Susan Ohanian Asks an Eternal Question

The Eggplant

http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_news.php?id=867

Why DID the Chicken Cross the Road?

I. Educationists Know the Answer

Because he recognized what I've said repeatedly, we really need to elevate the profession of teaching and you can't win the Race to the top without reaching for the higher bar . . . or road, as the case may be.--Arne Duncan

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market. . . and the right of chickens to cross those roads.--President Barack Obama

To listen to Bill Gates makes a speech about what chickens need to do to be successful.--New York Times editorial department

To attend a party honoring Michelle Rhee.--Washington Post editorial department

To dance a jig at a KIPP coop.--Jay Mathews

She wanted merit pay.--Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Because cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated.--Michelle Rhee

To get away from the 8,600 failed coops that live millions of chicks behind.--Chester Finn

The chicken wanted to learn its value:
y = Xβ + Zv + ε where β is a p-by-1 vector of fixed effects; X is an n-by-p matrix; v is a q-by-1 vector of random effects; Z is an n-by-q matrix; E(v) = 0, Var(v) = G; E(ε) = 0, Var(ε) = R; Cov(v,ε) = 0. V = Var(y) = Var(y - Xβ) = Var(Zv + ε) = ZGZT + R--Los Angeles Times

Because the more innovative that chicken is, the more money he'll get for his school. We've got to reward good chickens. First, we also have to stop making excuses for bad chickens." --Pres. Barack Obama

Because when chickens need more achievement for less money, they have to change where they walk. Unlike Europe, we do very little in this country to measure, develop and reward excellent walking.--Bill Gates

When American chickens have the skills and knowledge needed in today's society, our flocks will be positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.--National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)

II. Let history be the judge--Karl Marx

If a chicken insisted always on being serious, and never allowed itself a bit of fun and relaxation, it would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.--Herodotus

He who commands the road has command of everything. Themistocles

It wasn't a road; it was a river.--Julius Caesar

It wasn't a road; it was a mountain.--Hannibal

It wasn't a road; it was a railroad track.--Leland Stanford.

It wasn't a road; it was the Atlantic.--Charles Lindbergh

Either the road or nothing.--Cesare Borgia

Lebensraum.--Adolph Hitler

Chickens love to fight. All real chickens love the sting of battle.--General George Patton

As a committed anarchist, it jaywalked because the rules of the state are the chief instrument for permitting the few to monopolize the land.--Prince Peter Alekseyevich Kropotkin

I have it on good authority that it went to the crosswalk.--Rudi Guiliani

III. All chickens by nature desire knowledge--Aristotle

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step across the road.--Lao-Tsu

Because the road is the noble Middle Path. . .which produces insight and calm, to knowledge and enlightenment.--Buddha

Surely every chicken walketh in a vain show.--Psalms

It wanted to get out of the Cave.--Plato

An irrepresentable, unconscious, pre-existant form seemed to be part of the chicken's inherited structure and could manifest itself in spontaneous crossing anywhere, at any time.--Carl Jung

The chicken believed the coop is primarily a social institution and getting out of it the fundamental method of social progress and reform.--John Dewey

It was developmentally appropriate for the chicken to do so.--Jean Piaget

The bell rang, the chicken walked.--B. F. Skinner

Sexual fulfillment.--Dr. Ruth

Sexual perversion.--Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing

Crossing the road was the last taboo of chickendom.--Theodor Reik

A rooster cut off from its own mind, cut off equally from its own body--a half-crazed creature in a mad world.--R. D. Laing

Because it was lonely and looking for other chickens.--David Riesman

We rest when we're dead.--Luis Bunel.

A chicken is free the moment it wants to be.--Voltaire

A chicken takes its fun where it finds it.--Rudyard Kipling

It couldn't go home again.--Thomas Wolf

The chicken was looking for what it had lost.--Marcel Proust

Because it was All Quiet on the Western Front.--Erich Maria Remarque

Because it cursed the commonplace.--E. A. Robinson

To begin a long day's journey into night.--Eugene O'Neill

Well, I don't know. The media have swamped the message, but anyway

God bless the chicken.

