Of Schools, Academies, and Sweet, Sweet Torture

The School of Hard Knocks (Address: Gasoline Alley Church, that one room to the left of the rectory that smells like mold) has become an Academy, which I don’t think is a good thing. “School of Hard Knocks” implies college-level instruction in hard knockery; “Academy of Hard Knocks” is high school level at most. Boarding school, probably, but not the kind of place where you’re going to going to get a piece of paper that proves that you’ve spent four years studying something that’s probably not too useful.

This has practical ramifications. I don’t know how much tuition is for an Academy, but I doubt it’s as much as a college, at least not one of the same relative level of prestige. I mean, sure, a year at Captain Caviar’s Hoity-Toity House of Education may well cost more than a year at Bodunkville Community College, but that’s not a fair comparison. Plus, a boarding school puts the onus on the proprietor to provide housing and food and make sure that the movies that they show on Friday nights are PG-13 or gentler. So the Pyes are talking themselves down in tuition and giving themselves more work. Stupid schemers!

It is pretty nice that nobody’s jumping in to help the Kleebs by, say, checking one of the other rooms in the church to find where Sturdy might be getting poked with a stick. Thus far, I think that’s the most realistic thing about this plotline.

Finally, I just noticed something: This scheme really has come down to “We’re poking your son with a stick, and we’re going to keep on poking him until we get our money!” It’s not exactly the cut-your-extremities-off school of torture. It’s hardly even the “I’m going to tickle you until you say to stop” school of torture.