Roy Exum: Our Stick Of Dynamite

  • Saturday, February 6, 2016
  • Roy Exum

You may have seen the Tennessee Legislature jumped on the bandwagon to send “an atomic bomb” to Washington this week. The “bomb” makes Tennessee the fifth state to adopt a Convention of the States Project that will hopefully limit the power and the jurisdiction of federal government.

The official wording is “to impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and the jurisdiction of the federal government and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress.” Needless to say, guys like Chuck Fleishman aren’t real keen on the idea.

But as I read about the Convention of States Project, my beady little mind came up with a Convention of Tennessee Cities Project. I am dreaming it would “impose fiscal restraints on state government, limit the power and jurisdiction of state government, and limit the terms of office for state officials and members of the legislature.”

Why not? If the legislature can adopt a plan to send an atomic bomb to Washington, then by-Chuckling-Charlie the 95 counties in this state should have the same rights and powers to send a stick of dynamite to our politicians in Nashville. Now think about this because it is even better – we put our dynamite stick in the state’s Department of Education and tell them to pile up the Common Core, the TN Ready program and all sorts of other utter foolishness where all of it can promptly be blown up.

Think hard about this: our schools hate it, our teachers hate it, our parents hate it and our students hate it. So why do those in Nashville not understand we dislike the pain and the meddlesome oversight they foist on school districts all across the state?

While Tennessee legislators were getting all cheesy in the mouth over the Convention of States ploy, the Alabama legislature was discussing doing away with the state’s standards applying to math and English curriculum. If they do, I know teachers and parents alike who will move there to escape the testing that has killed the teaching in the classroom.

It is not awful that any teacher should be judged by some God-awful test, even when it includes the answers from some child whose IQ is the same as the room temperature?  Why don’t people rally against this? Why doesn’t the legislature hear the heartbeat of the people? In Alabama parents want their children to be taught by teachers, not herded by test-givers.

Oh, I’m for some test that can be given in less than an hour after each semester and replaced by the ACT in a kid’s senior year but Nashville’s quest for superiority, not to mention creating jobs to collect meaningless statistics on children, is plump loco.

I never took a Core Test or some standardized test that I can remember besides the ACT and the SAT my senior year. Maybe it was because I went to so many different high schools but who gives a rip? I made a 27 on the ACT and that suited me fine. Of course, back then we took penmanship in grammar school and typing in junior high. We also had to memorize poems, take civics and do other obsolete stuff that the educational wackos took away in the dumbing down of America.

The attempt to put a dagger in Alabama’s Common Core is just getting underway and is still in the discussion mode in the state’s Senate Education Policy Committee but there have been several failed attempts in previous years. Some legislators think such a decision should be made by the state’s Board of Education, which is an elected body in Alabama and answerable to the voters.

Conversely, in Tennessee we have no say over the misguided fools who dreamed up TN-Ready. My heavens! The TN-Ready English test lasts 360 minutes. That’s longer than it took to paint my bathroom. Imagine you are a high school kid taking a test that lasts six hours! Of course, it is given over a four-day period which only adds to the collective misery of the teacher and students. And the kicker? No one has seen the results from the first semester, this being Feb. 6. The word for that is an ancient school term – dumb.

I’m telling you, we could do a lot of good stuff with the Tennessee Convention of Counties Project. I am not a particularly smart guy but even I could straighten the driver’s license boondoggle out – no one can make it worse. And TDOT? Let’s don’t even go there. And those fat guys that sit in pickup trucks with blinking lights to watch a sub-contractor work? Ridiculous; instead tell the company to do the job right or you ain’t paying.

What about the emissions scam, where it costs a guy in Hamilton County $10 a year while those in Marion, Grundy, Bledsoe, Bradley and out 85 other counties are exempt from such simple robbery. Have you ever wondered – really – why not one of our state legislators has ever uttered a peep about such unfairness?

It is so obvious the county can do things better. Jim Coppinger and the County Commission would be run out of town on a rail if they performed like the state. Let us keep the money for certain stuff and the loving-hands-of-home can complete a task quicker, easier, nicer and have a lot more fun than some goof-brains who think a 360-minute test is an advancement in education.

Kids ought to be taught, not tested. What if we tested the Tennessee football team and the Alabama football team? We could quickly acquire each squad’s cumulative speed, the number of pull-ups by the top 44 position players, add all the body-mass index, and the average time in the one-mile run. Then we could send the data to Nashville where it could be analyzed, advisors could be brought in, and – oh, remember the observers who already watched both teams be tested like those fat overseers in the pickups with the blinking lights.

Don’t you get it? We would never have to play the game! We would know analytically – there would never be any question about a referee’s call, a 20-mile wind from the east as a 45-yard field goal attempt is made – none of that. Think of the gasoline we could save with nobody driving to Neyland Stadium. The savings in tail-gating, alcohol, concessions … oh mercy. And the most thrilling part – we could do it much faster than 360 minutes!

The only downside is when guys from our tested team – who won 10 out of 12 in testing – go to the NFL and we learn 65 percent of them must take remedial practices because they simply can’t play. Ask the big dogs in Nashville whose fault is that? It is so obvious even a pre-school can tell you – the teachers.

Teach, don’t test.

royexum@aol.com

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