Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

We’re on a roll. Only six weeks after Vermont discovered that hiring more teachers while shedding students does, remarkably, lead to school budget deficits, comes the news that Maine has learned school district consolidation does not lead to budget savings.

Perhaps we could excuse Maine officials for not studying the research, but they didn’t have to. Their own newspapers reported this would happen back in October 2007.

High school students in Grand Rapids, Michigan, will see an “H” instead of an “F” on their report cards if they fail a course. The “H” is supposed to stand for “held.” The Grand Rapids Press reports, ”About 2,400 failing grades were converted to ‘held’ grades for the trimester. Students will have the option of repeating the course, taking it as an online class on Saturdays or evenings and working with tutors.”

I’m with the teachers’ union on this one. Grand Rapids Education Association President said the move reeks of desperation as administrators look for quick ways to improve the percentage of passing students.

It’s also going to cause some confusion for the local 4-H Club.

An aboriginal group is upset that the Australian version of the Daring Book for Girls has a chapter on “How to Play a Didgeridoo.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the instrument, the didgeridoo is a traditional long wooden wind instrument created by Australian aborigines at least 1,500 years ago. But Dr. Mark Rose, general manager of the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association, said the chapter shows “extreme cultural insensitivity and mammoth ignorance.” Why? Dr. Rose says indigenous people believed there were consequences for women who played a didgeridoo, including infertility.

“I wouldn’t let my daughter touch one,” he said. “I reckon it’s the equivalent of encouraging someone to play with razor blades. I would say pulp it.”

Indigenous author and chair of the Australian Society of Authors Dr. Anita Heiss called the chapter “cultural ignorance and it’s a slap in the face to indigenous people and to indigenous writers who are actually writing in the field.”

Dr. Heiss said she wouldn’t “even pick up a didgeridoo.”

As with most traditions of this sort, whether a taboo is actually mandated is a little murky.

Nevertheless, it illustrates there are many ways for girls to be “daring.”

Erica Chevillar, the Florida teacher recently outed as a member as the U.S.A. National Bikini Team (under the nom de lingerie Erica Lee), told reporters she posed for the photos because she can’t make ends meet as a teacher.

As you can see from the accompanying photo, she could barely afford enough clothing to cover herself, but apparently had saved enough to invest in, um… er, “teacher development.”

Chevillar’s destitution prompted Sun-Sentinel columnist Howard Goodman to write the sort of agonized editorial on underpaid teachers that union officials love.

So Intercepts has the perfect solution for all involved: the Florida Education Association should hire Chevillar as an organizer!

With her experience, her empathy, and her other assets, education employees will join FEA in droves.