Schools to introduce McDonalds courses in program

Citing the rich potential of future employees contained within high schools' halls, fast food chain McDonald’s has today announced that the introduction of school classes aimed at preparing children for their inevitable careers in the below-living-wage service industry.

”When you look at the majority of kids in our secondary schools who are just coming to the age where they can seek employment in any number of dead-end jobs with limited wage and upward mobility, you can see this move, much like these kids, is a no-brainer,” said CEO of McDonalds, Lex Ploytew.

“Little to no effort in class, unfocused or apathetic attitudes towards their own enlightenment and self-betterment, no special interests or passions outside of TV and social media, the inability to converse beyond basic Neanderthalic grunts? We need to develop all of this amazing cashier, fry-boy potential to its fullest extent!”

Since the introduction, other Fast Food outlets and service industry competitors have praised the move and voiced support for it.

“Who knows, we could even find the next CEO of KFC among these kids,” said CEO of KFC May Kewfatta. “They all show a natural aptitude for not giving the tiniest shit about other people or the work they do, and are utterly self-absorbed, so they seem to have all the makings of upper-level company management. Hell, half of these entitled little shits might even be able to compete with my son for the position.”

According to the course creators, the program will cover basic skills required for this line of work.

“We will of course, include basic language skills and mathematical literacy as a part of their preparation,” they said. “I mean, without a sound knowledge of the founding principles of arithmetic and linguistics, how will you be able to know how much a Quarter Pounder, Fries, Large Soda and a Number Seven Combo Meal costs, or how to ask if they’d like it Supersized?”

This is not the first time McDonald’s has taken an interest in education, after they introduced a series of libraries and art galleries in 2012.

Teachers have wholeheartedly welcomed the move, saying there is a great number of pupils it appears perfectly suited to.

“Just take a look at Billy. He’s super popular in class. Talkative and a natural joker – obviously the class clown – he always has a knee-slapper tucked away to shout out when I'm trying to teach something, no matter what the class is doing, be it written work or reading comprehension exercises. In many ways, he’s the perfect applicant for the restaurant. In fact, I’ll probably visit McDonalds every single day just so I can watch him fulfill his purpose in life."

"The little gap-toothed fuck," she added.

And parents couldn't be more pleased.

"Little Johnny is such a self-entitled, mean-spirited, selfish little bastard," said parents Jake and Amy Henderson. "We're glad someone is willing to sacrifice their time and energy to make sure he gets a job befitting his talents. I mean, for a moment there, we were worried he'd become a Member of Parliament."

Government begins campaign to improve graffiti

Bad graffiti and the defacement of public property has long been a stain on our society, but finally the Department of Education is striking back. Today, the Minister of Education has announced a much-needed injection of almost 3 billion Rand into South African schools, aimed at improving students’ grammar and punctuation so that, “at the very least, our schools will be vandalised and defaced in an educated and correctly-spelled manner.”

“Have you seen some of our students’ tags and ‘art’?” asked the Minister at a press conference in Pretoria. “I mean, Jake waz heer? Blu Klan Gang 4 lyf? Have we so failed our children that they can’t even deface public property in a respectable, grammatically sound way? They say ‘fuk da police’, but why? We hope that this new boost will enable our children to at least have an empirically-based and nuanced critique of our problematic police force and why, exactly, we should ‘fuk’ them.”

The cash boost follows on the heels of a damning study commissioned by the Institute of Public Art, which recently found that a “made-up but very high” percentage of gang-affiliated graffiti contained innumerable spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.

“While this widespread creativity and love of art is a sign of promise in the next generation,” said the sixty-page report, “their inability to differentiate between ‘to’, ‘too’ and ‘two’, or ‘your’ and ‘you’re’, or even ‘were’, ‘we’re’ and ‘where’, is something that needs to be immediately addressed.”

This isn't the first time South African education has been drastically altered to suit contemporary trends, and despite government officials remaining obstinate that "a Matric isn't easy", teachers have embraced the new introductions.

“The system of basic education is failing many thousands of little obnoxious shits I’m legally obliged to call ‘students’,” said a High School maths teacher in Kwazulu-Natal. “If we don’t do something now, we’ll forever be doomed to see ‘fuck’ spelt without the ‘c’ on our trains, buildings and public spaces.”

The new educational fund is also aimed at improving students’ limited or incorrect knowledge of human anatomy as depicted in erroneous and crude tags.

“Most graffiti pictures of genitalia are not anatomically correct,” said one biology teacher. “For example, most crudely sprayed penises on industrial buildings disregard the usual kinks, bends and demographically relevant size proportions of the average male; the same can be said for roughly painted breasts or hastily tagged vaginas. They are just in no way indicative of real breasts, and don’t convey even half the complexity or sophisticated anatomical structures of the female reproductive organs.”

Government opinion remains divided on the matter, with some claiming that "education is not in a crisis in South Africa" and others admitting that education in South Africa would be "a terrible idea", but at the end of the day, the decision has excited great number of school kids.

“I’ve already been working on a new series of tags,” said a grade-ten learner. “I think it’s gonna blow people away.”

Artists depiction: before education program.

Artist's depiction: after education program.

Pics: Grafitti, Matthew de Klerk. Wall (both edits): Creative Commons.

Schools ban "racist, classist" Chess

It has been a fantastic day for equal rights, after schools around the world announced their decision to finally ban the overtly racist and classist piece of offensive intolerance disguised as a board game, Chess.

“Just look at the game,” said Headmaster of Checkerton High School, Chek Mayt, “It’s all about kings and queens forcing the poor proletariat pawns around a board, and about whites fighting blacks to control a limited bit of territory. We’re just glad we can finally throw this Nazi-esque piece of crude pro-supremacy propaganda in the bin.”

