My dear wife is out of town today for training on the pre-school components of No Child Left Behind. Yes, kids from age 2-5 will now be tested to make sure they’re progressing during their time playing with blocks, taking naps, and pasting construction paper.

Something about this strikes me as ridiculous, partially because of the juxtaposition of the philosophy that we should let kids be kids with this new approach of making sure they’re tested and trained for the future! That future being when they have to learn how to count to 100.

I was not a pre-school child. My parents certainly didn’t have the money for it, and I’m certain that it wasn’t quite as much of an issue between 1973 and 1978 as it is today. Still, I entered kindergarten and was able to be graduated to the first grade without so much as a single federally mandated test.

What has happened to our poor children that they must now endure entrance and exit exams just to make it to real school? Too much Power Rangers, not enough Electric Company? Are our children destined to be failures because two adults never approached them in silhouette to assemble monosyllabic words against an empty landscape?

Oh well, I guess it’s only fair that we start stressing out these kids as early as possible. Get them used to the whole routine of regular evaluation. I just wish there was an actual reward for the kids in doing all of this testing. Some countries reward you with a college education for that stuff. The only people rewarded in our country are the politicians.

Yeah, I bet you weren’t expecting that from the guy who posts dead fish photos.