Dear Mrs. Rutabaga,
I started receiving email in January of 1993, almost 20 years ago. In all that time, the email you sent me last night is the only one to which I've ever been tempted to reply with an obscene and anatomically improbable directive.
My son, your student, is miserable in your class. I know it is frustrating for you that he is not meeting your classroom expectations. You have apparently failed to consider, however, that the reason he is not meeting your classroom expectations is that your classroom is not meeting his expectations -- namely, that he would be learning.
It was a red flag for me when I sat in your classroom for half an hour at the meet-the-teacher event in August and heard nothing, not a word, about what the kids would be studying. I learned a lot about your discipline policies, about how they move their clothespins up and down depending on whether they've been good or bad, about how they can buy potato chips with their good behavior points. I have no idea -- none -- what your goals are for social studies or science or math or language arts.
My son came home yesterday with unhappiness etched all over his face. When I asked him what the trouble was, he burst into tears and begged to be homeschooled. You had told the kids they needed to read The Giver according to your schedule. His crime, his unspeakable transgression, was to get so excited about the book that he came home on Monday and dug up our family's copy to finish the story. He was so eager to talk about it with me -- why did it end that way? What would it be like to live in a world like that? Your response, when you found out about this deplorable enthusiasm, was to tell him he'd have to do all of the reading comprehension questions -- approximately 200 of them -- for all 22 chapters.
I have to tell you that reflecting on this threat, and remembering the reading comprehension questions to which I was subjected as a grade-schooler, makes me want to gather up all of the school's reading comprehension workbooks, shower them with napalm, and watch the flames with glee. Afterward, calm and moderate soul that I am, I will spit on the ashes.
I do not intend for my son to remain in your class much longer, but there is something you need to know anyway: if you were to succeed in your efforts to teach him that assiduous reading is less important than a grim determination to stick to the schedule, you would be doing him a grave disservice. It is difficult for me to imagine that a teacher would really want to drive a stake through the heart of a student's zeal for reading, his willingness to be drawn inside a fictional world, but based on this and other encounters I have to conclude that you find his alacrity unacceptable.
I myself find your attitude unacceptable. Your email indicates to me that we have fundamentally incompatible philosophies of education. And yours? Is wrong.
Yours most irascibly,
Jamie Gladly
PS This thing you do where you call yourself Mrs. Rutabaga while calling me Jamie? It doesn't fly. First names are fine. Mrs. + Surnames = also fine. Power-trippy games -- not fine.
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