Commentary
Ocean City Today Mar. 4, 2022
Page 44
School info bill incredibly dumb Legislation that would require public school teachers to post their lesson plans online is exactly what Worcester and other counties in the State of Maryland need. Here’s hoping that the Maryland General Assembly, lopsidedly Democratic though it is, will see the wisdom of this Republican-sponsored measure and push it through. After all, nothing could be better for the thousands upon thousands of students who fell behind when classroom instruction was shut down because of covid-19 than to have teachers spend more time posting their lesson plans online and less time actually developing, refining and using them. As Worcester County Public Schools officials observed in this week’s story on the legislation, which is inspired by several conservative think tanks that argue racism wouldn’t exist if we just stopped talking about it so much, it would obligate this county’s 700 teachers to post seven lesson plans a day or thereabouts. Forget the philosophical and political arguments over critical race theory, the practical aspect of this bill is ... just stupid. When, exactly, are teachers supposed to map out their daily lesson plans and upload them to the school system web? This assumes, of course, that Worcester’s teachers are actually working during class hours and not short-changing the kids by sneaking out to conspire with each other about what else they might do to disrupt the course of civilization. Here’s the other problem: there is no precise definition of critical race theory and no specific curriculum. In that respect, it’s as the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 when, during a case before the court, he was asked to define pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Because actual coursework for critical race theory doesn’t exist, at least at this level, the parents and guardians of roughly 7,000 students, along with “concerned citizens,” would be invited to scour lesson plans for evidence of critical race theory teaching based on their “I know it when I see it” individual opinions and interpretations. Great. Put that on a state level, and anyone can see how that’s going to work out. Incidentally, so much for school boards’ local control.
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EDITOR ............................................ Stewart Dobson MANAGING EDITOR ................................ Lisa Capitelli STAFF WRITERS .................. Greg Ellison, Greg Wehner, ..........................................Jack Chavez, Mallory Panuska ACCOUNT MANAGERS.......... Mary Cooper, Vicki Shrier ..............................................................Amanda Shick CLASSIFIEDS/LEGALS MANAGER .... Nancy MacCubbin SENIOR DESIGNER ................................ Susan Parks GRAPHIC ARTIST .................................... Kelly Brown PUBLISHER........................................ Christine Brown ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT ...................... Gini Tufts Ocean City Today is published weekly by FLAG Publications, Inc. 11934 Ocean Gateway, Suite 6, Ocean City, Md. 21842 Ocean City Today is available by subscription at $150 a year. Visit us on the Web at www.oceancitytoday.com. Copyright 2022
REPRINT FROM 2016
PUBLIC EYE
The old sleeper pitch
Will major league baseball ever be played again? Does anyone care? I care, because it looks like I might have to find something else on TV to fall asleep to on a Sunday afternoon. Even though I like baseball, I never make it past the third inning when I’m watching it. Here’s what it sounds like on summer Sundays in our family room, sunroom, or whatever you would call a space occupied by people not put off by the room’s secondBy ary job as a travel destination Stewart for dog hair. “It’s the bottom of the Dobson third, two outs and no one on, Tampa leads by one ... Mullins digs in at the plate.” “ZZzzzzzzzzzz, snort, zzzzzzz.” With any luck, I’ll wake up by the bottom of the ninth so I’ll know who won without having to watch the post-game wrap-up, which is about as exciting to me as a documentary on clothespin art. This is just an aside, but if my luck holds, I’ll awake without a layer of Cheeto dust or some other essential food’s remains all over my shirt, which is where the metaphorical cookie generally crumbles. It’s tough to deny that you slept through most of the game when you’re covered with edible evidence pointing to yet another episode of nodding off mid-nibble. “You slept through that entire game again, didn’t you?” she’ll ask. “Actually, I did not,” I’ll reply. “I was watching with relaxed eyelids.”
“Oh really? Well, I guess you know why the dog is making that ‘clack, clack’ sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Might it be because she ate half a peanut butter sandwich out of your dangling hand? Could that be it, Mr. Wide-Awake-the-Whole-Time?” That’s a true story, by the way, having occurred several years ago during the pre-Crazy Eddie days (he’s still here, although I’m not sure he knows it). This was the same dog that once lapped up a quart of fried chicken oil and ended up spending the day outside engaged in some truly remarkable activities. You don’t want to know more, although the term “crop circles” does come to mind. Anyway, with the exception of the chicken oil incident, all the other inadvertent feedings and crumb dustings were baseball’s fault. It is a game of hours interrupted by seconds of brilliance, the infrequency of which put me to sleep somewhere between “low and outside for ball one” and “the wind is swirling in the left field corner.” And yet, here we are facing the prospect of a severely shortened baseball season or no season at all, as greedy owners and greedy players fight over who gets what share of this $10 billion burrito, while the game’s popularity is dropping like a fly ball in a downdraft. Many one-time fans, it turns out, no longer care. Well, I do care. It’s important to my weekend well-being that I have something on TV to fall asleep to, and not much else seems to work as well as baseball. Besides, you can only watch so many Hallmark Channel movies — “Sparks fly when a store clerk discovers the produce manager is a prince” — before even the dogs leave the room and the sandwich is still in your hand when you wake up.
