1627. Plummeting education

Dear Editor

I usually don’t write to the newspaper to vent my frustration, but enough is enough. I think that personal opinions are just that – opinions that should be kept to oneself. But I can’t hold back in this matter any longer. I see our education system plunging into a dark and bottomless abyss. Here are a few questions I would like to ask today’s young people. The paucity of correct replies should serve to emphasize the lack of cultural historicity being taught in today’s classroom.

1. What exactly was in Little Red Riding Hood’s basket? Was it buns or muffins or perhaps bagels? Was it scones? Or maybe it was little bottles of honey and various jams that she was taking to grandma. I am prepared to bet my bottom dollar that today’s generation will be lost for words when it comes to this aspect of our cultural heritage. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, given the lack of morality prevalent in today’s society, if some people suggest that Little Red Riding Hood had non-perishable goods in her basket. Pickled onions for example. Or even some sort of health food. That is what the world has come to. If students were taught properly what was really in Little Red Riding Hood’s basket then the world would be a better place.

2. Was the Big Bad Wolf that confronted Little Red Riding Hood the same wolf that hounded the Three Little Pigs? Teachers want us to believe that toxic males permeate society and are far more common than they really are. They think the world is full of nasty wolves like the Big Bad Wolf. And anyway, was the woodsman who in the end chopped off the head of the wolf as nice as some make out? What was the woodsman doing hovering around Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house in the first place? The woodsman with the axe, not the Wolf, was oversexed and violent.

3. Why was Little Red Riding Hood wearing a hood? Was she ashamed of who she was? What uneducated person these days knows that the reason Little Red Riding Hood wore a hood was perhaps because she was Little Bo Peep in disguise. Or perhaps Goldilocks? Or Cinderella? Or Sleeping Beauty? Need I go on and on? Who is to say that Little Red Riding Hood wasn’t a toxic male such as Little Jack Horner trying to lure the Big Bad Wolf into sticking his thumb into a pie?

4. When Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater put his wife inside a pumpkin he wasn’t being nasty. Those were different times. There’s no need to rewrite history. One can only hope that the pumpkin had a kitchen sink.

Whatever happened to our fine education system when students were taught real answers to real questions? I bet you anything that few people these days know that getting a pail of water was the last thing on Jack and Jill’s mind when they went up the hill. Our world has indeed plummeted into savagery and barbarousness.

Yours faithfully
Old King Cole