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“Who Needs Math?” John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight Back-to-School Primer for Kids

With other helpful sections like "Who Died at the End of That Book?"

John Oliver offers a subject-by-subject breakdown of what this coming school year might look like for a bunch of kids in traditional Last Week Tonight fashion … which is to say: hilarious and full of sarcasm.

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Oliver is probably the best living Cliff Notes resource ever, dispensing stunning gems like, “You’ll learn that Africa and Asia are places … but that’s about it,” and, “The most lasting lesson [about dissecting frogs] will be what frog embalming fluid smells like.” Ahh, memories.

But perhaps the best part of the segment is John Oliver’s section on “Who Dies At The End” for English classes. No “Snape kills Dumbledore” shenanigans here—we’re talking classic literature, people. We’re talking about the books that you read then promptly forgot about after the test.

Spoiler: all the books are about the American Dream, and the American Dream always dies at the end.

(via The Daily Dot)

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Jessica Lachenal
Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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