I loved the way it ran.--John Updike

The chicken walks freely in the street

and sees reality

and the things it sees

are bigger than itself

and the things it sees

are its reality.--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Because the absurd is only too necessary on earth--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.--Edith Wharton

Among twenty chickens

The only puzzling one

Was the one who crossed the road.--Wallace Stevens

The chicken

relieves his noble bowels

in a desolate field.--Buson

A willful beast must go its own way.--Aesop

To take a basket of fruit to her grandmother.--Grimm brothers

Because she would rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.--e. e. cummings

I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.--J. D. Salinger

Someone must have been telling lies about the chicken.--Franz Kafka

So it wouldn't have to say it was sorry.--Erich Segal

It was privileged to be invited to a family festival of an upper middle-class flock in full plumage.--John Galsworthy

You build it, the chicken will come.--William Kinsella

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.--Bob Dylan

My dear, I don't give a damn.--Rhett Butler

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.--Noam Chomsky

It wanted to be on the road.--Jack Koureac

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.--Eugene Ionesco

Because it was the master of its fate and the captain of its soul.--W. E. Henley

So much depends

upon a chicken

seeing a road

and a path between the

white lines.--William Carlos Williams

I never saw a chicken cross

I never hope to see one.

But I'll tell you this

I'd rather see than be one.--Galett Burgess

Every chicken, as long as it does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue its own interest his own way, and to bring both its industry and capital into competition with those of any other chicken.--Adam Smith

That's where the money was.--U. S. Congress

The great thing about chickens is they don't talk.--Studs Terkel

The Family made the chicken an offer it couldn't refuse.--Mario Puzo

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about. That and chickens crossing roads--Newt Gingrich

So I could feel its pain.--Bill Clinton

Looking for a place to take a nap.--Washington Irving

She felt oppressed by the henhouse.--Henrik Ibsen

To avoid getting stewed.--W. C. Fields

It wasn't a chicken.--J. R. R. Tolkien

To get away from its mother.--Philip Roth

Her welfare was cut, so she had to stop watching TV and having babies and get a job.--Newt Gingrich

Panehllenic synergism.--Aristophanes

To hide out.--Frank Perdue

It was tired of its cubicle.--Dilbert

Because it was there.--Sir Edmund Hilary

We are looking at the societal influences that caused the breakup of this perfect family unit, asking the abandoned chicks how they feel.--Oprah

Everybody has something to conceal. --Humphrey Bogart, The Maltese Falcon

It's hard to be free when you're bought and sold in the market place.--Jack Nicholson, Easy Rider

Without deviation, progress is not possible.--Frank Zappa

It's better to be out than in. It is better to be on the lam than on the cover of Time magazine.--Nelson Algren

What color was the chicken?--The Car Guys on NPR

Because it is time to start shoving cement and iron in the opposite direction before the entire nation, before the whole planet, becomes one steaming, stinking, overcrowded high-tech coop.--Edward Abbey

You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.--Winne the Pooh

There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.--Gertrude Stein

IV. Hens must try to do things as roosters have tried--Amelia Earhart

She crossed because hens have rights too.--Susan B. Anthony

She wanted a room of her own.--Virginia Woolf

Go ask Alice--Grace Slick

She needed to dig her brother's grave.--Antigone

That's where the railroad tracks were.--Anna Karenina

Her astrologer told her to.--Nancy Reagan

To interpret is to impoverish.--Susan Sontag

She didn't want to be pigeon-holed.--Ms Magazine

She could, therefore she did.--Simone Weil

That's where the cocks crowed.--Alfred Kinsey

Looking for eggplant.--Julia Child

She wanted a cigarette with her vodka and tonic.--Fran Lebowitz

It is better to be a lion for a day than a chicken all your life.--Elizabeth Kenny

A hen's cold, perverted will.--John Clare

Roosters have an unusual talent for making a bore out of everything they touch.--Yoko Ono

She was tired of being a sitting duck.--Gloria Steinham

V. The Common Core Literature Plan Has the Answer--David Coleman

Whan that Aprile with his shoures sote

Than longen chicke to goon on pilgrimages.--Geoffrey Chaucer

To see a world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wild flower--William Blake

To celebrate itself.--Walt Whitman

Looking for Xanadu.--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To get away from the maddening crowd's ignoble strife.--Thomas Gray

It was better than sitting in darkness, hatching vain empires.--John Milton

The mass of chickens lead lives of quiet desperation--Henry David Thoreau

Small things make base chickens proud--William Shakespeare

The chicken did not want to go gentle into that good night.--Dylan Thomas

Because the road was the one less traveled.--Robert Frost

Because it's better to cross with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.--Herman Melville

A widow hen sat mourning for her love.--Percy Bysse Shelley

It didn't.

Crossed roads are sweet, but those uncrossed

Are sweeter.--John Keats

— Susan Ohanian

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