Zarxnol: The Lost Episodes, Vol 1

(KnorrNote: Zarxnol is the first soul for whom I translated on a regular basis. For a little over a year, his child-raising advice was published in rotation with other columnists on The Daily Probe, a humor webzine currently on haitus. I have asked the owner of The Daily Probe for permission to interpret for Zarxnol on my own, and he graciously granted it. Good thing, too - some days that Xargolian bastard won't shut up!

This issue was originally written for The Daily Probe but never got published. If you would like Zarxnol's advice on child-raising, please ask him your questions in the comment area, and I'll pass them along.)

Interpretations by Knorr is happy to provide Ask Zarxnol as a service to its readers with child-raising concerns. Zarxnol was the premier child psychologist on his home planet Xargolia, before being called to the service of his Warrior-God Xargol as a conqueror of lesser worlds.


Dear Zarxnol:

Our Jeremy just turned three, so my wife and I are debating his future in school. She would like him to be safe in a good parochial school, whereas I feel he would get a better chance at a complete education in a public school. Which type of school would you recommend for the child of the 21st century?

Debating in Dubuque


Debating:

Aside from family, a child’s education is the most formative element of its future success. The particular Earthly society in which we currently coexist offers two main avenues of education. Two. One more than one – therefore you driveling dung-chuckers’ cousins need choose, thus sparking a nigh-interminable regurgitation of the same points of cogitation as did your more prominently-browed predecessors. Indubitably, being spineless indecisive and irrational humans, the Family Ating will resort to a coin toss, dice roll, or distance-urination contest to arrive at the “proper” path for your nestling Jeremy – however, I will gleefully impart my superior insight into the situation, since you asked without the pithless mewling to which I have become so vomitously accustomed.

Below, I shall compare and contrast the attributes of public secular schools and private parochial schools. My conclusions should be self-evident to a member of any species more than two degrees removed from filth-flinging banana addicts.

Public education is funded by regional governments and provided mostly gratis to the local taxpaying community. Taxpayers, being greedy short-sighted humans, balk at paying a tax sufficient to fund a proper education. Therefore, classrooms are overcrowded dens of hormonal superfluity stocked with outdated learning materials and staffed by oft-narcotized social workers of provisional qualification. Curricula are well-rounded to state-mandated levels, and their success is increasingly evaluated on a student body’s efficacious pencil-oriented circle-filling.

Parochial schools tend to be administered by a secluded segment of society which dedicates itself to reading and interpreting the same solitary millennia-old manuscript ad infinitum. Your children thus learn science from people whose hierarchy only formally accepted your heliocentric planetary system model in 1992 AD, and are counseled in the ways of health and reproduction by those who believe all illnesses are the will of the intangible deity who forbids them from engaging in any sexual activity under penalty of eternal damnation. For these “educational” services, you pay tens of thousands of currency units annually, much of which is siphoned off by the church in order to pay for its legal defense against charges of child buggering by its silly-hatted superintendence.

Therefore, Deb, were your piffling civilization to last long enough for Jeremy Ating to reach a maturity level where his input in society meant more that the flatulent burst of a limping housecat, I would most wholeheartedly recommend a public education. However, the harsh disciplinary tactics and training in blind, unquestioning obedience by your parochial schools will prove most useful when my Armies From The Sea storm your Dubuque and segregate the throngs of you facile pallid bipeds into servants and livestock. Thus, I present you the true quandary, Deb - Would you rather your Jeremy serve Xargol or be served unto Xargol?

Submit, Human Insects!
Zarxnol