Sarah and the Public Schools.

I read Steve Benen's hilarious post on Bart Simpson's school report, just minutes after I read Patrick Kurp's horrific account of his life in the public school system. In case you missed Benen's post, here's Bart:

"The exports in Libya are numerous in amount," Bart said earnestly. "One thing they export is corn, or as the Indians call it, maize. Another famous Indian was Crazy Horse. In conclusion, Libya is a land of contrast. Thank you."

Put it in the context of Patrick's account: we're raising a generation of school kids who don't learn, and don't want to learn and--this is the worst of it--who don't in the least way grasp why learning might be interesting or worthwhile.

Benen's point is, of course, that Bart reminds him so much of the Lady from Alaska who can't name a newspaper she reads (all of them!) or a founding father she admires (all of them!). It's not just the absence of learning, it's the absence of the possibility of learning: the absence of any sense that learning is, in fact, one of the great joys of life, the great solaces in time of trouble. "The best thing for being sad," said Merlin to Wart in The Sword and the Stone:

That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

Then idly, it occurred to me to wonder: is Sarah a public school girl? Sure is: Wasilla High School , Class of 1982 (The Wiki says they teach "abstinence education, although it is not abstinence-only," which sure doesn't sound like abstinence to me). Could Sarah have been the kind of student that so dismays Patrick?

Well, you can guess what I think. And it's a kind of a cheap shot (oddly enough, both her parents seem to have made their living in public education which might suggest some possibility of belief or commitment). But though it may be a cheap shot, I really don't mean to be putting her down. My point is that it might help to explain so much of her behavior--her insatiable urge for an audience, her frantic flitting from half-baked idea to half-baked idea. I don't know about you, but this strikes me as the show of a deeply unhappy person. In short, I don't like having Sarah around, but I suspect it might be even worse to be Sarah.

An added irony: I don't know but I'll bet she tracks extremely well voters most committed to home-schooling or private schools. If we can understand her as the kind of wreckage a public school system can produce, perhaps we can see their point.