November 17, 2009 3:31PM # Don’t Worry, Onion. The Feds Have This Education Crisis Covered! By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE Today, crack Center for Educational Freedom research assistant Ian Hinsdale alerted me to an [Onion News Network program ](http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_are_our_children)on which panelists decried Americans’ shocking ignorance about whales, a problem the experts agreed, for the most part, started in the schools. Toward the end of the segment one of the panelists spoke a little whale, but she hadn’t learned it in her whale-studies deficient, inner-city K‑12 schools. No, she had to learn it in adult school, illustrating how severely we’ve shortchanged so many of our students. And don’t think for a minute that whale ignorance is confined to low-income schools… Now, you might think this was a joke — ONN does sometimes do a parody or two. But this segment could not have been more serious. How do I know? Because the federal government *really does have a multi-million dollar, whale-based education initiative*: [The Historic Whaling and Trading Partners Exchange Program](https://www.cato.org/2009/05/07/a-whale-of-a-disgraceful-ed-budget/). And if the feds have a program for something the problem must be real, and it must be serious! Ilwhaleracy, quite simply, threatens the future of our nation — consider just the potential devastation on our economic competitiveness with Atlantis! — and I for one am glad to see Washington tackling the threat head on! ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).