Chess, as we all know, was invented by 1623 by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, who came up with the concept after realising how charred or polished bones of innocent men and women could each be carved into different little figurines for use in board games aimed at whiling away the quiet moments between public executions. Chess was preceded by the far more bigoted Backgammon (a word which derives from the Old Latin, Bacchus Gammonius, meaning “slaughter of innocents”) which involved impaling white and black pieces on different colour spikes, with the winner being the one who can get rid of their particular ethic group the fastest.

Mayt is just one of many Education professionals who stand by the new ban. He added that what made the game even more like a mini Apartheid was how some pieces, like the Bishop, are forced to always remain on their specific coloured area.

“What are we trying to teach our kids? That we are all just expendable, exploited pieces on the board of life, divided up by the colour of our skin and never allowed by society to leave our predefined roles or change our lot in life? What if a rook wants to move in an ‘L’ shape? What if a pawn wants to take a step to the side? What if a king doesn’t want to sacrifice his subjects in a pointless war that has no real purpose or reason except racial hatred and territorial disputes?”

Schools have for a number of years now been trying to slowly marginalise chess out of their hallways through covert operations, but they say that it has not yet proven successful, and that there was finally no other choice than drastic action.

“We used to pay kids to beat up the smaller kids who played this game between AP Maths and Advance Chemistry, calling them ‘nerds’ and ‘dorks’ in the hopes that they would bow to peer pressure and social norms and give up the game, but it’s still played today,” said Mayt. “Extreme measures are necessary. If we want to teach our kids tolerance and acceptance, we have to ban this game and condemn anyone who plays it.”

Some theorists are now trying to work on a “more tolerant, less ethnically charged version” of the game, but say they have encountered some difficulties.

“We first tried to fix it by changing the colours of the pieces, but even this has proven not enough. We tried yellow and red, but now it just looks like we’re trying to portray Asian and Indian ethnic cleansing.” In spite of these difficulties, these hard-working men and women say they are optimistic that they are on the verge of a “much better game”.

“We’re making a new version in which every piece is a mutli-coloured rainbow pawn – so that we’re all equal and racially sensitive – and a new bunch of rules in which your pieces democratically elect a King, and then you spend the rest of the game exercising passive measures instead of violence, equipping your pieces with placards, marijuana, flowers and an iconic soundtrack to stop the pointless violence of war. Sure, there isn’t a winner or loser, and it’s not at all fun – but isn’t that the best way to teach kids the basic lessons of life?”

The game goes on sale next week, alongside the new anti-capitalist version of a popular board game, Marx-nopoly, in which players equally distribute land and spread their Pass-Go-Collect-200-Dollars income evenly among the masses.

Angie Motshekga – Matric is “not that easy”

The government has struck back at critics of the Education System and the Department of Education this morning, after a statement released by somehow-still-Minister for Basic Education Angie Motshekga and signed by almost 100 Members of Parliament declared that “Matric exams aren’t easy” and that “we’d know, because we tried to do one.”

“Everyone is criticising it, saying it’s simple, it’s too easy, that the standard of education is falling quickly, but it really isn’t,” said Motsekga at a press conference in Johannesburg today.

Many MPs have agreed, having taken the exam themselves.

“The first question was quite challenging, but I eventually figured it out after maybe fifteen minutes of thought,” said Minister of Agriculture Lander Eforme. “But after I wrote down my name in that first blank, I realised that being asked my name isn’t actually a part of the question paper - and then I couldn’t go past the real Question One, which was something about two numbers and a small cross between them. I put my head in my hands and looked around Parliament at everyone else’s anxious, confused faces and thought, ‘Jesus, what are these hieroglyphics? Have we done this in class?’”

Minister Motshekga has slammed criticism of Matric,
saying, "Me, Malema, Zille and Zuma all agree - that's
seventeen people who prove my point."
pic:Flickr, Governmentza

According to Motshekga, 100% of the MPs who sat the exam failed to get over the minimum 33% pass mark, proving that the exam isn’t as easy as many claim.

“These critics, people like Johnathan Jansen, they are wrong about the exams,” she said, “and by wrong I mean more wrong that you’re allowed to be to be deemed eligible to get a Matric.”

Though some of the submitted papers did garner a few correct marks here and there, exam markers have now determined this to be “merely coincidental.”

“If we look at the papers themselves, statistically speaking they could only have gotten a few lucky ticks,” said script marker Nawt San-Krosis, “because the ANC just filled in all the (A) and (C) boxes on the multiple choice grids, with Helen Zille and her cadre of counterrevolutionaries filling in all the (D) and (A) choices. COPE and Agang didn’t provide any of their own problems to the solution, but probably just tried to peek over their neighbours' shoulders to steal some answers and points and pretend it was their original thoughts.”

The full results of the experiment, however, are not known.

“We don’t know what how the EFF did, because firstly there aren’t any (E) or (F) choices on the grid, and secondly because they staged a mass walk-out when the Woodwork Exam Question Papers were handed out. “

Despite all this, Motshekga says that she and other Organs of State were not worried by these Parliamentary failures.

“You don’t need a Matric to run a country,” she said. “Just ask Jacob.”

However, to combat possible issues they have announced new legislation and changes in law and education, such as protecting doctors in medical malpractice suits who only get one or two things wrong.

“If he cuts you open, fixes your liver, and then sews you up nicely, but accidentally leaves a box of needles in you, that’s okay, because that’s more than 33% correct.”

Motshekga and her coworkers are also excited to announce a new series of Matric Examination Papers, such as Put The Coloured Blocks In The Right-Shaped Holes and new multiple choice style papers in fitting with today’s high standard of education.