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The Confessions of an Educational Unabomber Or: Why I Like to Laugh at the Fact that There Ain't Nothin' Funny

Wardrobe Remix
By John Linton
22 July 2008

Some of you seemed to like my speech at my wife's retirement so much I thought I'd upload the one I gave at my retirement. I dedicate it now to the fools on The New Yorker staff who actually thought their present cover was a good idea.

"When I was in the fourth grade my parents asked the school to administer an IQ test to see if I was stupid or lazy. When the results came back they sent dad into a depression from which he has never fully recovered. You see, dad is a member in good standing of Mensa and had hoped the results would indicate that I was lazy. From that time until I graduated from college, I don't think I missed many opportunities to deepen dad's depression, which probably explains why on my wedding day he took me aside and said "Son, marrying Brenda is the only intelligent thing you have ever done in your life." Looking back over the 32 years since that momentous occasion, I can think of nothing that I have done that would in anyway alter the accuracy of dad's statement.

The trouble lies in the fact that my mentors have never been educators. Instead, they have been the likes of George Carlin, Kinky Freidman, and Kurt Vonnegut. Educational gurus say things like "We are all life long learners." I prefer to say, "We are all dipsticks in search of oil." You might say I have always viewed mankind's attempts at educating successive generations as proof positive that God possesses one wicked sense of humor.

Not long ago, we used to hold an annual staff development bitchfest/love-in at some posh hotel somewhere. And each year we would invite some educational guru to come, at our expense, and lecture us on why we shouldn't use the lecture method in the classroom. One particular year it was some black guy, "Mister Gettin' Wid' His Bad Self" his self, and I must admit that he summed up better than most why my ass should have been fired years before when he intoned, "We teach what we know, but we reproduce what we are."

So why wasn't my ass fired years ago? Well, I believe it is because those in the teaching profession too often allow the better angels of their mercy to cloud their judgment."

The superintendent was sitting right in front of me when I delivered this and had personally invited his very good friend (with a phd in ed) to speak. The very same person I referred to as some black guy. He probably was thinking about me then what I'm thinking about The New Yorker staff right now.

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