Readers, today you and I get to rejoice like pharisees, because however silly, misguided, and stupid our opinions and actions regarding our schools may be, at least we ain't as bad as them Texans.
I call your attention to an article that recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal. Its headline reads, "Texas High-School Athletes Gain Ground in Class."
You may not believe this, but I swear it's true: Those clowns in the Texas state legislature, already world-famous for corruption and greed and downright silliness, are thinking about passing a law that would double the credits Texas high-school athletes earn for playing professional high-school football and other professional interscholastic sports.
The proposed regulations would increase the number of academic graduation credits a boy or girl can earn by playing football or softball from two to four. That equates to more than fifteen per cent of the total number of academic credits necessary to graduate.
You read right. The morons in Texas--legislators, athletic directors, coaches, trainers, and assistant coaches--have taken over secondary education in the state and made it an add-on to high-school pro sports.
Not that books and study and grades weren't an afterthought to football before. This new law will make it official, will give legal recognition to what every red-blooded, gun-totin', pickup drivin', dog lovin', white-skinned Texas male already knows: "School ain't sh--!!"
Oh, a few of the womenfolk, especially a couple of troublemakers on the Texas State Board of Education, voiced some reservations about turning over prime hours in the school day to ignoramuses who majored in Methods in Minor Sports, but . . . what the hell, that's the way them damn women think! Who kin unnerstand 'em?
Having subverted and ruined the atmosphere and purpose of Texas universities, the football parasites are doing what pests do in the struggle to survive: colonizing new territory.
An anti-intellectual citizen who happens to serve on the Texas State Board of Education, Mr. Ken Mercer, gave this as his reason for voting for the change: "Sports provide leadership and teamwork lessons. If this [sports] is what keeps kids in school, then we should support it."
I have news for you, Mr. Mercer: If sports keep kids in school, we should close the schools immediately.
Of course, your state, Mr. Mercer, is the state that in the name of improving its schools, passed its "No Child Left Behind" law authorizing the scripted instruction that made talking puppets out of its underpaid, under-respected, under-staffed and over-worked teachers, turning them into demoralized rubber-stamps for their natural enemies, the Ken Mercers of this world.
(The Texas State Teachers Association supports the increase in football and basketball credits. Is everybody in Texas mentally disabled?)
Texas also produced the least literate president (by far) that these United States have ever seen, the man who made Presidents Warren G. Harding and Andrew Jackson look like Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton.
Texas has a lot to answer for.
But let's be fair. If you're a Texas high-school student, you can capitalize on the old regulation that lets you claim four academic credits for being in the school band.
Theoretically, therefore, under the new rules an enterprising lad could play football in the fall quarter and trumpet in the band in winter and spring quarters, and, over the course of four challenging years, earn eight academic credits towards his high school graduation.
That's more than thirty per cent of the academic credits he needs to graduate, all from sports- or football-related activities alone. Is Texas a great state, or what?
After this exacting regimen, I see no difficulty in certifying him as battlefield-tested for the arduous life of the country club golf course that awaits him after college.
The conclusion is clear: Texas needs some adult supervision. Older, more mature outsiders who have a firm sense of what society and young people actually need must intervene and show these middle-aged (male) children where and how they have gone astray.