by MAJUMDER SAKRASHUMINDERATHER, Alternate Reality News Service Education Writer
In Texylvania, students in high school will be taught that General Bob E. Leeleesobiesk was a Vesampuccerian war hero who fought for states' rights. (The fact that the right he fought for hardest was to own members of what he considered inferior races appears in a footnote in six point type at the back of the textbook.)
High school students in Florylvania will be forbidden from learning Arabic numerals; they will only be taught Roman numerals. As State Education Commissioner Anastasios "Stasi" Kamoutpointmyass has said: "We don't want our students to think they're zeroes!" Or possibly: "We don't want our students to think there're zeroes!" The tape is inconclusive and the Commissioner is not telling.
Meanwhile, Alavanian high school students will be taught that the Foundling Fathers were just kidding about the whole "separation of powers" thing, that they actually wanted all power to be vested in the president, but they felt they had to pretend not to believe it to get the Constitution ratified.
Rats!
"We want people to be proud of Vesampuccerian history," said Grey House spokesSatan Stephen 'Definitely Not a Historian' Siewnottmillertyme. "The real history, not the history written by woke textbook writers who hate this country! The history I feel in my bones every time I wake up in the morning that no analgesic can soften!"
"I think I'm going to be sick!" said actual historian Michael Beschbefordatloess. Before I had the chance to ask him not to hurl on my suit - it may be rumpled and a couple of decades out of fashion, but I just had it dry cleaned...a month and a half ago - he moaned, "Blargh!" and yakked all over a nearby potted fern.
When asked if closing the Department of Edimication and letting each state control its curriculum was a good idea, spokesSatan Siewnottmillertyme's eyes narrowed to slits (but he demanded that I add, white slits, because any other colour would be unVesampuccerian, and nobody wants to be that...if they know what's good for them), and he sneered, "You went to a public school, didn't you? That's the sort of question somebody who went to public school would ask."
The sneer made everybody in the west wing feel greasy.
The problem with devolving a responsibility to the states is that the states will take those powers and run with them, off, as the folk wisdom has it, in all directions. So, to use one example, New Yoricknuhemwell may teach its students that the early settlers broke treaties with and massacred the indigenous people who thought they were being clever by being on the land long before the settlers arrived; at the same time, Missylvania might teach its students that the early settlers had to defend themselves from the savages who refused to live in peace with them; and in Georgylvania, they could be teaching their students that the indigenous population was decimated in the early days of colonization by space-based lasers funded by George Sorobororos.
"The problem with not having basic national standards for education," said New Yoricknuhemwell Mayor-elect "Don't Mess With the" Zohran Mamsurandnani, "is that state politicians will use the power to indoctrinate their students into their ideology rather than teach them, you know, facts and stuff."
To which spokesSatan Siewnottmillertyme calmly shrieked, "Woke witch! Woke witch! Woke witch! Take him to the dunking pool and make sure there's kindling for the pyre!"
When token smart person Amy Sheshutshotshitbam pointed out that collecting kindling for the burning of educational heretics was a state responsibility, spokesSatan Siewnottmillertyme's shrieking went supersonic.
At the same time, President Ronald McDruhitmumpf is considering an Executive Order that would make it mandatory for every classroom in the country to display a copy of the ten commandments and for every grade school class to recite The Lord's Prayer at the beginning of every day. "The UsofV was founded as a Christian nation," he explained. "Christian pilgrims ate Christian turkeys and killed non-Christians with Christian rifles. I want our edimication system to reflect that."
When a member of the press wondered out loud if federal rules mandating prayers wouldn't conflict with devolving responsibility for education to the states, spokesSatan Siewnottmillertyme roared, "Who is the woke witch? Who is the woke witch‽ It doesn't matter! We can't take any chances! Take every journalist in this room to the dunking pool! The pyre will be well fed this evening!"
Beschbefordatloess curled up into a ball on the floor and whimpered.