The NEA Imitates South Park

Colleague and loyal reader KS alerts us to the latest from our nation's premier teacher's union...

A National Education Association online poll reveals that actress Jessica Alba is the celebrity most respondents would like to see substitute teach for a day. The star of “Into the Blue” and “Fantastic Four” was the top pick with 46 percent of the vote. The runners-up include Oprah Winfrey (24 percent) followed by Angelina Jolie (14 percent), Will Smith (12 percent) and Andre Agassi (4 percent). NEA received more than 5,000 responses to the poll, which was conducted in advance of Substitute Educators Day on Friday, November 17.

“Although substitute educators play a key role in the classroom, they are often taken for granted,” said Reg Weaver, NEA president. “Our celebrity Substitute Educators Day poll is an excellent way for us to spotlight the collective contributions of substitutes to schools nationwide. Just as actress Jessica Alba toiled long and hard before achieving stardom, substitute educators work tirelessly—and often in relative anonymity—to provide every child with a quality public education."

This immeditely reminds me of two things -- Van Halen's Hot for Teacher and the South Park episode where Natasha Henstridge voiced substitute teacher Ms. Ellen (described by Chef as being "Erin Grey in the second season of Buck Rogers beautiful").

You know, normally I just mock the NEA as the biggest impediment to improving our nation's public schools. But here, I think we have an idea -- let's build robot teachers that look like Jessica Alba! For the females and males of another persuasion, we could have robot Matt Damons (guaranteed to be smarter than the real Matt Damon)! I guarantee school attendence would pick up, especially in high school. And I would bet parents would never skip those parent-teacher conferences.

We could expand this into other areas -- imagine having Jessica Alba as your substitute boss! Wait... I'm pretty sure that might lead to some bad things, so let's move on.