Thanks to the No Child Left Behind law we have an educational environment here in North Carolina that is myopically focused on our students achieving good scores on standardized tests that are used to measure their academic performance.  In our kids’ schools they literally have weeks dedicated specifically to preparing for the tests, with some time being spent on such intellectually stimulating tasks as test taking strategy.

Since the schools’ federal funding is put at risk if the students don’t achieve what is considered adequate academic progress there is a great deal of incentive for administrators and teachers to get the maximum number of kids to pass.  In fact the book Freakonomics has a chapter that explores how some teachers in Chicago gamed the system (i.e. cheated) to make their students’ test results seem better than they actually were. 

What amazes me is that no one has thought of inspiring the kids to succeed on their tests in the most typically American fashion: by paying them.  Since each school district is looking at losing millions of dollars if they don’t get the students’ test grades up wouldn’t it behoove them to set aside a percentage for student incentives?  Any parent who has watched their kids open their birthday cards before their presents, not out of politeness but because they want to see how many gift cards they’ve racked up, can tell you that cash is king with America’s youth.  That’s why I think you could stoke the desire for "education" in the kids by merely promising them cash or a Target gift card if they achieve a certain level of success on the tests. The little kids would come cheap since their economic valuation system is based on the amount of candy the money represents.  The middle schoolers and high schoolers are more jaded and quite frankly they’re a bunch of money-hungry ingrates, so I’m thinking that you’re probably looking at a hefty price to get them interested.  That’s why I’m thinking you can give them a choice: cash or a special exemption on their drivers license that will lower the drinking age from 21 to 18.  The next step would be to earmark for education all the taxes on alcohol sold to these kids which would make the proposal revenue-neutral, and would help get it approved by our conservative representatives.  Those conservatives really don’t like anyone to have fun unless there’s money to be collected from it.  That would give North Carolina a healthy chunk of education revenue from gambling (the "education" lottery) and booze.

Of course once this type of incentive system is established it will have to be continued indefinitely. Some folks in the UK discovered the hard way that when an incentive is offered to one graduating class, those that follow expect to get the same treatment.  I don’t see a problem with that; I think we’d be paying cash to about 5% of our kids since the vast majority would opt for being able to drink the same year they could vote or be drafted. 

There is one potential fly in the ointment: the teensy – weensy problem of losing federal highway funds by lowering the drinking age, but since we’re already billions in the hole and NCDOT is as dysfunctional as a Hollywood marriage I don’t think it would make things much worse.  In fact I’d say we could split the earmarked taxes between the ed and transportation departments and both would come out ahead.  In case you didn’t know teenagers tend to enjoy their beverages of choice.

Our daughter, an eighth grader, told us tonight at dinner that she didn’t have PE today because they had a woman come in to give a presentation called something like "It’s Worth the wait" to all the girls in her grade.  From our daughter’s description the speaker’s message was simply that it’s worth waiting until marriage to have sex. Not adulthood, marriage. 

She said that the woman giving the presentation was open and gregarious, and was quite explicit in her explanation of the perils of sex like contracting herpes, syphilis, etc.  Then one of the girls asked, "Well, what about lesbians?"  Much stuttering ensued and then the presenter explained that if a boy cheated on his girlfriend with another girl who had herpes then he could give his girlfriend herpes.  Basically it sounds like she dodged the whole lesbian thing, and I guess it’s understandable if you’re asked to address alternative lifestyles and your program is based on waiting until marriage to engage in sex, but you can’t legally get married as a homosexual.  It does present one with a conundrum.

Before I go on I think it’s important to note that while today’s presentation was about abstinence my daughter tells me that the girls have received information on safe sex in past programs.  My understanding is that today’s program was simply another piece of the sex-ed puzzle for the girls, not the end-all, be-all.  Thus my comments here are directed specifically at today’s program and its ilk.

Now don’t get me wrong;  I don’t like the idea of my kids having sex too young and I’d like to think that they’ll wait until they are mature enough and have met a person that they truly love before they decide to have sex.  On the other hand I live in the present and I also remember being 16, 17, 18 years old and full of raging hormones so I’m pretty realistic about the odds of kids waiting until they’re married.  Heck, if I had to choose I’d rather they have sex at the appropriate age before marriage rather than rush into a marriage in order to have sex.   

So realistically speaking I think our kids need information about the benefits of waiting (and there are some, believe it or not) and about how to protect themselves when they think they’re ready.  And believe you me, they’ll decide when they’re ready, not us parents.  As for the kids who are gay, well they deserve the same information the straight kids get.  Just because they’re gay doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from the same message about the benefits of waiting and how to protect themselves when they decide they’re ready for sex.  Heck they probably deserve it more given the added social stresses they face that their straight peers don’t.

Finally there’s the question of whether the state should be getting into sex education at all.  Some folks argue that this is simply the domain of parents, but I tend to think that kids benefit from hearing things from other responsible adults beyond their parents.  It’s the same reason that I think my kids learn more from being taught math, science and English by people who have studied those subjects in-depth I think my kids will learn a lot from someone trained in health services.  We’ll still cover it at home, but as most parents will tell you kids often don’t hear what’s coming out of our mouths because to them we’re just annoying nags.  So if they can get the information from a source they’ll actually listen to then all the better.

One of the kids came home from school with a corrected essay that had been written for language arts, which in my day was called English.  One of the corrections was the word "ficticious" being circled accompanied by the word "fictitous" as the correct spelling.  At the end of the paper the teacher wrote "Always check the dictionary."

Indeed.

Is it just me or does calling English "language arts" seem a little too vague?  After all couldn’t the study of Spanish or French also be called "language arts?"  Did the English teachers’ union decide that they needed a fancier title or was this foisted on them by some bureaucrat with nothing better to do?  Am I sounding like Andy Rooney, only less wrinkled and slightly less stooped?