Satirical Essay

Five diplomats from Norway came to visit Robertson High School yesterday for a presentation by the school’s foreign language program. The five Norwegian diplomats, who were visiting Washington for a Wizards-Celtics basketball game, are heads of the Program of Baccalaureate Studies, POBS. Robertson’s POBS Norwegian class president, senior Otto von Scratchenmayer, gave a welcoming speech to start off the assembly. Here is the speech, translated from Norwegian into English:

"Hello, and welcome. My name is Otto von Scratchenmayer. I am 18 years old. I drive a car to school. My shirt is green. Look, the sun is shining!"

Immediately afterwards this, the rest of the POBS Norwegian class gave Otto a six-minute standing ovation for his mastery of the Norwegian language. It is assumed that the Norwegian diplomats were pleased. No one was able to detect any changes in facial expression from the visitors all evening.

The POBS was instituted to compare American students to their smarter academic counterparts, the rest of the known world. Based in Oslo, the POBS has just started to be used in northern Virginia. Robertson, in its second year of POBS, is one of the few schools that have POBS course options for every core class, plus history. Since it is so new to the school, it is hard to really tell if it has improved students’ test scores. The POBS board, however, has decided, based on the students’ lack of enthusiasm and drop in personal hygiene, that the POBS is a good thing and will stay at Robertson.

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