To My Kind Editor,
My enemies, I fear, are quickly closing in on me and I am afraid that this letter may be intercepted. On the first day of the week after receiving this, enter the Student Union wearing your ninth best slacks and the scarf that you borrowed from me on your sixteenth birthday. Order your favorite drink at the coffee shop – iced instead of hot – and tell the barista your favorite color. When you pick up your drink, my associate will slip you a folder containing the manuscript of my latest work detailing the lives of pupils in the school system which is entitled A Study of Unfortunate Approaches: The Rigid Rules.
A Study of Unfortunate Approaches: The Rigid Rules After a great deal of time examining grammar, investigating punctuation, and staring very hard at several lengthy texts, the educators of the world developed a theory regarding how good writing is created around our planet. Of course, it is boring to read about boring things, but it is better to read about something that makes you yawn with boredom than to teach something that will make your students weep uncontrollably, pound their fists against the floor, and leave tearstains all over their pillowcase, sheets, and boomerang collection. As you surely know if you have taken the time to read the astonishingly behemothic appellation (a phrase which here means “very big title”) at the apex of this page – the dismal results of my recent and diligent studies have shown that there seem to be a myriad of teachers who are doing just so. My beloved friend and colleague, Lemony Snicket, (from whom I have not received correspondence since his latest tragedy, Horseradish; Biter Truths You Can’t Avoid, and who I have reason to believe has either suffered the affliction of death or entrapment at the hands of those who seek to stop us on our quest to bring life back into the schools) once said “A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means ‘standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction
of a bossy adult.’ In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented.” It is with deepest regret that I inform you, dear reader, that he was wrong – not about children spending their days learning a trade, but about children ‘standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult’ being a thing of the past. The pupils that I researched are exceptional and find refuge from the grievous tedium of their institute in a fortress – a place that they have entitled “RaohRaoh1”1 (the sound of a cougar roaming the icy mountain for its prey) – known to their supervisors only as “Opportunities.” It is with bitter regret that I acknowledge that my invasion of this sanctuary returned them to recollections of the afore-mentioned tedium of their institute. Dear reader, if your desire is to be stimulated and inspired to pick up your writing utensil (be it a pen, pencil, typewriter, or your trembling finger dipped in the blood that you have extracted from your own forearm by puncturing it with the last piece of stale bread you have left in the dark dank cell in which you are now imprisoned) and create, I suggest that you find some other piece of writing about writing to read (you can find such insight, for example, in a book by Gail Carson Levine called Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly) – for, the following is a list of the mind-numbing quotes that these visionary students divulged regarding what they learned in school about writing. • “Capatalize the first word in a sentence.” • “Periods go with imperitive sentences.” 1 An accurate demonstration of the “Opportunities” true name can be found here: http:// www.entertonement.com/clips/gvgyyxtrjt-CougarAnimals-Cougars-cougarwriting
• “Question marks go with interrogative sentences.” • “Declaritive sentences also require periods.” • “Exlamation points go with exclamatory sentences.” • “Underline long story/book titles.” • “Nouns are people, places, things, and sometimes ideas.” • “Sentences contain a predicate, subject, and a complete thought.” • “Capatalize States.” • “Capatalize Countries.” • “Have to have good grammar.” • “Have to have good punctuation.” • “Have to have good spelling.” • “Have to be able to read.” • “Alliteration is fun, but don’t over use.” • “No run-ons.” • “Semicolons and commas are NOT interchangeable” • “Contractions make for lazy, sloppy writing.” • “Grammar and spelling need to be correct.” • “I have been taught when to use affect and effect.” • “I have been taught when to use quotations.” • “I have been taught when to use a comma.” • “I know how to use colons when writing.” • “I know how to write punctuated sentence.” I assume that if you are still reading, your library has already checked out all of the copies of Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly, you wish to be bored to death (a phrase which here means “read the funereal facts of this essay until
your eyes begin to seep blood and your brain dissolves”), or you have refused to speak and your torturer is forcing you to read this until you scream like a small girl and confess what you were doing that day in the back of the English classroom with your pocket-recorder. In any case, I must return to my study and can only offer you one last warning to stop reading. Now. Mournfully, eight of the fifteen students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “good grammar makes good writing.” Only two disagreed (the rest were indifferent). If you enjoy reading – as most intelligent people (a phrase which here means “people dedicated enough to the education system to continue reading such a bleak paper”) do – you will scarcely be surprised that both of the students who disagreed with the previous statement also claimed that they strongly agreed with the assertation “I have learned about writing from reading.” At the same time, all of the students who agreed with or were indifferent to the quote “good grammar makes good writing” also agreed that “most of what I know about writing is about grammar and spelling,” (a phrase which here means “most of what I have been taught in school about writing is about grammar and spelling”). If you are obtuse and obscene, you may be glad to read that the students who rely on their formal education for knowledge about writing seem to be learning grim grammar (a phrase which here means “learning about subjects so spiritless that students are seduced by the speculation of silencing their styluses and surrendering their studies”).
If, however, you are who I think you are, you are neither obtuse or obscene, and the thought of teachers brainwashing their students with such nonsense is even more unpleasant to you than the rat that is curled up at the foot of your moldy cot as you read this. In fact the one and only benefit that these students have attained from their thorough instruction of grammar, spelling, and punctuation seems to be their ability to spot signs who’s authors seem not to have been as indoctrinated in said delicacies of writing. Of the fifteen bright youths interviewed, six strongly agreed and nine agreed (if you are who I think you are, you will be nearly as bored by the tedium of addition as these students are by the rigid rules they learn, so I will report to you that six and nine is fifteen which is the sum of the students who participated in my study and attend “Roah Roah”) to the statement “I notice poor grammar on the signs I see.” This, I am sure you realize, is a miserable substitute for the multifaceted knowledge of writing that their education system pledges to them. Grasping the gloomy truth of the school system, it is not startling that our compatriot Lemony Snicket once advised: “If you are a student you should always get a good night’s sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means ‘flunk’.” For, the education most students receive is so woeful and useless that it is far better for them to read good writing than to write in the worksheets that their woebegone writing teachers have written for them to learn writing from.
It is far better for students to write whatever variety of writing they wish than it is for them to read good writing, which is far better for them than to write in the worksheets that their woebegone writing teachers have written for them to learn writing from. Every single one of the students reported that they use writing for Facebook updates, texting, or some other form of electronic communication, yet there is a regrettable lack of enthusiasm on the part of many educators to exploit these types of writing. My dear reader, find I must close this epistle shortly, as the superintendent has spied my study and insists upon setting fire to the sad statistics that I have uncovered about her students. If you have completed this composition, I can only hope that you are indeed who I think you are and will comprehend my meaning when I write that we must meet in the place in which we meet on the third day of each week so that we may again pursue our struggle to amend America’s academies.