Bush pushes new negative number standards to educators

December 2, 2002
Minneapolis, MN (Dayahead News Service)

"It's as plain as a polka-dot rattlesnake."

President George W. Bush today addressed members of the the Minneapolis School Board in a satellite conference held outdoors at the former site of a junior high school near Lake Nokomis, in Minneapolis.

President Bush strongly urged Board members to approve new Administration standards requiring public schools to teach criticism of negative numbers. "A lot of mathematicians are raising significant objections to negative number theory," said Bush. "Insisting that Minneapolis students learn about these objections promotes academic freedom and should help prepare every right-thinking person for a new America."

Bush introduced John Glovner, the new Director of Early Education for Homeland Defense. Glovner, formerly a professor of Philosophical Freedoms at Oral Roberts University, explained that in decades past, children in Minnesota and elsewhere commonly learned how to manipulate negative numbers without examining the theory behind them. "For example," Glovner said, "they learned that 4 take away 8 equals minus 4." However, in the last two years, mathematicians from Beltway think tanks such as the Falwell Institute have argued that children should avoid such calculations because minus 4 and similar numbers have no basis in reality. "Today's actions will squelch the plan of the negative-number crowd to indoctrinate our children with secular humanist dogma," Glovner said.

The White House has been pushing its new "Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative," campaign, and the new standards fall neatly into that program. Glovner likened the teaching of negative numbers to the teaching of "Darwinism, plate tectonics, and other fictions of the philosophical materialists." Bush agreed. "It's as plain as a polka-dot rattlesnake," Bush said. "Any monkey can hold an apple in each hand and see that two apples exist, but who on God's green Earth has ever held two negative apples? Explain that!"

The video conference was held outdoors in below-freezing weather to demonstrate the point that significantly lowering temperatures in Minneapolis school buildings will drastically reduce operating and heating costs in a time of reduced subsidies for schools. Bush, seen on the monitors wearing a blue presidential windbreaker, reminded Minnesota viewers that, "In times of war, all citizens must make sacrifices for the good of the American cause." A recent bill, which has yet to clear the Senate, would require all public buildings not affiliated with the War on Terrorism to "voluntarily" lower thermostats by ten degrees in the daytime hours and more at night.

The above story and the characters within are intentionally fictional. Any resemblance to actual people may be coincidental and could be disregarded, depending on your political views. "George W. Bush" and "The White House" are copyright (c) 2000, and both remain the sole property of the National Republican Party.

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