According to the US National Education Association, 50% of teachers drop out of the profession within five years. That's a particular shame, since more and more of them have advanced education degrees that are, of course, suitable to education and to nothing else except resume-stuffing. From Sploid.

No matter how much tax money is thrown at U.S. public schools, teachers have been dropping out at the same rate for decades.

And while only half of America's public-school students are still white kids, teachers are still dominated by the same middle-aged women who have always been teachers – and 90% of them are white.

"The average public school teacher is a 43-year-old white, married, religious female," the Detroit Free Press reported today. "About 75% of public school teachers are female."

One thing that has changed for teachers is that they've got more university degrees than ever before: a full 50% of them now hold Master's Degrees.

And the kids they're turning loose on the world are real idiots. Few can read, write, do basic math or even find Iraq on a map, while their simpleton parents are increasingly afraid of science.

And on that note, perhaps it's time for a few little tidbits picked up by one of raincoaster's operatives over the Pond in the UK school system. It's as convoluted and politicized as the Knights Templar, and about as open and accessible, so I don't really know the correct terminology for the school in which she works, except that it's paid for by the taxpayers, rather than by rich parents or corporations seeking to mold consumers when their brains are still young, and children go there to give them something to do while their parents are at work and to give the parents a sense of complacency about the way that they turn out.

Or is that too bleak?

In any case, as the raincoaster offshore operative was handing out papers in class one day, she overheard a 16-year-old girl saying to her friends, "but why would anyone want a butt plug with a tail on it???" to which one can, of course, only reply: why would one want one without?

And later that term, walking down the hallway, the r.o.o. passed a cluster of boys discussing something of obvious nefarity, for they clammed up as she passed. Once they thought she was safely out of hearing one turned to the other and picked up where they'd presumably left off.

"So should I shave my balls then?"

R.o.o. cried "Too much information, lads!" and they scattered as if pursued by the hounds of hell.

Hmmmmm. Perhaps we've discovered the source of those "married, religious" women's discomfort with the teaching profession.