?The snowstorm kicked out electricity last week,? writes Jay Mathews on his Washington Post Class Struggle blog. ?It was hard to write the column without access to the Internet.? So he decided to travel a simpler route and pen a piece complaining that high-school-based television shows?e.g., Glee?never feature stories about academics. About Glee specifically Mathews writes, ?Have you ever seen any of those amazingly talented characters on that show doing their homework? Or discussing an upcoming exam? Or opening a textbook?? No? Well why not?
Why not? Because homework, exams, and textbooks are boring. Television shows like Glee are supposed to be entertaining. I understand that his internet service was down, but is Mathews serious?
Why not an episode in which history students reenact the 1787 Constitutional Convention? The dramatic possibilities are enormous. Or the writers could examine the comic possibilities of rival nerd gangs, like some of my high school friends, competing for supremacy in SAT scores. Or one sensitive biology student could sue for the right to opt out of frog dissection.
Maybe he's joking. Let's hope so. Let's also hope his internet connection has been fixed.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow