I know, the heading doesn’t sound like a good government program, but after tonight, I’m wondering if that’ll be the end result of George W’s “No Child Left Behind” plan to get the kids of America educated. (During a debate with John Kerry, he also called it a jobs plan, which makes this event all the more ironic.)
My mother and I were out shopping and decided to stop at Gander Mountain on the way home. For those who haven’t been there, it’s a place that specializes in outdoor gear (hunting, fishing, camping… basically a cheap REI). They were having an after-Christmas clearance sale, so Mom decided to pick up a $40 fleece jacket at a discounted price. The problems started when we got to the checkout counter.
The cashier rang it up, but when Mom looked at the screen, it read $29.99—ten dollars off. She thought it was supposed to be discounted 50%, so the cashier called someone from apparel over to the counter. After a brief discussion (which wasn’t as brief as it should have been), the person headed back into the apparel section, then called to let us know that the jacket was 40% off.
The price on the tag was $40. 40% off leaves $24. Not that tough to do the math in your head, right? 10% of 40 is 4, multiply that by 6 to make 60% and you’ve got 24 bucks. There’s plenty of ways to throw numbers around—it’s not quantum physics—so how’d our cashier figure it out?
She didn’t. She pulled out her cell phone instead. After pushing a couple buttons, she said, “My phone sucks” and put it back in her pocket. When the person from apparel came back to the checkout counter, our cashier had narrowed the price down to somewhere between $20-$30 (after all, it was supposed to be less than $29.99 and $20 is 50% off). So what did our friend from apparel say after looking at the screen?
“Let me get out my cell phone.” That’s when I had to turn away from the counter and hold my jacket up to my face to cover up a look of sheer anguish. Weren’t we supposed to learn multiplication and division back in 4th grade or something? Hell, I remember using algebra and geometry in 7th grade when I was on the math team—this was percentages from kids old enough to be employed (10th grade or beyond).
Thankfully, they managed to figure out that the price was supposed to be $24, Mom paid the bill and I turned around long enough to grab the bag with the jacket inside. As we left, the cashier congratulated us. Congratulated us! Apparently, she never calls back into the store, but she had to to consult the person from apparel because of us. The problems with figuring out the price of the jacket were in the past now—it was better to pat herself on the back for being so independent while working behind the register.
So what’s the moral of the story? If those two didn’t get “left behind” in our education system, then a majority of the students smart enough to graduate from high school are complete morons. (Don’t take offense—if you’re reading this weblog, then you obviously have very good taste in reading material and thus must be more intelligent than the general populace.) During the trip home, I made sure to thank my mother profusely for sending me to a private school. I doubt I would have ended up like those two, but having to deal with them on a regular basis… I would have become way too familiar with the view from inside my jacket.
Oh yeah, there was one other moral. During the presidential debate, George said that his “No Child Left Behind” was a sort of jobs plan. While he didn’t have (or didn’t take) the time to elaborate, one thought started floating through my head: “If you make everyone smarter, then you’ll simply have smarter people getting the crappy jobs at McDonald’s.” Or Gander Mountain, for that matter. After tonight, though, I’m guessing we still have a few years to wait before his plan starts to take effect.
