Education Payola

Recent legislation in Illinois promises to end educational payola. Shocked and appalled by recent revelations from an unnamed elementary school, the Illinois House took quick action for reform. According to informed sources, a fourth-grade student gave his teacher a gift consisting of 1 oz. Marshmallows in a crumpled ziploc, accompanied by a poem which follows:

Using guidelines graciously furnished by the National Endowment for the Arts, investigators rated the value of the poem alone at $53.49 and that does not factor in the artistic added value of the crumpled ziploc. This was clearly outside the $25 limit considered customary and some think it influenced the student's passing grade in fractions.

From now on, the $25 limit will be the law, and not a moment too soon. Fast-food stores are filled with teachers' families wolfing down the ill-gotten profits resulting from doctored spelling tests and bloated cursive-writing grades. A cursory look at the adults around us indicate that this problem has been one of long standing. How else can we explain legislators who confuse million with billion (place-value problems), don't know a bribe from a contribution (probably spelling), and are unable to define basic concepts such as sex and inhalation (science-impaired). There are probably retired teachers across the land living in luxury from the sale of stale hard candy, apple-shaped artifacts and stationary with tiny fluffy cats on it. The antique value of some of the older hand-made penwipers has been documented by e-Bay.

Nevertheless, there have been some positive effects of long-standing practice. In an interview with the author, Senator Maxwell (Mad Max) Purdy disclosed that he had given

"a bushel of beets every year that I was in fourth grade to Miss Murfee. She taught me at a young age that a little grease makes the wheel go 'round."