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To a Bush, all facts are useless. Reality deprivation runs in the Bush family, including the president's brother, dyslexic adulterer and Saudi PR adviser Neil Bush (USA Today):

The problem with education, says Neil Bush, is that we create prison-like environments that suppress many students' natural gifts and bore them with useless facts.

The president's brother is speaking on a panel at Whitney High, a Southern California academic powerhouse, where his company's social studies software is being tested by eighth-graders. But Bush quickly finds himself alone, pitted against several bright-as-lights Whitney students who like calculus. They think the problem isn't that school is boring, but that educators, parents and kids set their expectations too low.

"I hear students say, 'Oh, math is boring, or that subject is boring, so I don't want to do it.' I say, that's an excuse, a crutch. A student should want to learn everything. That's what we're here for," notes one.

Fortunately, today's crutch-free eighth-graders — the ones who appreciate the finer things in life, like calculus, or anything factual — will be writing the educational software of the future.

In the meanwhile, California kids will be hobbled by the software equivalent of Billy Beer.

{ 12:50 PM }

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