Bad Humor

In the last local union newsrag I received were a couple articles that had, as a keystone, complaining about the No Child Left Behind Act, known to us insiders as NCLB.

Try to follow me here.

One article was called Multicultural and Civic Education Go Hand in Hand, but Move to the Back in NCLB. Her argument seems to be that since NCLB doesn't require tests in social studies, it therefore devalues social studies education. From there she veers into multicultural education, with its twin pillars of "social justice" and "equity". Interestingly enough, I doubt she'd want my views on social justice and equity taught, but I've already written posts on those topics: just go to the search engine up at the top left of this page and type in either multicultural education or social justice if you're interested.

So where's the humor I mentioned in the title? Well, there's a parenthetical explanation after her title, one that's supposed to be a cute play on the NCLB abbreviation. Here's the full title:

Multicultural and Civic Education Go Hand in Hand, but Move to the Back in NCLB (Nascent Citizens Left Befuddled?)

Hahahahahaha! Isn't that funny????? I didn't think so either. If you want to be funny, your new anti-abbreviation needs to be easily understood, preferably pithy, and contain at least a grain of humor. You can't just make up something that has the same letters and then pat yourself on the back because of your amazing wit.

For starters, I had to think a moment about what nascent meant. It's not a word I use every day, so I had to think. And befuddled? Who uses that word? And the whole statement isn't even funny. Besides that, are our nascent citizens (I figured out she meant our students) really befuddled by the loss of our district's multicultural library? I'm thinking no.

She tried to be funny, but to use some baseball parlance, swing and a miss. She doesn't know she wasn't funny because she really didn't try hard enough to be funny.

No clue, lazy broad.