Bob Shepherd reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn state laws banning public money to religious schools if the state is subsidizing other private schools. Bob lives in Florida, which already funds private and religious schools to the tune of $1 billion a year and has just increased the funding for them. Religious schools in Florida do not take the state tests, do not have to hire certified teachers or principals, and are not accountable to the state in any way:
Post-Espinoza Business Plan 1 (We Put the Duh in Flor-uh-duh):
Come on down to our “Race to the Top of Mount Zion Enrollment Jubilee” in the old K-Mart parking lot this Saturday and sign yore kids up for Bob Shepherd’s Real Good Floruhduh School. You can use yore Florida State Scholarships to pay for it, and so its absolutely FREE!!!! No longer due you havta send yore children to them gobbermint schools run by Socialists whar they will be taut to be transgendered! We offer compleet curriculems, wrote by Bob’s girlfriend Darlene herself, including
World HIStory (from Creation to Babylon to the Rapshure)
Political Science (We thank you, Lord, for Donald Trump; the Second Amendmint; and protecting our Borders from invading hoardes of rapists and murderers)
English (the offishul langwidge of the United States, and the langwidge the Bible was wrote in)
Science (the six days of creation; how to make yore own buckshot; and how Cain and Abel survived among the dinosaurs)
Economics (when rich people get tax brakes, that makes you richer)
And much, much more!!! Plus, you don’t havta worry yore hed about safety, cause all are teachers is locked and loaded!
Bob’s Real Good Florurduh Skool, located across from Bob’s Gun and Pawn right next to Wild Wuornos’s Adult Novelties.
It’s been real good runnin’ this here skool. Free innerprize! So much better then tryin to live on Darlene’s disability! Make America Grate Agin!
Post-Espinoza Business Plan 1 (Akashic Kakistonics, or Opening Heaven’s Gate to Every Child):
Tired of those failing public schools? Want to send your child a true Akashic Academy where he/she/they can receive nourishment for the mind AND the soul?
Then enroll him/her/them in Enlightened Master Bob’s AYAHUASCA SCHOOL FOR LITTLE COSMIC VOYAGERS.
Here at Enlightened Master Bob’s, your child will learn how he or she can skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner and draw nourishment directly from Father Sun in our Solar Temple.
We offer complete holistic health training, using our proprietary textbooks on the Ethereal Body, including uncapping and aligning children’s Chakras so they can download DIRECTLY from the Mother Ship the Cosmic Light necessary for the coming Transformation from Earth-bound Homo Sapiens to Interdimensional Beings.
In our history classes, students will learn all about Atlantis, Lemuria, Camelot and Glastonbury, the Black Rock Desert, and other places of Places of Power throughout the Ages.
Students will also learn how to protect themselves against the forces of the Evil Galactic Emperor Xenu and his band of sometimes invisible, shape-shifting reptilian aliens from Alpha Draconis.
But don’t delay! Soon, as our galaxy moves into proximity to the Pleiades, the vibrational tone of the entire planet will rise to such a pitch that we will either undergo Ascension or explode, and everything—the FATE OF THE PLANET– depends on how many young Lightworkers we can bring into Alignment and Cosmic Consciousness before then!
Of course, all this is absolutely FREE because you can use your State Scholarship Voucher to pay for it.
And best yet, all classes are taught by the Spiritual Wives of Enlightened Master Bob himself!!!!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
THANK YOU, Bob Shepherd. 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch, for the marketing assistance! Will send your check as soon as our Flor-uh-duh do-wah State Scholarship Assistance payments clear!
FROM: the law offices of A. Wayne Kerr, Esq.
TO: The State of Georgia
OK. We here in Flor-uh-duh are not happy. We’ve spent years, literally, building our reputation as the dumbest state in the union. We’ve built rope swings over pits of alligators. We’ve worn “Seriously, I have drugs” shirts when we were carrying illegal drugs. We’ve organized people to shoot down hurricanes. We’ve claimed in court that we weren’t drinking and driving because we only swigged alcohol at stop signs. We’ve committed criminal assault with fried chicken. We’ve passed resolutions banning Satan from our towns. We’ve committed armed robbery with transparent bags on our heads. We’ve elected Ron DeSantis our governor. We’ve passed stand your ground laws. We’ve driven on the highway with a “Car in Toe” sign in the back window. And we’ve issued an order to open all our schools to full in-person instruction on the very day that we set a national record for new cases of Covid-19.
In short, we have worked extremely hard to build the brand of Flor-uh-duh Man. Now, the state of Georgia thinks it can capriciously encroach on our brand by rescinding its order to wear masks in public during the pandemic. This cannot stand. Please cease and desist from further stupid.
Thank you.
And the hits just keep on coming! DJShep puts to shame big-name comics who run out of gas, turn bathetic and preachy, no longer able to whittle wit from witlessness, see the irony in Ron D, spot the laugh in fallacious, nor even spoof puffery!
blushing here
Isn’t ed reform headed for a huge crash between the dogma and the lockstep promotion and support of private school vouchers?
