Letter to President Obama #28 | Subject: Public Education

Letter to President Obama #28 | Subject: Public Education

Dear President Obama,

I attended public schools for my entire life and overall I think the public schools I attended served me admirably. Nevertheless, I've got a few things I'd like to ask/suggest about the system.

First of all, I know there’s been a lot of talk about standardized tests in the last few years, but I’ve got a question of my own that has never been asked. As a kid, I usually did pretty well on standardized tests, but on a few occasions I didn’t, because I was transfixed by the possibility that there might be an underlying code on the test sheet, like those crazy numbers on Lost. And if I managed to figure out the code and filled in the bubbles correctly, I’d get a secret prize, like ice cream or getting to skip the fifth grade. Anyway, on a few occasions when I got bored (the math sections of the tests, usually) I tried to spell out that secret with my answers, but it’s hard only using A through E. The best I came up with was A BABE CEDED ABE A BEE. Is that correct? If so, I’ll still take the government up on the free ice cream. Please send it, you already have my address.

I also have a question about school funding priorities. I know that school budgets are quite tight these days, but I think we should retain as many music and art classes as possible. I know music classes can be an especially tough sell—I mean, let’s face it—they’re often noisy, chaotic, and disorganized. I mean, the other day I was down the hallway from a room full of fourth graders with recorders, and for a moment I thought I was overhearing a flock of poisoned, deranged birds. (Or healthy loons.) And then I got into the classroom and found that many of the kids were armed with those padded xylophone mallet things and they were whomping each other on the head like in Whack-A-Mole. This reminded me of the music class at my elementary school: A lot of clashing and a sugar-crazed kid with the cymbals, then the teacher trying to sing over the top of all that noise. Eventually she gave up and just started screaming along with the music. I’m pretty sure that this is where death metal originated.

That’s exactly my point; the end product doesn’t always seem all that important (or even melodic) but these classes can be productive in really surprising ways.

Of course, the same could be said of most art classes—but I think our kids do a pretty good job of depicting the human form. I mean, really, if I were forced to choose, I would rather take my six year old cousin’s drawing of a woman out on a date rather than either of the women depicted in Pablo Picasso’s painting Femmes devant la mer (Women before the Sea), because my cousin’s figure, while sporting a serious unibrow and really disproportionate features, was not some sort of human-triangle hybrid.

So please do consider retaining funding for such courses. If we need to cut back in other areas; I’d suggest cutting math. And if, as I suspect, we won’t be cutting math classes, I’d like to spruce them up. I’ve always thought the music triangle should have been incorporated into math class somehow. Then maybe math class would have been fun. (In retrospect, it seems like a perfect fit for trigonometry.)

In any case, that’s another topic altogether. Please let me know what you think, and thanks.

Brett

This is letter #28 to President Obama. I'm sending one-a-day, or thereabouts. I haven't received a response yet, but will let everyone know if I do.