Alaska Schools Just Give Up and Switch to All Petroleum-Based Curriculum

The Alaska Legislature has suddenly threatened a last-minute $13 million cut in public education funding, and education advocates in the state are now scrambling for solutions. Many teachers, administrators, and stupid, hysterical parents are tearing their hair out, suspecting that perks and gifts to the oil industry might be behind the last minute shuffling around of dollars.

Others, however, (specifically oil companies and their legislators) appear more sanguine. These are the folks in our state who know how to come up with solutions; not whine over the same old inefficiencies and problems in our broken public schools. 

And that's why ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and ConocoPhillips--together with the elected public officials who sup upon their lobbyists' delicious $15 spam musubi rolls---are revamping the state's K-12 curriculum. 

It is hoped that the proposed restructure will prompt legislators into returning the recently slashed dollars to the school districts. Here are the key features of the newly proposed "petroleum-based curriculum" being hashed out in Juneau right now:

• All math to include only word problems that end in a certain number of barrels of oil and a certain number of dollars per barrel.

• Home Ec-type classes to be replaced by drenching birds in crude oil and scrubbing them with Dawn in a bucket outside.

• Science focused exclusively on geochemistry and debunking climate change conspiracy.

• History lessons only about history of drilling for oil and the awesomeness that it has yielded the world over.

• Each playground at every school in the state will be a miniature mock-up of Prudhoe Bay (e.g., that rocking rig hammer-thingie will be a see-saw).

• School libraries will be purged of crappy, controversial books like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby, and replaced with Exxon-approved glossy magazines featuring diverse races of men and women in safety goggles and hard hats studiously looking at blueprints, pointing off into the horizon, and smiling brightly.

• All-percussion music classes, using only oil drums.

• Foreign exchange programs only to Nigeria, Dubai, and Texas.

• Each student's education will be "sponsored" by a major oil producer, who will require the student to wear a uniform bearing the logo of that producer during school hours.

Most people we spoke with were confident that this new petroleum-based curriculum would at last satisfy all stakeholders.