GAR Week 8: Making Chicken Salad with Linda McMahon

Read on to Discover the Secret Ingredient

“Non potes facere acetariam pullo ex cacato pulli”

The Romans were no strangers to struggling under suboptimal circumstances.

If they weren’t put upon by surly, uncivilized bands of barbarians from without, they were subject to surly, uncaring bougie statesmen vying for absolute power from within.

Even after the western half of the empire fell in 476 CE, the Roman Empire limped on for another ~1,000 years.

Surely, in that time, an educated, well-thought-of Roman uttered the above words as he toiled fruitlessly against a decadent civilization on the brink of collapse.

As an educator, this phrase has become a mantra as I repeat it when I’m told there’s no paper, forced to watch another compliance video, or when I learn something akin to free and reduced lunch has been curtailed.

To be clear, I don’t say “non potes facere acetariam pullo ex cacato pulli” to myself. Rather, I opt for the English translation of the pithy phrase, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

I submit that I, and many other devoted educators, consistently create passable, if not scrumptious, chicken salad out of the poopy provisions supplied by the powers that be. This is and will remain true despite any action taken by Linda “The Axe Plan” McMahon to disparage education in these here United States.

Near as I can figure, McMahon is putting the smackdown on those programs and services that aim to help those who would otherwise be forgotten and disparaged. As evidence of this, I submit McMahon’s ignorance of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), along with her frequent trope about spending “almost one trillion dollars to continue to see our performance scores go down.”

To that last point, the Department of Education was established in 1980. Now, the number one trillion is really, really big, especially in terms of money. Written numerically, it looks like this

$1,000,000,000,000

That’s a lot of zeros… but that’s $1,000,000,000,000 over 45 years, or $22,222,222,222 or twenty-two billion, two hundred-twenty-two million, two hundred- twenty-two thousand, two hundred-twenty-two dollars¹ a year. That is certainly not chump change. But just think about all the parents and students, and by association, entire communities, who have benefited from The Department of Education’s programs, such as the previously mentioned Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

What we now know as IDEA was originally known as The Education of All Handicapped Children’s Act. It was passed in 1975 to guarantee, among other things,

“a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the nation and [ensure] special education and related services to those children.”

We need to remember that this has not always been the case –

“Before 1975, only one in five children with disabilities attended public school. Many states specifically excluded students who were deaf, blind, or those with intellectual or emotional disabilities from their public schools. Pediatricians routinely advised parents to place toddlers with intellectual disabilities in institutions.”

Mind you, a “free appropriate public education”² in the “LRE”³ isn’t only for those students with profound intellectual and developmental challenges, tucked away in that forsaken hall far from the general student population. It includes the cheerleader who doesn’t quite grasp the special relationship a right triangle has with its angles and the lengths of its sides, or the quarterback who has trouble identifying personification and metaphor in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Not to mention, students protected under section 504 of the much broader Americans with Disabilities Act, also administered by The Department of Education.

Can we place a dollar amount on the value these pieces of legislation have brought to millions of Americans? I’m sure that we could make an exhaustive list of all the students who have gone on to succeed in so many pursuits, and we could add up the many ways a student has returned on that investment by looking at metrics like wages, job creation and products/services provided — items that figure prominently in the calculation of GDP.

But what about dignity? What about pride? What about self-worth?

I submit that intangibles like these are the special sauce and seasoning to a delectable chicken salad — a chicken salad whose key ingredient is chicken shit.

I’m giving Linda “The Educaterrorist” McMahon five out of five heaping piles of chicken shit. I want to see if she can make chicken salad out of chicken shit. She will have plenty to work with because I’m giving her one set of five for each of the three domains: Atmosphere, Cultural Contribution, and Ingenuity. Each of those areas is going to suffer greatly due to her gutting of The Department of Education.

You’ll just have to make believe that there are 15 clumps of poop — I don’t want to add the graphic two more times because it is disgusting.

SPECIAL BONUS RATING

For caving on the CR vote in the Senate on Friday, I’m giving Chuck Schumer one out of five spines. My first thought was to give him zero, but I figured that if I gave him one, he could keep it and use it next time.

1. Fun fact, adding up all the twos in 22,222,222,222 -> 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2 comes out two, rather, to 22! Weird! Something two think about.
2. FAPE to speakers of educationese.
3. Least Restrictive Environment for those who aren’t speakers of educationese.