The Post-Apocalyptic United States Department of Education (PAUSDOE) has released the latest report card on the educational achievement levels of U.S. students. The results are simply shocking.
That is, it's shocking if you are not a person well-versed in mathematical skepticism and aware of the inherent fallibility of numbers.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports that while U.S. fourth graders have made gains in math since the 1970s, these math "skills" are essentially lost by the time students graduate high school. While half of 9-year-olds are able to do basic arithmetic at grade level, fewer than one in ten high-school seniors can do higher-level math such as algebra and geometry and whatever the kids are learning these days.
The unescapable conclusion we must inevitably reach from these results is that it is simply pointless to teach children math - a conclusion that fortunately dovetails quite nicely with my anti-math worldview.
Besides the well-known fact that arithmetical education is nothing more than an injection of numerist propaganda into the brain-minds of innocent children, this new report card demonstrates that it is a pointless under-taking anyway.
All of which is beside the fact that it is pointless to teach math at all in this brave new post-apocalyptic nightmare world. Children should be learning important post-civilization life skills such as how to distill squirrel urine into alcoholic beverages/wound disinfectants. Continuing to teach our surviving children pointless subjects like art and literature and science and math is simply an antiquated notion from the world as it was six months ago, not the world of today.
"Some say the world will end in fire, others in ice.
I say it's probly gonna be a little of both."
One thing is absolutely certain: the world is ending on December 21. There is no question about that, as confirmed by the overwhelming consensus of 2012 Doomsday believers who believe that doomsday is coming this month.
Many readers have written to ask me how the world is going to end. The details here are a bit fuzzy, but the fact is that on December 21, a confluence of astronomical forces will come together in a "perfect storm" of doom. I'll try and lay out the scenario to the best of my ability.
The main driver of doomsday will be a close encounter with the invisible rogue planet Nibiru. This planet, also known as Planet X by its discoverer -- Slavic patent-clerk-turned-astrophysicist Zecariah Sitchin -- will literally pass between the Earth and the Moon on Dec. 21. This will split the Moon in two and cause the Earth's axis of rotation to flip - a 180 degree pole shift.
At the same time, we will be entering a period in our orbit about the sun that eclipses us from the supermassive black hole at the galactic center. This unfortunate galactic alignment will literally cut us off from the galaxy's critical supply of cosmic rays, opening a hole in the ionosphere and causing our magnetic poles to shift sideways and/or turnwise (leading pseudoscientists are still debating this point.)
The conflict between our rotational axes and geomagnetic poles will cause the Earth's mantle to liquify, sending the tectonic plates into free drift and allowing continents to roam about the planet like stray cattle. During this crustal displacement, some land masses may sink, drowning entire countries under oceans of lava and oceans.
There may also be a supercaldera eruption or two. Again, pseudoscientists are fuzzy on this point.
What is not in doubt is the fact that these events will literally rip all human infrastructure, governance, and societal structure from its foundations and send the remaining survivors back to pre-agrarian times. The only difference between the future us and our ancestors is that we will have motorcycles with which to form cannibal motorcycle gangs, perpetually engaged in tribal warfare with rival gangs over dwindling supplies until somebody figures out how to invent fire again.
In the ongoing war between humans and numbers, it seems as though we are hopelessly outmatched. After all - there are only four billion of us versus an infinite number of numbers.
Every now and then, however, we humans triumph.
Now is one of those thens. Three students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or S.A.T., have uncovered a numerist conspiracy to throw all of secondary and collegiate education into utter disarray by rendering this standard collegiate admissions exam thoroughly unreliable, putting millions of university diplomas at risk.
The plot was discovered when the students, attempting to answer a geometric problem on the S.A.T., realized that the correct answer was none of the above.
Of course, the numero-conspiracists at the College Board were quick to cover up for their arithmetical masters, literally falling on their own swords by claiming responsibility for the mistake.
"It was a human error," said Barrie Kelly, the College Board's executive director of communication.
Right, Mr. Kelly. "Human error." As if the inherent fallibility of numbers had nothing what-so-ever to do with it.
Shame on the College Board for siding with the numbers in their ongoing battle against humanity, and praise for the courageous students who uncovered this nefarious scheme!
