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 - Laugh out loud funnyI have been considering entering the educational field and bought this book because it appeared to be a humorous but serious look into some of the more personal aspects of teaching. The volume did not disappoint! I don't read this one at work any more due to large outburst of laughing. While the language is intense, the imagery it gives in hilarious. A gold star in my book! Rating:  - A Waste of TimeLike a previous reviewer, I had to quit this book. Chapter four was my limit. Maybe if I'd finished I might have gotten SOMETHING out of this gutter-language, gutter-thinking book, but I didn't want to be dragged through the crap (excuse me), in-between. The author is lauded on the back cover, and I was fooled by people who should know a lack of quality when they see it. Actually, this is my re-write of my Amazon review of this book because I originally quoted some of the author's language (even broken with dashes, which usually passes) and Amazon found it so offensive they wouldn't publish the review. This alone gives you an idea of what I am referring to. Maybe I can get away with saying there are too many "F" and "S" words, but that's being too mild. Philosophically, the author views professional teachers (of which he is one) as being in the "education game" (p. 18), which he also refers to as the "saddest pleasure called teaching" (p.30). Up to Chapter Four, at least, he writes about abnormal situations and such students and thinks we readers (many who will be teachers) should consider this interesting or humorous. I sense his moral compass is wobbly and unnecessarily pointing south. I found no sense of altruism; instead, I was struck by his negativity. I know I only read four out of twenty-four chapters, but an author sets the tone of his/her book early on, and this one is offensive (as one previous reviewer wrote). Rating: - I loved this book!This book was more helpful to me than the last five years of inservice combined. It is so refreshing to know that there are other dedicated teachers who get frustrated with students, administrators, parents, and above all, themselves and are still able to maintain a sense of humor! Buy this book! Rating: - Everyone can relateI think anyone who has a sense of humor and the capacity for not taking life TOO seriously can relate to this book! The essays in this book are spot-on funny, and yes, irreverent, as the title states. If you want to remember what it was like to slink through the halls of learning in a constant state of fear/embarrassment; want a handle on school from a teacher's perspective; or just want a good belly laugh -this book is for you! Rating: - SkeweredRob Wilder has a wicked pen. He skewers everyone--students, teachers, friends, family, and above all himself--with a biting sarcasm, but also with grace and humor. Reading him, you have the feeling that if he got ahold of you, he'd show all your foibles, but it wouldn't really sting. He'd have you dead to rights, and all you could do would be laugh. That and moan perhaps, at Wilder's exposure of the educational and social subtleties of the classroom, the underbelly of today's schools. "Never give a Wilder a microphone or a podium," the author says. "Like an infomercial, we'll be on all night." That's fine with me, because I'll be up laughing. Wilder outdoes himself with his versions of student retellings of books often taught in high school: The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, Song of Myself, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and others. Brilliant. I wish, in the tenth grade, I'd had a teacher half as devoted, humane and funny as Rob Wilder. page 1 of 2
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