Saturday, June 10, 2006

Why Kids Are Getting Stupider

Because teachers and school administrators are getting stupider. And stupider. An Arlington, VA high school decided it would be a nice gesture to hand out gifts at the senior prom. What gift did they choose? Stainless steel hip flasks. When some (not all) parents objected to the scheme, the school canceled the gift-giving and the principal issued a letter of apology saying, "In retrospect..." In retrospect? This guy should be reflecting on his past goofs in the unemployment line. And what are they going to do with all those hip flasks?

And stupider.

WALLED LAKE, Mich. (AP) -- The state police bomb squad had to be called to a high school after a chemistry student made suspected TNT as part of a class project.

The squad removed and detonated the material. The three beakers reportedly went off with a big bang Thursday. No one was injured.

"We still have to analyze the material to determine if it even was TNT," Oakland County Undersheriff Michael McCabe told The Detroit News. Sheriffs deputies and officials at Walled Lake Central High School said the 17-year-old junior made the material as part of his final experiment for the class.

He told the teacher he would make the TNT at school under close supervision, they said. He found a TNT recipe on the Internet and planned to make enough to blow up a watermelon, investigators said.

"The teacher, unfortunately, did not take the student's comments about his intentions seriously," Principal David Barry wrote in a letter to parents.

Can you say, "Home schooling?"

2 comments:

Tonto said...

I laughed and was horrified all at the same time after reading that story. Flasks!!...you can't make this stuff up.

Lone Ranger said...

I saw the story on local TV. The flasks were nice -- had the graduation year engraved on them. And BIG! They looked like something W.C. Fields would pull out of his pocket.

If I had it all to do over again, I'd sell flowers at freeway on-ramps before I'd send my kid to public school.