september 25, 2002

Op-€d

 

 

AFTER SCHOOL HACKS

Bryan Johnson
Op Contributor

So, have you seen that commercial for
Sylvan Learning Centers where the
eight or nine-year-old girl is sitting in
front of the TV in her room and her
mem comes in and tells her it’s time
for bed and the kid says, “Gee, mom,
just let me read a few more pages” or
some such equally pathetic, gagable
shit? Well, that commercial is not
only proof that intelligence can't be
genetic, it’s also proof there isn’t any
intelligence anywhere in the whole
machinery that made that commer-
cial: not in Sylvan, their marketing
company, not anywhere.

What parent in their right bloody
mind is going to give a pre-teen kid
their own television? I know, I know,
with the fucking Liberal tax break for
their rich friends, every asshole earn-
ing seventy grand, like your average
plumber or electrician, has an extra
grand in their pocket, so there are too
many idiots with money to blow in
this province (while their kids’ school
suffers because that same grand came
out of that school, so now there’s no
librarian, no reading program, no spe-
cial help...).

But the real test of the intelligence of
those parents is when you ask what
mother or father, after spoiling their
brat so criminally by giving them their
own 21-inch monitor, (I mean, really,
what has the kid got to look forward
to in life if that level of self-indulgence
has already been attained so effortless-

ly at such a tender age?) is then going
to be so goddamned stupid to first of
all, wonder why their kid doesn’t read
very much, and then, being so gorm-
less as to come up blank on that one,
is also going to be so thick as to spend
money sending their kid to some fuck-
ing after-school program to try and
remedy the problem they themselves
created. As if the six or more hours in
school a day their kid now spends will
help when the kid is obviously got to
be so fucking scattered and spaced
after watching television all night that
no amount of extra schooling in a day
is going to help. And obviously, if the
parent is so completely ignorant of
what it takes to raise a literate child
that they would give the kid a TV in
the first place, the only possible expla-
nation is because the parent has an IQ
of three, and if intelligence is inherita-
ble then there is no way that kid is ever
going to read, and I mean EVER, no
matter how much money their asshole
parents blow on private tutors.

Then there's the issue of just how the
kid is supposed to sit still for after-
school schooling when they've just
spent six hours chained to those dinky
desks that the public schools provide
(the desks were designed for children
in Dickens time, when malnutrition
meant that ten-year-olds tended to be
about the height of today’s two-year-
old). No doubt the same shit-for-
brains parents give their kid chocolate

bars and Jolt for lunch and then won-
der why the hyperactive, pre-diabetic
little shit-monster can’t pay attention
or learn how to read in school in the
first place. By the time the yard-ape
gets out of school, they've got more
energy to burn than a space shuttle on
the launch pad...and then the kid is
supposed to go back to school after
school for still more of the same crap,
only one-on-one this time, so they
can't hide in the back row playing leg
wrestling with the kid next door. It’s a
wonder the kid doesn’t kill the moon-
lighting scab teacher at Sylvan and
then go home and kill his parents.
That’s probably what kids are learning
how to do from watching television
anyway and that’s just what some of
them do!

And then there’s whoever dreamed
up this stupid-ass commercial.
Obviously they think that parents who
care about their children enough that
they might consider sending them to a
private after-school program are so
thick that they going to be suckered by
such an inane commercial. Clearly the
managers of Sylvan and their mar-
keters and everyone connected with
the whole fruitless exercise in money-
wasting are even more retarded than
any fucking parent who would take
that commercial seriously, because
they didn’t get it for free; they actually
paid a lot of real cash to have that crap
commercial made.

 

the other press

a ASA RYANN

So, that only leaves one question:
would you send your child to a school
run by people who are so barking mad
that they would market that same
school using a commercial that is so
insulting to your intelligence? If you
would, youre as retarded as they are,
and if intelligence even smells of chro-
mosomes, your kid has gotta be so
hopelessly genetically deficient already
that no amount of tutoring, money, or
time is ever going to raise them above
the performance level of a low-func-
tioning hedgehog. You might as well
just buy them that 21-inch monitor
they've been pestering you for endless-
ly, tie ‘em up in front of it, and let
them be subliminally trained in stupid
marketing strategies so that when they
grow up into mirror images of the use-
less excuses for adults their parents are,
they can go out and milk all those ass-
hole executives with money to spend
on insulting sentimental shit like the
Sylvan commercial!

the Other Press’ bon Poll

he
OP Sepp ecans

- Rude! not one of you on . last week's ’s pol asking if you brown banged: your

lunches or ate in the cafeteria. This is nee data. C'mon p o le now, smile on your

  

i Tue — lot of hate. os sue ct a ee

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