09:04 – Barbara and I are about halfway through the seven seasons of Despicable Housewives on Netflix streaming. In what I think is a first for me, I like most of the male characters, but with the exception of Andrea Bowen in a supporting role as Julie Mayer I can’t stand any of the women characters. They’re stupid, greedy, whining, phony, lying, weasely, cheating, stealing, murdering scum. Literally. I don’t understand why the male characters don’t just strangle all of them.
Last night, we watched a couple episodes about a tornado hitting the fictional Wisteria Lane and the aftermath. Those were pretty powerful episodes, particularly since just a couple days earlier a real tornado devastated an area in a county that adjoins ours. As Barbara said, the devastation on the TV show looked exactly like the newspaper photos of that town just down the road from us. She also said that from now on when we’re under a tornado warning, we’re going to head for the basement.
11:30 – For all I complain about public schools and NCLB, there are occasional success stories. For example, the Dallas News reports on the stunningly good math and reading test scores achieved by third-grade pupils at Field Elementary school. There was a minor downside, though. They achieved those high math and reading test scores by devoting essentially all of their effort to teaching these kids math and reading, which of course meant they had to skip science and other subjects almost entirely. Not to worry, though. The kids still got grades in those other subjects. Of course, those grades were faked, sometimes assigned by teachers who’d never even taught the subjects in question. If I had school-age children, I’d do whatever it took to either homeschool them or get them into private schools. I don’t believe public schools–any public schools–can any longer be trusted to educate kids.