to thinking: What if the Georgia school system expanded some of these programs into their middle and high school curriculums. For instance, in middle school, why not combine say math and health education, to wit:
“If a slutty Georgetown law student has totally reckless sex with five guys on Friday night, and then finds it necessary to engage in two three-ways and a one-on-one encounter on Saturday night, but decides to rest on Sunday, how many condoms will American taxpayers be on the hook for, providing, of course, said birth control items are covered under certain provisions of the controversial Obamacare statute?”
Or say Georgia’s high school teachers come up with a curriculum that combines math with civics, as in:
“If 7% of Congress is Hispanic and 30% of those lawmakers have a heavy accent, how many senators are most likely to have at least two or more family members in this country illegally?”
See where this is going? All of us, who, at one time or another, questioned why learning math was even necessary, need only look to Georgia to see how important division is in shaping the futures of our children.
Ed Note: Thanks to writer John Peurach for coming up with the concept of this story and contributing to the content.
to me, that’s a heckuva compliment. Thanks L-T. I do want to give credit again, though, to writer John Peurach for bringing up the whole math plus other subject issue. It was a great concept that he allowed me to run with.
P.J. O’Rourke has a Liberal sister, I see…