For consistency and coherence, don’t they have to regulate and police private schools to the same extent they regulate and police public schools, with the “accountability!” prong of the ideology?
How are they planning on doing that? Won’t publicly funded private schools simply revert to being “private” after they accept the public funding? Much like charters are only public when it’s convenient to be public?
They’re planning on imposing elaborate, gimmicky measurement schemes on public schools but exempting their own publicly funded private schools from the mandates?
So the whole justification for testing public school students (equity) just goes out the window now that the echo chamber have all embraced vouchers? Wow. That’s pretty cynical. Pure ideology, pure politics.
Yore Rite that bein a privat skool, we dont haveta give them state tests. But that dont meen we aint testing are studints constantlee. Are students all grajuates able to identify on a map ever state in the United States of Dimocrat Babylon (the enemy) and ever state whar the South is rising agin! An, course, when it comes to targit practice, the testing is built rite in! You is close to the hole or you aint. Thats called formative assessmint.
“Reality Check: What Will It Take to Reopen Schools Amid the Pandemic? 8 Experts Weigh In on Families, Schools & Students’ Diverse Needs”
Ed reform’s “reality check” on opening public schools does not include a single representative from a public school.
“reality” is a funny word to use when “the movement” excludes 90% of schools, students and families from any input into opening their own schools because they have ideological objections to the existence of our schools.
Public schools still exist, however. One would not know it from reading within the ed reform echo chamber but that is in fact “the reality”.
Who do we have to pay to get some public school people invited to elite policy discussions on public schools?
Ed reform’s “reality check” on opening public schools does not include a single representative from a public school.
Exactly. Thank you, Chiara, for continuing to raise this issue!
Bob, you are a masterful satirist. You should be a writer for Saturday Night Live. You have an acid pen that eats through all the artifice and baloney. I always enjoy your work.
Last night while watching the local news, the local Florida station posted a still shot of a Florida classroom. On the desks were books with the title “Florida Biology.” What in the world is Florida biology? I don’t know, but I can only let my imagination run wild.
LMAO! IKR?
Here’s how this happens: Every six years, for decades, Texas had an adoption cycle in which, in a given year, they would throw out all their textbooks in a particular subject area and buy new ones. So, the publishers would create a Texas Edition, e.g., “Texas Algebra” (which differs, I suppose, from Illinois Algebra). And then they would “correlate” the program to the Texas state standards. Now, here’s the crafty part: They would use full-page illustrations on half title pages (chapter openers) of Texas scenes. And they would scatter, throughout, pages with Texas-themed “Special Features.” And they would hire program “authors” from the state who didn’t write a word in the programs and feature their pictures and bios in the front of the Teachers’ editions. Then, they would, for other states, switch out the full-page illustrations and the half title pages and the program “authors,” and correlate to the standards of other states.
And–surprise, surprise!–the program, almost entirely unchanged, would just happen to correlate perfectly to the standards of every state! Then they would stamp “Illinois Algebra” or whatever on the cover. And, because parts of Texas are only slightly less backward than Flor-uh-duh is, the textbook content would be dumbed down to the level of the Texas template. I worked for a company that had a health textbook refused for adoption in Texas because it contained the line “Humans and other mammals lactate.” They were offended by the reference to lactation, but what really bothered them was that humans were called mammals, suggesting that they were animals and not part of some separate, special creation. And we would have to be very, very circumspect about any references to the age of the Earth or of the Universe, to evil-lution, to DNA, etc.
BTW, in Flor-uh-duh Biology, humans lack reproductive organs. You know, like Barbie and Ken. And, of course, people used to organize Dinosaur hunts.
This kind of thing is discussed in riveting and amusing detail in Diane Ravitch’s book The Language Police.
Thanks for the insights into regional textbooks. Florida, eager to separate from the Common Core, has developed its own standards called Florida B.E.S.T. aka. Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking. It sounds like standards from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” If these standards can produce “excellent thinking,” they should immediately get DeSantis to adopt them in order to lead the state from the Covid inferno. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcowen/2020/02/19/florida-should-have-put-the-brakes-on-their-standards-review/#6f0975c86f6f
If these standards can produce “excellent thinking,” they should immediately get DeSantis to adopt them in order to lead the state from the Covid inferno.
Oh. My. Lord. That’s good. That’s very very good.
The process of textbook adoption in Texas is still being influenced by the Gabler family, infamous for being outspoken critics of textbooks put up for adoption in Texas. The Gabler’s sought and received national publicity as protectors of conservative and their version of Christian values. See the Gabler legacy operation here: http://www.textbookreviews.org
Bob’s satires are super-well informed. As a native Floridian (a rare creature) I appreciate the southern sounds in his careful misspellings and the absurdities. I also learned more about textbook adoptions than I wanted to a couple of decades ago. Most states still have adoption committees with absurd criteria for publishers. Now there is also the Gates-funded EdReports, a rating scheme that checks instructional materials for strict compliance with the Common Core.
key question
The troglodytes among the Supremes should be careful what they ask for. A bit of instructive history: In the past, the nation states of Europe were officially theocratic, with what our founders called “established”–by which they meant “government-sponsored”–religions. After the Reformation, there were Protestant nation states and Catholic nation states. In England, the monarch was officially the head of the church.
When Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which provided the basis for the clause in Article Six of our Constitution that prohibited a religious test for office and later for the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, there were those who were horrified by this Roger Williams-like call for strict separation. Would the new United States become an irreligious country?
Well, precisely the opposite happened. Today, in the former theocratic nation states of Europe, religious belief is in sharp decline, and many fine churches stand empty. In the United States, with its wall of separation between religion and the state, religion flourishes, and literally thousands of denominations have sprung up. Freedom is a fertile soil.
Nutcase Evangelicals gathered around Don the Con in the now Offal Office in the now Whiter House may think they want government sanctioning of religion–the use of taxpayer dollars to fund their madrasas. But they won’t, if they are successful, end up with the Handmaid’s Tale world they so fervently pray (prey?) for. They will end up with schools full of kids pushing back against the rigidity, the stupidity, the dullness and sameness, of the official line, what with the arc of history and all. LOL. As Neil Postman put it long ago: Kids have excellent crap detectors.
However, in the short term (for many decades, before we arrive at that future irreligiosity) there will be much strife because of the Espinoza decision. The Supremes have prepared, in this decision, a diseased Apple of Discord that, I predict, will cause much sickness in the Body Politic, which is already on life support due to the autoimmune disease of factionalism. The question will arise, over and over, again and again, in other areas of public life. Will the citizens of a town be able to declare it officially Christian? Will the Church of Satan and the Wiccans and the ayahuasca churches and the Pastafarians and the Church of Bob (yes, there is such a thing) and the Church of the Dude be able to set up schools in Florida and Mississippi and demand taxpayer dollars (in the form of vouchers or direct subsidies) for those? What will the bible thumpers of Florida and Mississippi think of that?
So, there will be all these battles, further dividing us, further factionalizing us, at the very time when we are so factionalized that reasonable pundits are talking about the possibility of Civil War again in these dis-United States.
Lord help us. LOL.
“And best yet, all classes are taught by the Spiritual Wives of Enlightened Master Bob himself!!!!”
Tell me dear enlightened ONE, similar to our GREAT CHOSEN ONE, how many wives do you have? It must be terribly hard to see all of them in just one night so you have learned how to spread your generosity around and around.
My youngens would love to try out your drawing nourishment directly from Father Sun in your oll Solar Temple. You see, I’ve spent way too much of my puny retirement, well of my ex-husband who was a real drinker, on these kids. TOO often they have wanted three meals a day. Oh my goodness. Such spoiled kids.
I want to send all 10 of them to yorse good AYAHUASCA SCHOOL. I didn’t never have an edukation but went to school when my daddy wasn’t around. I had to keep him entertained [I don’t speak much about that] and sometimes he’d come in drunk anytime that I was thinking about having some of that skulling/shulling ah heck, you know attendance at that place to learn about dem invisible, shape-shifting reptilian aliens from Alpha Draconis.
My daddy done oft told me about dem shape-shifting demogods. He taught me to worship them in secret on only Fridays.
My mom, rest her dear soul was ever good to usuns. She’d bake goodies such as oatmeal/dog poop. I’d eat it with real determination. I’ve passed on this goodie to my chil’ens. They all like dog poop oatmeal and go out hunting for the best in nearby woods.
So when can I come in and sign up all 10 of them? in case you were wond’in, none of them cares much about masks. They all know that such nonsense is far L drivel. Probably is put out by dim Democats.
Dear aspiring novitiate Carol: as you can imagine, there is much clamoring to become one of the Sister Wives of Enlightened Master Bob, so He has had to establish a rotational schedule, though He continues to visit each wife nightly in one of His many non-corporeal manifestations, and His Love is always present. And, of course, the annual rotational corporeal Great Rite rebonding ceremonies are a burden that He bears with grace and humble acceptance of the self-sacrifice involved. Would you and your ten children consider opening a mission in Kuala Lumpur or Putrajaya?
Bob Shepherd: “Would you and your ten children consider opening a mission in Kuala Lumpur or Putrajaya?”
Sorry Great Master Bob, but I’a not go to Putrajaya or KL at the current time slot. Youse see, I be a Amrican an we be not welcome now. COVID-19 is rot but some countries not allow us Greatly Imporved Inspired People enter witout 14 day isolation. I have pay hotel expense meself, 10 kids.
Rotate many wives. It be good. Da CHOSEN ONE Trump be want same.
[PS. How you know da Putrajaya?]
LOL. Enlightened Master Bob (or is it Google?) knows all. LOL.
I can’t believe this. You’ll have to await my official reply since it now is in moderation.
It’s truly amazing how bad my English gets.