Dumb and Dumber: The Best And the Brightest

LAST term I spent a weekend in Washington, D.C., attending the Princeton Model Congress, where all the private-school debate clubs gather to argue, hang around Union Station, drink crème de menthe from the hotel-room mini-bars—you can get into them really easily by unscrewing the back if you don’t have the key—and get rebuked by Grand Hyatt officials for playing hacky-sack in the halls. It was, as usual, fun, and weird, but has been getting less weird and less fun every year. (This was my third trip.)

The twilight-zone alternative-reality feeling began in my first committee meeting on Thursday night. A bill was brought up, proposing a federally standardized sex-education curriculum. Public schools wouldn’t have to adopt it; but if they didn’t, the government would, as an incentive, withdraw “certain other funds”—specifically, funds for frivolous school extras such as honors science programs.

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Susannah Black

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LAST term I spent a weekend in Washington, D.C., attending the Princeton Model Congress, where all the private-school debate clubs gather to argue, hang around Union Station, drink crème de menthe from the hotel-room mini-bars—you can get into them really easily by unscrewing the back if you don’t have the key—and get rebuked by Grand Hyatt officials for playing hacky-sack in the halls. It was, as usual, fun, and weird, but has been getting less weird and less fun every year. (This was my third trip.)

The twilight-zone alternative-reality feeling began in my first committee meeting on Thursday night. A bill was brought up, proposing a federally standardized sex-education curriculum. Public schools wouldn’t have to adopt it; but if they didn’t, the government would, as an incentive, withdraw “certain other funds”—specifically, funds for frivolous school extras such as honors science programs.