More Evidence of a Dark Future Ahead

I was helping my son with his homework a couple of weeks ago, mainly in an effort to help him prepare for a test on ‘Rocks & Minerals’.

One of the questions that came up:  ‘Define ‘fracking’ and list the pros and cons of fracking’.

My son is in Grade 4.  Grade 4!!!!

When I saw the question, I calmed myself and found a great way to explain fracking:

‘You see, fracking is like smoking.  There are no pros.’

(He’s also being shown the array of pictures with lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases as part of a health topic, so the timing couldn’t have been better).

The message sunk in.  There are no pros of fracking.

He went on to write his test and for a kid who’s 10, he showed an amazing amount of knowledge of some pretty complex topics.

However, he received NO POINTS for stating that there are no pros of fracking.  Now, the key here is that other parts of the test had requests to state an opinion on certain topics, but not fracking.

(For the record, the regular bullshit answers related to this are things like employment and revenue for governments etc.  Yeah.  Just like smoking.)

I don’t know what to do with this.  I’m saddened that a teacher won’t accept a child’s opinion that something SO INCREDIBLY STUPID could have any ‘pros’.

If this is a small glimpse of what’s to come with our educational system, we are entering dark days indeed.

What’s next?  Scientists are witches?