Truthiness @ School

"Truthiness is what you want the facts to be, as opposed to what the facts are. What feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support."

Stephen Colbert coining the term truthiness
October 17, 2023 on The Colbert Report

Remember: If you can't laugh about it, then you can't get over it. If you can't get over it, then you're stuck. Everything in education of all kinds; traditional, alternative, democratic, industrial, etc.; is fair game for jokes, parody, and humor. This is where I will collect the funniest school humor I can find. If you get offended, please let me know so I can learn to be more sensitive and get better at it.

This page will be my central clearinghouse for all school comedy, not just making a mockery of traditional schools but eveything in the field of education. Truthiness is just the beginning!

Enjoy!

Don Berg

How much of what is done at school has the ring of truthiness? Teacher Clay Burrell on his Beyond School Blog (beyond-school.org) coined the term schooliness to illuminate the absurdity of some of the stuff that goes on in schools.

Here's a selection of proposed definitions of schooliness and related terms from Clay Burrell and the readers of his blog beyond-school.org:

• Schooliness: Preparing students for challenges and careers that don’t exist yet by teaching them about challenges and careers that don’t exist anymore.

  
  

• Schooly Day: as the doors open, the minds close.

  
  

• Schooliness: the process of leaching creativity from the soul of a student

  
  

• Schooly Writing (noun): Assignments by teachers who don’t want to read them, to students who don’t want to write them; a perpetual and unnecessary misery upon which hinges the student’s future, and the teacher’s present, livelihood; an oxymoron.

  
  

• Schooly Gaze: Looking at every new technology, event or idea only in terms of how it can be used for the purposes of schooliness.

  
  

• Schooly Success: The sacrifice of happiness to be better than everybody else, in order to sacrifice more happiness doing the same in college and life.

  
  

• An acrostic on schooliness:

  Straight lines for margins and for walking

  Chew on this as long as it’s not an idea or gum

  Obedience = success

  Opine not

  Late to class, go the office and get a pass (see you in 10)

  SAT: your whole future in four digits or less

Thanks to all and you can figure out who did what at this post on beyond-school.org.

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• School Work In The Real World...
  Here's a really eye-opening look at school work from the perspective of real work.

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Here's a music video called Not on the Test by Tom Chapin: