'Idiocracy' isn't sci-fi, it's happened, people.

Thanks to not being able to find a job other than retail in the lovely, popular, ever-growing metroplex of Austin (despite a doctoral degree) I have decided to get a teaching certificate and become a dreaded English teacher.

In order to gain relevant experience and make a very measly living, I brilliantly decided to substitute teach.

All I can say is I hope there is light at the end of the tunnel, and karma is a bitch.

So I haven't been subbing long, but it's been a surreal experience. Being a sci-fi author (and geek) I can't help comparing everything to this book or that show. Watching kids constantly plugged into their cellphone, I think "at least Elroy Jetson had the decency to hide that he was watching videos in class." But what really threw me over the edge was subbing Freshman English. Like seemingly all Freshman classes everywhere (including mine when I was in high school), they were doing Romeo and Juliet. Since the teacher didn't leave a lesson plan, I found a text book and assigned some questions to the reading. The first question referenced iambic pentameter and some dialogue that rhymed.

The kids decide they want to read the assigned scenes silently, so I give them time while writing the questions on the board.

"What's...those words up there?" a kid asks (referring to iambic pentameter). I expected that the concept of iambic pentameter would be difficult for most, so I say "Let's do this one as a class," and start reading the first few lines of dialogue.

Everyone is lost. I say, "Page 98, first 2 lines."

"No, ma'am, teacher said don't read the left side. We're just supposed to read the right."

I look again at the text. Left pages are the actual play. Right pages hold a translation into modern English. And instead of studying the original play, then using the modern English version to help with comprehension, they're just throwing out the original.

I keep asking myself throughout the day if I'm overreacting. To be fair to their regular teacher, the kids are having a hard time understanding the cliffnotes version. They're having trouble with vocabulary like "pupil" and "garment." My own English teacher gave up and had us watch the movie before the test so that the entire class wouldn't fail. I remember making the same groaning comment as another kid "But this play is so boring!" In my case, it was not because I didn't understand it, but because I was secretly reading the rest of his plays and preferred the comedies.

When I was a kid, I went to an underfunded rural high school. The percentage of my graduating class that ended up with felonies or meth addictions about equaled that of those who 'made it out' and went to college, and I was thought of as 'that weird smart kid.' But I had assumed that kids who went to better schools were different. In class, they discussed Shakespeare instead of spending every class 'reading aloud,' listening to their classmates painfully try to sound out every word. The kids I saw on TV and met in college enforced this belief. So when I signed up to teach, I assumed that, though I would have some tough classes, at least some of my classes would be full of bright, college-bound kids obsessed with acing their ACT. I didn't think that I would teach 3 Freshman classes in a row where the words of the greatest English author were thrown out in favor of a dumbed-down version. At least the movie has the original language (and, in my opinion is probably a better way of teaching a play than just reading it anyway).

It reminded me of Charles Sheffield's novel, 'Higher Education,' which features a senior class taking a test on a picture touch-pad like a McDonalds cash register.

Am I overreacting?

Verdict: though subbing has worn away some of the rosy ideals I had about teaching, I've decided I ought to at least try to stem the tide of the seemingly inexorable slide towards Idiocracy.