Education in the Panhandle is

As outlined in a report by Panhandle Twenty/20 a quarter of adults in the Panhandle do not have a high school diploma and 20% of residents in Amarillo do not possess one. Less than 18% of adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher. As worrisome as this is, the educational level is predicted to get worse unless action is taken now.

When the report was released early last year there was a spate of letters in the Amarillo Globe-News disparaging higher education and extolling the merits of simple hard work. The general attitude seemed to be that all that was really required to be happy was to slop hogs, sell truck parts, drink beer and write grammatically incorrect letters to the editor denouncing liberal intellectuals and their sinister schooling plans.

Now the Amarillo Globe-News has announced “Celebrate Education,” a year-long project involving 19 other civic organizations, to bring attention to the issues raised by Panhandle Twenty/20’s report and to explore potential solutions to improving education in the region.

What is so positive about this development is that it is an apparent about-face for the Amarillo Globe-News. In the past the newspaper has been at the forefront of celebrating cretinism, providing an open forum for every idiot and moron and giving free reign to the ignoramus Van Camp and the imbecile D*ve H*nry. By providing papers to schools and publishing work at odds with generally established facts and reality, the AGN has been considered one of the greater contributors to the stupidification of Amarillo and the Panhandle.

We can only be thankful the Amarillo Globe-News has chosen a new course and is leading a different way forward. The editors recognize our students are not doing well and that their education is in crisis:

“This has to change, and the time has come for the Panhandle to martial its energy toward that end.”

Yes, it is time for – oh crap. That should be “marshal its energy” you stupid morons! Gad! With the Amarillo Globe-News at the helm education in the Panhandle is doomed.