U.S. Students Dumber than Ever

ourth and eighth-graders tested nationwide really screwed the pooch on a recent history exam, while 12th-graders were about as dumb as expected, the Education Department announced Thursday. The Bush administration was not impressed, calling the results "a shocking wake-up call of historicalistical proportions." More than 29,000 students took the history test that's part of the National Assessment of Educational Ineptitude, known informally as "Operation: Dumbo Drop."

Among fourth-graders, 67 percent had at least a basic understanding of the concept of history itself, though few could name any specific events. 13 percent showed no sense of events happening in the past at all, beyond a vague concept of everything happening "yesterday." That was three percentage points higher than in 1994, the last time the test was given.

Some 29,600 students, 87 percent of them apparently high on drugs at the time, took the test in 2001. The randomly selected test-takers answered multiple-choice, short-answer and essay questions with only a slightly higher success rate than a control group of lab mice trying to play "Axel-F" on a small Casio keyboard during the exam. Students were alarmingly befuddled by questions like these for fourth-graders:

Pilgrims came to North American in the 1700's fleeing what in Europe?
(a) the bubonic plague.
(b) religious persecution.
(c) Napoleon's army.
(d) Godzilla.


Only 45 percent answered correctly with (b).

What was a major cause of the Civil War?
(a) East Coast rap calling out West Coast rap.
(b) People in the North and in the South disagreed over slavery.
(c) Montel Williams.
(d) The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.


Correct answer: (b); 57 percent answered correctly.

The answers to the multiple-choice questions, however, looked like the minutes from a meeting of MENSA when compared to the short-answer section of the test. Asked to write in their own answer to the question "Who led Germany during World War II?" 57 percent of the students wrote "Arnold Schwarzenegger." The second and third most-frequent responses were no less alarming: "Tupac!" and "banana."

Deanna Norvich, an education historian and NAEI board member, called the students' answers "fuckin' hilarious" and said the seniors' scores were "about what you'd expect from a bunch of Taco Bell trainees."

"Since the seniors are very close to voting age or already have reached it, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see more professional wrestlers elected to public office in the near future. I'd be frightened if I weren't looking at the bright side: No way in hell someone younger than me is going to come and take my job in the next millennia. These kids couldn't operate a salad shooter."

She added: "Clearly, our high schools are failing to teach U.S. history well to these paste-eating morons. And by the time they're seniors there's no way you're going to get them to stop fucking and doing blow long enough to learn about Benjamin Franklin. It's just not happening."

According to the National Assessment Governing Board, the independent group that develops the NAEI for the Education Department, only 17 percent of fourth-graders scored above the "vegetable" level. Of those, 11 percent scored at the "head injury" level and another 3 percent fell into the higher "slow country cousin" grouping. Alarmingly, only 2 percent scored in the "can handle plastic silverware" group, the highest level attained in the test this year.

To be sure, many questions were tough, especially those asked of older students. An example:

There were many significant factors that led American colonists to form the First Continental Congress in 1774. Among them were colonial frustrations with laws passed by the British Parliament. What is your name?

Thirty-nine percent got that one right.

The NAEI is given in different subjects periodically, though always to predictably pathetic results that make adults feel smart again after their bank account has been drained by a ten year-old hacker. The 2001 national history test was the first given since 1994, when it was designed to test the effects of crop dusting on the nation's youth.

NAEI scores in geography are scheduled to be released this summer, with Vermont crossing its fingers that the state will be recognized for the first time ever on an NAEI exam.

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There are a couple of different ways to go about getting yourself a new car. What most people do is they exploit the underclass until they've got enough greenbacks to roll up on Mr. Mercedes or Mr. Benz and slap one of them in the face with a stack of $100 bills. "Booya, bitch! Where's my wheels?" or however the classy blueblood expression of that sentiment comes out. This doesn't work so hot for the members of the exploited underclass, who lack the sufficient Benjamins to make for an impressive slap-stack, so most of them have to stick a gun in somebody's face to keep from having to take the bus to church on Sundays.

As for the rest of us, the poor suckers stuck in-between who are too cheap for caviar and too soft for prison, we have to get creative.

For a while I thought I might be able to screw The Man (or at least The Man's fine trophy wife) and increase the Omar Bricks Needs a Goddamned Car Fund by playing the stock market. Seemed easy enough, since it's basically just like a horse racing with companies, except you don't have to worry about any of the companies banging their funny bone on the starting gate and throwing the jockey into the stands when the buzzer goes off. I knew I never should have bet on a horse named "Buyer's Remorse."

Plus on the stock market they don't give the companies misleading names like "Jailbait" that make them sound really fast but then it turns out they're just not fully-grown. I've always thought the FCC should step in and require that they give the horses accurate names, like "Shithead," "Slow as Fuck" and "Money Pit." Some kind of truth-in-advertising type thing. I guess when they vow to protect consumers they don't include degenerate gambling consumers under that umbrella, the self-righteous pricks. Sure, the racing form's not going to look as cool when half the horses are named "Shitbird" and "Gonad," but that's a small price to pay not to have the horse you bet on get lapped in a one-lap race. It's especially rough on the kids when they shoot a horse before the race is even over. But what in the hell are little kids doing betting on horse races, anyway? They should be off betting on cartoons or some shit.

