People who cannot understand why some students in the United States are falling behind students in Europe and Asia clearly have no idea what actually takes place in the classroom. Take the Moot Court Activity my government class has taken to engaging in. While some of the participants have stuck to the Constitutional question proposed by the case, the majority have spent far too much time discussing irrelevant information. Yesterday, it became necessary for me to reprimand the court when the chief justice decided to ask my co-counsel an entirely irrelevant question that dealt with the morality of prayer in schools. The Supreme Court does not deal with moral questions, it rules on questions of the Constitutional variety.

If these people cannot so much as stick to the Constitutional question, they should, at least, put forth their best effort to emulate the court procedure. The chief justice does not need need to object to interrupt one of the lawyers. Typically, the justices start speaking and the lawyer stops speaking. For that matter, the justices often interrupt each other.

Of course, objecting superfluously cannot begin to compare with the misuse of the word "incentive." Incertitude between, say, "all intensive purposes" and "all intents and purposes" (the former being the correct phrase), might garner more understanding and sympathy. But someone with a gun and in the process of robbing a house does not have incentive to kill. Intent, perhaps, but not incentive. Generally, I think of an incentive as, perhaps, a coupon for a free drink at Starbucks with the purchase of two pounds of coffee.

So maybe - just maybe - my class should pass that vague and extreme "increase in school funding bill." But that is yet another sorrowful tale.