And the children shall lead them

This just in from Scholastic magazine:

In a nearly complete reversal from just two years ago, 80 percent of elementary school students say they do not want to be president of the United States.

In Scholastic magazine's 2004 poll, 75 percent of elementary students said they would like to hold the nation's top office. This year's results, however, found that 80 percent do not want the job.

Scholastic editors told The New York Daily News they have no idea why children's attitudes have changed so dramatically and doubt it's linked to the unpopularity of President George Bush.

"We are always surprised by things kids do and say," said Suzanne Freeman, executive editor of Scholastic News Online.

In a related Scholastic study, researchers found that a generation of American children do not want to be postal workers when they grow up.

According to Dr. Rudolph Schnaebel, principle researcher,

"We are simply stumped by the findings. In 1981, 79% of American grade schoolers responded favorably to the idea of becoming a postman/postwoman when they grew up. But by 1998 the number expressing a positive attitude about letter carriers had plummeted to 18%.

We have no idea why children's attitudes have changed so dramatically, although we doubt it's linked to the prime-time presence of buffoonish mailmen on 'Cheers' (1982-93) and 'Seinfeld' (1989-98)."

The characters of Cliff Claven ("Cheers") and Newman ("Seinfeld") were both nerdy, out-of-shape, emotionally stunted blowhards who were often the butt of the other characters' jokes, but Schaebel and his associates denied that this could have any relationship to the study's findings.

Even though the survey numbers took their worst dips in 1989-93 (7%, when both TV series were aired regularly in primetime) and again, beginning in 1998 (4%, when the series have both started being available several times weekly in syndication), the researchers dismiss the pattern as what statisticians call "a coincidence."

"Kids today," said Schnaebel. "Who can figure them, huh?"

(Thanks to Shakespeare's Sister.)