So playing the market sounded easy enough, at least compared to betting on horse races. That was like having a license to print IOUs. But any old idiot can predict what products are going to hit or flop, or at least that's what I thought before all my stock in the Swiss Piss powdered lemonade brand tanked. I'm just glad I didn't invest in those chocolate logs you float in the punch bowl for when you throw a party, those things didn't do very well at all. At least I got out from under Swiss Piss before the lawsuit hit.

I guess my broker truly lived up to his name, since I did end up broker than when I'd met him. But he said it was probably all for the best, since I didn't stand to earn much from only owning one share of stock. And that's what pissed me off, why even call it a "share" when you're going to reward some rich prick for gobbling up thousands of the things then and give me the shaft for only having one? That doesn't sound much like sharing to me, the greedy bastards.

But that was all water under the dyke when I realized that all I needed to get my car funds together was to hold a really bitchin' raffle. People go apeshit for a raffle, and it's better than the lottery because I don't get any money from the lottery. So a raffle was definitely in order.

I went down to the bus station to talk to my good friend and local raffle organizer Poontang Douglas, and we got the particulars in order. The tickets sold out fast when people heard the prize was something in a "mystery box." Raffle freaks love that shit.

What they didn't know, and this was the brilliant part of the plan, was that it turns out the prize in the box is a shitload of tickets to the raffle. That ought to keep 'em guessing, right?

Well, I don't know about you, but when I'm guessing I usually sit there and scratch my head a little, maybe look up at the ceiling or something, you know? I sure as hell don't set the bingo hall on fire. Goddamn degenerate gamblers.

Bricks out.

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I'm doing the audition circuit out in Hollywood big time these days, so it wouldn't surprise me to come home and find the apartment a little dusty. Mom always found cleaning to be in defiance of her religion, and dad thinks dusting demeans his manliness. I would say it's the high-pitched girl voice and purple vinyl jacket, but I don't want to get his ire up. Anyway, the dust is no surprise. And in fact, I'm not really surprised to find a gang war between my dad and lesbians either.

I knew some fallout was coming from my sister's revelation she's a homosexual, and dad's gang was getting dangerously full of itself, so it makes sense the two would eventually crash into each other. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Cassandra and her girlfriend Steve tried to make a new family connection, part of some therapy or something, Cassandra's attempt to heal all the emotional scars in her life that led her into Harvard law and becoming a lawyer, instead of the path I took of pre-teen superstardom and my brother Poot's path of cult worship. She was doing well, too, she at least got to the point where mom was cool with it. Of course, mom said she always liked lesbians, she just didn't know why they all followed each other off a cliff to their deaths. Once again, mom not exactly Harvard material, as Cassandra always says.

If only dad could be so understanding. I suppose I could cut him a little slack by saying he was still struggling to keep control of his gang, the Baiters. Uncle Luke suggested the name because they attract so much jailbait, supposedly. I totally agree with them, as I was telling dad. I think they're the masters of attracting younger girls. Hopefully they'll take my suggestion and start calling themselves the Master Baiters.

But my own enjoyment aside, nothing challenges dad's masculinity more than fully-clothed lesbians. He and Cassandra never got along while we were growing up, he never did stop calling her "the other one." And Cassandra's partner Steve keeps telling her to stand up for herself, which makes for more tension than you could shake a tense stick at. Dad was just trying to taunt them after a while, his way of looking cool in front of the gang. I know he had to have some clue "the rugmunchers" wasn't a politically-correct way to refer to them. Cassandra told me so over Christmas and he must have heard. Anyway, it wasn't long before things blew up and Steve's friends in the National Wymans Collective began to protest.

Should be no surprise dad saw the group of leathernecks out front and took them as a threat to his turf. It was good for dad, in a way, since he rallied the gang together behind him. Uncle Luke put aside his differences and the fight for control of the gang was over, at least temporarily. They challenged the Wymans Collective to a rumble, and who knew, Steve can't turn down a challenge.

Actually, the rumble hasn't happened just yet, it's set for later Friday night this week, after Steve's lecture at NYU about the phallogenic oppression of the menstrual cycle, and dad sews the names on the back of the jackets. But this is a by-the-numbers thing for dad, so I predict the fight was short, the Wymans Collective fought the good fight and overcame, and probably three of the four members of dad's Master Baiters survived. Dad's crafty enough and knows when to abandon a good fight, so I assume he climbed on Freddy Mercury's back and got the hell out of there when the odds turned against him. If Uncle Luke bought the farm, maybe that will put the gang disputes to an end, and maybe even dad learned a little bit of respect for Cassandra and her new pals. In the meantime, I got to find a place in California and erase all excuse for coming back to this apartment.

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