ED in '08 and Puppy Dog Tails

Educational researchers, economists, and research scientists in the area of human behavior, working in collaboration with canine behavior specialists, have completed a groundbreaking study, the policy implications of which are likely to cause hair to stand on end among the Strong American Schools/ED in '08 folks who compose a 60 million dollar public awareness and action campaign funded by billionaire philanthropists Bill Gates and Eli Broad. The stated mission of ED in '08 is to make education a top priority in the 2008 presidential election.

The findings exposed by the study and the preliminary recommendations being set forth by its authors are considered long overdue by frustrated teachers on the ground charged with carrying out misguided corporate/politico policies guaranteed to leave many children behind. Extensive documentation demonstrates irrefutably that much of the fear-mongering now being disseminated by ED in '08 is virtually identical to the years of "failing public schools" propaganda that paved the way for the No Child Left Behind Act, now aptly re-named the No Corporation Left Behind Act.

Remarkably, the study was inspired by a simple observation frequently noted by exasperated teachers, an uncanny similarity between the tight frenzied circle of unproductive tail chasing activity that certain dogs engage in and the endless revolving circle of resurrected myths about public schools perpetuated by powerful business interests --- myths which scapegoat already heavily burdened schools and teachers while conveniently neglecting the elephants in the classroom.

The examination of likenesses between corporate behavior and obsessive/compulsive disorders in dogs may lead to treatments and policies which will bring blessed relief to children, teachers, and schools. Canine behavior specialists have long known that dogs afflicted with obsessive compulsive disorders commonly develop a fixation on their tails. Many scientists believe compulsive tail chasing derives from dogs' natural predatory instincts. Corporate obsession with public school accountability is likewise predatory.

While scientists acknowledge that dogs bear no particular hostility or ill will toward our nation's public schools, the same cannot be said of their corporate counterparts, who in sum evoke images of an animal of behemoth proportions, lumbering in large figure o-eights around our nation's struggling schools, waiting to devour them.

Recommendations are under consideration for treating the corporate compulsion to control our nation's public schools. Teachers are favoring the securing of rigor wraps (electric shock collars) around the necks of offenders. Every time the word "rigor" is invoked as a solution for the childhood poverty and deprivations largely responsible for poor academic achievement, a succession of harmless but exceedingly unpleasant electrical jolts will be administered into the necks of offenders by highly qualified teachers carrying remote control devices. Though actual implementation of the remedy is not a certainty, teachers have already affectionately dubbed the devices "rigor triggers". In the most extreme cases of obsessive/compulsive school bashing, even shock therapy may not significantly reduce the problem . In these cases, muzzling may have to be considered.