Morning News: the Syllabus in Wilmette

At last: a news item from our own corner of the Blogosphere, not yet reported in the Times.

Mig at Metamorphosism has made a queasy discovery. Clicking on the link in his entry, “I was afraid of this,” (“Welcome to the canon”) will take you to a sort of Internet syllabus for the Fourth Grade Marine Biology Unit at the Wilmette [Illinois] public schools. You will find a table filled with the names of various fish. Click on “Flying Fish 2,” and you’re back at Metamorphosism, for Mig’s drolly mock-scientific entry. Among the “facts” noted about the flying fish:

This sounds an awful lot like surfing, which is done for fun, not to escape predators, man.

As the entry proceeds, it becomes ever more mired in yearning existential uncertainty.

[The flying fish] wonders, did walks calm its father this much? Walks at night? Are they as good as walks at dawn, the flying fish wonders. Because the light at dawn, not bad man. The clarity, the shine of the world. The swans. The way ducks look small and insufficient next to a swan, although they probably think the swans are way too big and prone to bird flu and a bad color – white – that gets dirty way too easy, while the swans maybe think, eat my wake, duck.

Let’s see, do any of my law school friends have kids in these schools? It’s a possibility – although grandchildren are getting to be more likely. Or we could try to get a saving note to Mr Elman.