June, 2005

“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” – George Bernard Shaw

It’s refreshing to a degree that Shaw’s comment will never lack for idiots to prove its worth. The latest and most delicious example comes to us courtesy of the administrators at Maurice J. McDonough High School in Charles County, Maryland. It’s sure-fire evidence of over-administration that the school-district spokeswoman, Katie O’Malley-Simpson and the school spokesman, John White were firing off declarations of duty over the explosive and cutting-edge issue of neckties versus bolo ties at graduation.

There was a day when the high school Principal or Superintendent of Schools could manage to stumble out a few words on their own, but it’s progress I guess to have spokespersons in these times when education fails us in direct proportion to the increase in administrators.

Actually, that’s probably not a fair assessment---40% of those involved in education today are administrators and the quality of education nationally has degraded in the past fifty years more in the neighborhood of three times that percentage.

I offer a photo of the perpetrator in this alleged crime, a nice enough young grad by the name of Tom Benya. The pic of Tom adjusting his bolo tie in the mirror is from Ann Marimow’s Washington Post article. I leave it to you whether Tom’s decision is worthy of withholding his diploma and making the stupid policies of the School Board and McDonough High School public.

O’Malley-Simpson pontificates, “Graduation is a time when we have a formal, uniform celebration. If kids are going to participate, they need to respect the rules.” It says something to me that O’Malley-Simpson’s apparent respecting of Benya and his classmates evidences itself by denigrating them as ‘kids’ rather than students.

Much huffery and puffery on the adult side, all according to and in compliance with Shaw’s Law, all once again bearing witness to the stupid doing what they are ashamed of.

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