Earlier today, in a move that shocked absolutely no one, MCPS administration announced that they would immediately be changing to entirely new and incredibly complicated classroom software “just for the hell of it.”
MCPS administrator Mark De Sade said the following about the decision:
“We’ve been disappointed recently with our current classroom software not being complex enough. It’s our responsibility to keep students sharp through any means necessary and we’ve found that forcing students to figure out new classroom software actually develops critical thinking and problem solving skills more than all of the core academic subjects combined. Google Classroom was obviously too simple. We had better success with MCPS Classroom, ManageBac, and AP classroom, but even these only produced homicidal rages in 50% of the chimps we tested them on.”
When asked whether this was actually the rationale for the seemingly endless difficulties with various online classrooms, Mr. De Sade reportedly responded by breaking into a four minute maniacal laugh before responding “Who cares!”
In order to learn more about the newest platform that MCPS has commissioned, we sent our Managing Editor, Caleb Levy, to Town-on-Gorkhon, a small village in the remote Hungarian steppe where the company tasked with creating the new classroom platform, LABYRINTH, is located.
After arriving in the town, which is unfindable on any maps dated later than 1476, Caleb managed to secure an interview with the head programmer, Isidor Daedalus, by correctly arranging the entrails of a bull that the townspeople had sacrificed.
“You come about the software, yes? Many have come, yet none have known the lines of the bull like you. I have dedicated my life to working on LABYRINTH. I will discuss it with you,” said Mr. Daedalus while leading Caleb into a foreboding castle he was pretty sure wasn’t there a second ago. Mr. Daedalus continued:
“We have assembled a team of specialists in the occult art of classroom design: Helkiah Crooke, former doctor at, and later a patient of the Royal Bethlem Asylum in London; Delia Eco, a postmodern author whose works were so unfathomable that critics were known to go blind while reading them; lastly, a programmer so infamous that his name has become synonymous with long and overwrought projects, Auguste Rame.
We have devised a system in which each specialist is unable to see the other’s work for fear that if they saw the source code together, they would go insane. We have been doing this for years and lost many good men and women, but finally the product is within sight.”
When asked how they could have been working on this project for years when MCPS had only requested the software this week Mr. Daedalus responded:
“Time is malleable in the castle on the steppe. Now come, let me show you the first LABYRINTH demo we have assembled.”
Unfortunately, Caleb later woke up in an open field with no memory of the interview after that point.
We here at The Snitch can’t wait for LABYRINTH to launch next week! Well, all of us except for Caleb who now wakes up several times a night screaming about “the coming darkness,” and “the immemorial curse.” But we’re pretty sure that's unrelated.
