Twenty years from now, all the important, high-value jobs will be taken by Minneapolis residents, and they will supervise St. Paul residents who make less money, have a dull sheen to their eyes and have to be poked every few minutes or they start to drool. Why? Because Minneapolitans will be smarter and know things.
Evidence: St. Paul schools start Sept. 8. Minneapolis schools start TOMORROW.
That's at least one week of learning, per year. You can't beat that kind of advantage. The attempt to build a Master Class of Super-Intelligent Overlords is so obvious that every parent whose child isn't permitted — nay, blessed — to be shoved through schoolroom doors before Labor Day should be alarmed.
And it's worse: Minneapolis schools are starting 15 minutes earlier and going 15 minutes longer. You can cram a lot of calculus into a teen brain at 8:15 a.m. if you shout. And when 3 p.m. rolls around, their active minds are so hungry for MORE knowledge, they will run outside after the bell rings and pass around encyclopedias.
Now, there are some who say that school shouldn't start before Labor Day, because it's cruel to poke kids back into a classroom before we have exhausted the supply of August.
They'll say it's hard to concentrate when the pleasures of summer still tempt, before the trees have assumed the autumnal tinge. They'll wonder whether some of those mysterious "release days" that pepper the calendar couldn't be combined into an extra week, so school could start after the great guillotine blade of Labor whistles down to separate summer from fall.
Well, that's old-style thinking, when the school year had its roots in the agricultural calendar, and kids had to help out with the harvest, which took place the last week of August, culminating with a bonfire offering of sheep to the Crop Gods on Labor Day. Or something like that. There's no reason we have to be bound to old rituals, is there? Kids will always complain when they have to go back early.
Don't think of it as going back before Labor Day. Think of it as going back after the Fourth of July!
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858
