“We don’t need no education

We don’t need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone”

– Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd

The Fortune: A bargain is something you don’t need at a price you can’t resist.

Sigh.

Here’s what I think. I think the fortune cookie writer who came up with this one may be the laziest individual on the planet. If not the laziest, he or she is running a close second to the dude from last week’s fortune cookie…you know, the one who couldn’t outwit the person who names the ultra rare Shopkins. I mean this gal – I’ll go with a she this time since last time I assumed it was a he and I’m an equal fortune-cookie-writer-gender-guessing-opportunist – simply whipped out the ole Merriam-Webster, blew the substantial layer of dust off, opened ‘er up to the Bs, and just went to town plagiarizing (or hopefully just paraphrasing) the ever so reliable dictionary that folks in my age bracket kept handy for our Wordly Wise homework, insultingly transferring it over to a tiny little ½ inch by 2 inch sliver of paper that ultimately got stuffed into a borderline baked good. Where is your creativity lady? C’mon. Stop making me lower my expectations in regards to the fortune cookie experience. I don’t want to learn, I want fortune!

If I wanted to know the loose definition of the word bargain, I would have looked it up myself. Or phoned a friend. Or dabbled on the ole interweb, paroozing a little site I like to call Google. And I would likely not have looked, phoned, or dabbled after a delicious meal at my favorite, local Chinese Bistro. Call me crazy, but I don’t need said information to flutter out of the post-general tofu fortune cookie. I’m there for the good food and the good company of friends. That’s simply not the time that I want to further my education and broaden my personal vocabulary. When I get my fortune cookie, I’d prefer to just revel in it’s crisp, palate cleansing state of being. Save the vocab lessons for the daylight hours. Please and thank you.

Why is this in a fortune cookie?

Is the South Carolina education system so bad that we have to squeeze vocabulary lessons in for the general public via a fortune cookie? It’s a valid question for sure, given the education system of my home state ranks in the country’s bottom five year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year. You get the gist. And I believe I’m being generous with that statistic e.g. I believe in 2010, my home state was ranked #51. Take a gander at that for a second. It’s so utterly pitiful it makes me chuckle a little. Oh, South Carolina. You trendsetter. But let’s look at one little factoid for a quick second. When the schools (in SC and obviously other states) are using a vocabulary lesson book that is pitched as “THE academic vocabulary curriculum used by over 5 million students”, also known as Wordly Wise, what kind of results can we honestly expect in either public or private schools?! I mean really. Soak that in for a second. “Wordly” is not even a word in the English language! You cannot look that up in the dictionary, people. Try it out for yourself. I’m serious; it’s not in there.

Now before I get raked over some blazing inferno of hot coals for my commentary on the school system in my home state, let me be the first to say that I had a superb education K-12 and all the way through grad school (and all in the State of South Carolina – mic drop). And I learned my extensive vocabulary under the Wordly Wise curriculum in middle school. So don’t get your knickers in a twist just yet. I mention it primarily because the irony of it makes me laugh so hard. It’s absolutely hilarious.

There’s no wonder we folks can’t read or write so good.

So I guess, by all means, throw some vocab lessons into the fortune cookies. Lord knows we consume plenty of them annually – roughly 3 billion world-wide. But perhaps when they are distributed to South Carolina, the distribution can be a little heavy handed on the vocab lesson cookies versus those silly regular fortune cookies with ‘fortunes’ in them. We’ll take all the help we can get. Obviously.

As for this fortune cookie writer gal, I wouldn’t fire her just yet. After all she’s providing an educational service to our country. For all we know she could be a potential candidate for the Secretary of Education. Hell, her qualifications aren’t that far off from the incumbent who couldn’t find her pencil on her first day. Yes, I went there. Oye.