THIS ARTICLE IS A WORK OF SATIRE. MUCH OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION HAS BEEN FABRICATED FOR SATIRICAL PURPOSES AND IS COMPLETELY FICTIONAL.

On March 12, local school District 615 English department sent representatives to their school board meeting to push back on the district’s $650,000.03 new furniture proposal for English classrooms. The new furniture would include modern desks with wheels, swivel chairs, and whiteboards. 

Since the beginning of the school year, this furniture was piloted in several classrooms, with negative results from English teachers and students. Teachers believe these desks are disruptive to learning, clunky, inflexible, and potentially harmful, as students have fallen out quite frequently. The English department requested to keep the old furniture as it suited their needs for cooperative learning styles.

“How dare our own teachers criticize our decisions! How would they know what’s good for their own classrooms?” Distinct 615 Superintendent Joseph Gilmore said. “We are moving to 21st-century classrooms. We will be using our students’ tax dollars on this damn new innovative furniture, harming them or not.”

Due to the criticism of the furniture, the board decided to implement medieval torture-style desks to punish the English teachers for speaking up. The cost of these medieval desks is significantly higher than the initial desks, reaching nearly $2 million, which is more than the budget of the athletic and performing arts departments combined. 

The school board wrote in the memo announcing these changes that anyone who opposes the new furniture can go sit in an iron maiden. 

One of the chair models resembles a 1200 AD-style wheelbarrow. The students will sit in wheelbarrows and if they lean forward, they will immediately fall onto the ground. Not only will the students fall to the ground and potentially hurt themselves, they will crash, disrupting the class. 

“Take that, teachers!” another District 615 board member said. 

The desks will also have iron plates attached to the sides. One little bump while navigating the classroom will cause the plates to fall onto students’ toes and crash loudly. Conveniently, the students can scrape writings into the plates during interactive teaching activities. 

Medival “morning stars” will replace the wheels on the desks, to honor the request of teachers, who said the desks roll around too much. 

“I mean,” one English teacher said, “All we wanted was to keep our old desks in a safe and calm learning environment. The new prototype ones are just too clunky. Keeping our old desks would save the school $650,000. We’re just trying to do our jobs!”

“Womp womp,” Gilmore said, in response to the teacher. “Be grateful for what you have!”

The new torture desks will be installed in August 2024.