Fuel costs are making some US school systems ponder 4 day school weeks:

Facing a crippling increase in fuel costs, some rural U.S. schools are mulling a solution born of the '70s oil crisis: a four-day week.

Cutting out one day of school has been the key to preserving educational programs and staff in parts of Kentucky, New Mexico and Minnesota, outweighing some parents' concerns about finding day-care for the day off.

"For rural school districts where buses may travel 100 miles round-trip each day, there certainly are transportation savings worth considering," said Marc Egan, the director of federal affairs at the National School Boards Association.

Egan said about 100 schools in as many as 16 states have already moved to a four-day school week, many to save money on transportation, heating and cooling.

Pardon me for not breathing, but shipping a human body 100 miles a day for something that can be accomplished just as well with a well-planned distance learning project seems absurd.

Hell, downright cruel.

Make the ideas travel, not the humans.

Humans are made of meat. They don't ship all that well sometimes.

During shipping, they're not terribly useful for much. Maybe they can read and write while shipping them, but there's a few really fragile ones that end up sleeping or napping because of motion sickness.

And when there's a problem with shipping, sometimes they get damaged.

No? Tell that to the Texas congressmen who were on that flight that recently nosedived and recovered.

And they were being shipped back just to say Yes or No on a freaking transportation safety bill.

Talk about a waste of fuel!

As for the huggy-feely stuff, if you think kids need socialization during their growing period, then explain to me why homeschooling is a legal option for these kids.

If you're militant about shipping kid-sized meatsacks around, well, you'd better get those banners out for banning homeschooling.

Oh? The parents want their kids in public schools? Well tell me why you went ahead and had kids out in the middle of bumeff backforty nowhere?

Just because public schools are free to the public, have you ever heard of the concept shipping and handling extra?

The education should be free, but the vroom-vroom costs shipping the meat back and forth from the processing plant needs to fall on the ranchers growing it, eh.