Wherever education humor raises its hilarious head, benefits accrue

Whether education humor turns up as a teaching technique or just one of those things, it's all great. Perhaps when used as a technique to help students learn, the proper term would be educational, rather than education, but hey. Picky, picky. This is not English class!

One of the most attention-getting bits of education humor occurred, as it happened, in a college chemistry class at Montana State University, circa 1966. It was the first day of class for the new Quarter, early on a cold January day.

This was Chemistry 122, the second in a series of introductory chemistry classes. It would provide the last of the school's required science credits for my non-science-related Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology.

Even better, the Professor was brilliant; I knew from experience that I'd be scribbling notes as fast as possible during every lecture, certainly not falling asleep as sometimes happened with lesser academics. I expected a good experience. I did NOT expect the surprise our teacher had in store for us.

We wandered right in and sat on down
I took a padded way-back seat
The classroom was built in theater style
So all of us could easily see

There were seats for a good one-fifty
Probably one twenty-five were full
Though at eight a.m. who was really awake?
You know how it is at school

At eight-oh-one the lights went out
Talking stopped as if cut with a knife
It was pitch dark in that big ol' room
We all waited in silence for the light

All of a sudden, a humongous BLAST!
Did that come from Hell or from Heaven?
Oh, we were not scared yet, since fortunately
This was long before nine-eleven

The lights came up, and we understood
The movie screen gave us the clue
Huge letters said: WELCOME! Hope you get
A BANG out of Chem 122!!

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I did, too. Get a bang out of Chem 122, that is. Kent State snagged that particular teacher, paid him much more money, within weeks following the end of that class. The study of bee venom was his specialty, but he never stung his students.

Of course, Saturday Night Live might have been willing to pay him even more as an idea man for an Education Humor segment, but SNL wasn't around then. Hard to believe, huh?

Thanks for reading,

Fred

P.S. If you never check out another page of Education Humor, you might want to at least consider clicking on [Education Humor, Children's View] below or the graphic above. My wife and I nearly fell off our chairs laughing!

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