In which the pond agonises between Dame Groan and doddering Donners ...

Choices, choices, so many choices ...

And yet, and yet ... the pond is large and can embrace contradictions, and in the interest of capitalism, consume much, and besides, it turns out that Dame Groan's effort isn't up to much ...

And that's it? Talk about short weight, talk about the butcher's finger on the sales.

Still, it's admirable, the geography on display. All those stupid geography classes wasting the pond's time when we could have just shouted at the teacher "it's all bonkers bunkum" ...

Oh you stupid geographers with your stupid maps, get away with thee ... always over-stating the connection. What a stretch and a waste of time you are, and besides don't you realise that viewed from Mars, that map is upside down, and the water's flowing to the north?

And now, having been educated by the Dame, it's time to turn to doddering Donners in the hope for a little more education ...

Oh dear, oh dear, the love of the Judeo-Christian American education system is apparently inexhaustible and we must all turn to home schooling, because where else are you going to get the righteous elements of climate science denialism and the rigorous teaching of the science of creationism ...

Now as always the elephant in the Donners' room is the Catholic education system, that's if we pass over the way that Donners had a short-lived career trying to fuck over school curriculums on behalf of the onion muncher.

Some will think it passing strange and heretical at the subtle distinction between expert teachers and classroom pedagogy, though the pond is prepared to bet a London bridge to a brick, that half an hour in a classroom with Donners at the helm would put the pond to sleep ...

And so to the love of Trumpism now abounding in the land ...

There are many problems with this, and not just that dumb and dumber penned that immortal educational tome Dumbing Down.

It's to do with the simplistic, bizarre American notion of 'choice', which has turned out to mean a choice between a huge variety of doughnuts all with cinnamon, a choice between a rampantly stupid range of assorted instant or takeaway shitty coffee, and a choice between a multiplicity of fast foods, though all with an abundance of fat, sugar, grease, cheese, and high fructose syrup guaranteed to ensure any choice will result in an obesity epidemic ...

Is it any wonder that questions are sometimes asked about the outcomes of  educational "choice"?

It's safe to say ... and there's more saying at the NY Times here, and many more places on the intertubes ... that anyone peddling the simplistic, easy notion that vouchers are the way forward and will fix everything, are peddling the usual pie in the sky in the marketplace by and by ...

In much the same way that the federal government, following the mantra of the marketplace and the folly of choice, now has a mighty mess on its hands which will take years to sort out, thanks to the private sector's rorting and looting of training funds and suckered students ...

But of course by the time the regulators have made a move to catch up with the rorters, they're long gone, and with them, the loot, or the lolly ... as the old woman in The Ladykillers was fond of calling it ...

Of course there's Donners la la land, and then there's reality, for anyone who followed that wild west link in the NY Times to get to here ...

Detroit has got plenty of problems, a lot to do with free markets, and none particularly susceptible to sorting out via the mantra of choice.

Would you like some cinnamon on the bun? Or would you like a super-sized serve of cinnamon? The choice is yours ...

But if you want your child to grow up a tweeting paranoid conspiracy theorist, full as a goog with doddering Donners' "choice", just get them following the Donald on Twitter ...

Now that's how to re-write history. No wonder Dame Groan knew how to re-write geography ...

And now class, it's time for a science lesson, thanks to Twitter ...