Freedom Plaza Humour
by Steve Cook
Education Supremo, Jo "Anagram" O' Merpus (78) today unveiled the latest plank in the government's raft of measures designed to "Make education in Britain unrecognizable."
Education Supremo, Jo "Anagram" O' Merpus (78) today unveiled the latest plank in the government's raft of measures designed to "Make education in Britain unrecognizable." Its eagerly awaited plan to remove spelling from the school curriculum will come into effect when the new school year starts in September.
"As of September this year," Mr Omerpus (68) told reporters via text message from the bar of the Cheshire Fat Cat in his Nuthouse constituency, "Pupils, and indeed teachers, will no longer be required to demonstrate an ability to spell, either in written term work or on exam papers. As long as whoever reads their work can be reasonably sure of what they were probably trying to say, then this government feels placing upon pupils and teachers the outdated and pointless burden of spelling words as good as the boffs what write dictionaries is just perliticul (sic) correctness gone mad. It is high time this fashist torture was brought to an end."
Arthur "Sloping" Forehead (22), leader of the biggest teachers' union was for once in agreement with the government. "For once I am in agreement with the government." he said.
In a semi-literate press release issued later, Mr Forehead's press release writer further elaborated: "We have long felt that education is about giving the kids what they want, as one would with any consumer. This new measure aligns perfectly with the government's previous innovations of ditching grammar and school attendance. It certainly makes our jobs a teachers a lot easier and takes the stress out of correcting written work. Most of us have a problem with the spelling side of things and no teacher wants to spend morning, noon and night with his face in a dickshonary (sic).
The Opposition's shadow minister for education was not so sure the government had got it right. "We see nothing in these proposals," he said, "to reassure us the government has done enough to improve the quality of the ticks pupils are putting beside their multiple-choice answers. Ticks that are too scrawled and barely legible can lead to misunderstandings and in the absence of an ability to actually write words, a pupil needs to be able to write his tick very clearly."
The government's senior educational adviser and reputedly the real architect of a raft of educational reforms described by an enthused PM recently as, "not so much a raft as a veritable Titanic of long awaited change," is psychiatrist Dr Pewee Druggem.
Dr Druggem told this reporter, "The impossible demands placed upon children that they learn to spell correctly undermine a child's self esteem in the mistaken assumption that self esteem derives from accomplishment and not, as we now know, being patted on the head and given lots of sympathy."
He added,"It is also socially divisive, splitting pupils into two classes: those smug little snots who can spell and a disenfranchised minority who can't. It also gives the former group an unfair advantage in terms of things like filling in job applications and benefit claims, and spellist employers too often discriminate so that only one in a hundred job vacancies goes to a person unable to spell. Indeed, we find that invariably the only truly "equal opportunities" employers, so far as the alphabetically challenged are concerned, are tabloid newspapers."
He went on to explain that that sinister undermining of a child's self-esteem causes a severe mental illness in the vast majority of children, known as "Spelling Anxiety Disorder (SAD). "Well," Dr Druggem said, "we've levelled the playing field by more or less doing away with it altogether."
When I asked whether this dumbing down, in so far as it removed the stress leading to SAD, would cause the pharmaceutical companies to lose the substantial profits accruing from the sale of drugs to treat the disorder, Dr Druggem said:
"We prefer the term LEVELLING down as dumbing down implies a value judgement. Fortunately the drug cartels will not lose out. We may be eliminating SAD but there is a newly discovered disorder caused by the stress of not being able to spell. It is called Anxiety Related to Spelling Elimination (ARSE) and requires extensive medication to treat."
The British government's revolutionary new approach to education is capturing the imagination of educators abroad. The Germans, French and Spanish in particluar enthusiastically welcomed the reforms and all three countries report a sharp rise in "Thick Englishmen " jokes circulating at both grass roots and governmental levels.
"Once again," said a French spokesperson, the British lead the way in providing endless amusement for the rest of Europe."
Mr O'Merpus retorted, "Our European partners will laugh on the other side of their faces when British workers pick up all the menial jobs available the length and breadth of the Reich - I mean, Union."
The government is expecting its reforms to pay handsome dividends in improved exam results next year. It is now five years since any British pupil flunked an exam and the government is quick to take credit for what it describes as not so much a lowering of examination standards as a rise towards genius level of the entire population. Accordingly, ten-year-olds will now be able to sit multiple-choice exams for PhDs in most subjects.
END
"Popularity of the new Text Messaging GCSE reaches new high."
[c pg 11]
"We don't need no Educashun. We don't need no fort controwl." Diskuss. [See page 6]
[c pg 11]
"We don't need no Educashun. We don't need no fort controwl." Diskuss. [See page 6]
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