High Stakes

With public education having her 15 minutes of fame recently, thanks in part to the documentary Waiting for Superman, I thought I would offer this nice little letter here. I will spare you my take on the film (Guggenheim can suck it), but I will say that this one artifact could dismantle most of the loosely and irresponsibly constructed arguments portrayed in the film. This particular student, for 3 straight years, chose independent reading books that ultimately were vetoed by his mother. It was a common occurrence to receive these letters, clearly written by mom, but signed by student. This is one of the more dramatic efforts to control what her son was exposed to. It should be noted however, that this student, despite being saved from magic, was often caught in the back of my room with his hand down his pants. When this concern was brought up to the mother, she explained simply that he had an itching problem with his parts and that she would get some icy hot for him.