Disclaimer: "Bill Nye The Science Guy" belongs to The Walt Disney Company.
Bill Nye had recorded his last TV show. Its run had been cancelled for reasons he would never understand. He always enjoyed sharing his enthusiasm for science with anyone who would listen.
So he decided to see if he would be able to continue to follow his passion in a different manner. He found that he could, by being a public speaker. He went from school to school in the United States, talking his mouth and performing demonstrations (as long as they were judged safe by the building's principal).
The more schools Bill Nye visited, the more disenheartened he became. There were too few good schools and too many bad schools. Textbooks were outdated and falling apart. Roofs were leaking when it rained. Classroom lessons consisted of lectures instead of experiments. Teachers were overworked, under-equipped, disrespected, and generally neglected. And the schools themselves were extremely overcrowded. One classroom was so overcrowded, students standing outnumbered the students sitting, and a few students even stood on the desks.
Bill Nye would never run a school like that.
He had earned enough money over the years that he could build his own school if he wanted to. But he would also need to hire teachers and staff, and that would cost a lot of money. Second, where would he build the school? There were so many bad schools, and he could only add one to the world.
Then Bill Nye got an idea.
His school would be a traveling school, a one-room, one-man schoolhouse that would move from city to city. And to save parking space and allow for more students, it would be an inflatable school. If Bigelow Aerospace could design an inflatable space hotel, then he could design an inflatable school.
Bill Nye demonstrated his inflatable school to the world for the first time in Seattle, Washington, near the world headquarters of his former employer, Boeing. He personally inflated the school himself with the same type of air compressor used to inflate bohncy houses at parties. It was 600 square feet in size, and had enough room for 24 students. Not only did each student have a desk, each student also had room to perform experiments. School administrators loved the idea, for it enabled them to temporarily expand their existing school buildings until new permanent schools could be completed. All the students seemed to enjoy the classroom, especially clumsy students, who could always count on hitting the ground soft.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is how and why Bill Nye blew up a school.
The End. I apologize if this story is not what you were expecting.