January 3, 2013
Steve Blow
The Dallas Morning News
PO Box 655237
Dallas, TX 75265

RE: Readin’, Ritin’, ‘Rithmetic – Pass the hat and help Johnny read – Some comments on your column in today’s DMN on the unfairness of it all.

Mr. Blow,

A cold Texas morning was made warmer by your aptly titled column “Texas Legislators Deserve Dunce Cap”. I say “aptly” because 2 centuries of empirical evidence scream at us the still unlearned lesson that “no man’s property is safe when the legislature is in session”. A one size fits all universal proof of this would be the War on Poverty. It was begun 49 years ago. The money spent cannot be counted; the enemy is still in command of the high ground. You are welcome to question my facts, my methodology, or my conclusion.

I am here from Florida, sunny warm Florida I quickly add, visiting my family, particularly my 3 Texas Ladies – 14, 10, and 8 – all of whom are in public school.

Whenever I write to any public person in re education, “a school for people who will not learn elsewhere”, I must ask certain questions.\

#1 – If you have children of school age do they attend public school? If not, why not?
#2 – If you had children of school age did they attend public school? If not, why not?

You would be surprised at the answers, or lack of answers, I get when I ask that question of people who are bound by the flexible standards set by the church of modern American Liberalism. [I’ll spare you the details of a P.T.A. meeting in West Orange, NJ where I was called a Nazi. My response was protected by the criminal libel statutes of New Jersey.]

Florida has the dreaded FCAT tests. They are given to show whether or not the student has met the minimum requirements for the aforementioned “readin, ‘ritin, & ‘rithmetic. Members of the “Spend More” school say that it forces poor schools to have students “study for the test”. I watched the mighty Allen Eagles perform last week. Certain situations shouted that absent repeated “studying for the test” drills the result would have been different. Why can’t the same Logic apply to quiscumperfecto verbs or osmotic tendencies?

Alas, my suggestion, a fundamentally diverse, multi-culturally sensitive one I might add, of raising scores and self-esteem in Geometry scores by changing Pi from 3,1416 to 3.0 has failed to gain traction in Florida.. Do you think it may have a chance here?

Full disclosure demands that I tell you that my plan to butcher manatees so as to provide sausage for the homeless. My reason is rooted in the tenets of Darwin and secular humanism. If the high point of the life of an Alpha male manatee is to float on his back and have sorry assed people fling week old endive at him to better prepare him for his apex moment, swimming into a whirling propeller, isn’t it time for them to go? If it is, why not let their demise be of some good to those who have fallen through the so called safety net?

I stopped at the point in your article where you said that “one recent study ranked Texas 49th in per-student spending”. [I have long searched for the mythical sign that says “Welcome to Arkansas. Mississippi is worse.”]

If pre-student spending is the key to educational success perhaps you can tell me why the Obama children are not enrolled in any of the fine, I mean really, really fine public schools in Washington, DC? After all, they are tenants of a public housing project. You may remember that in the heady days of February, 2009 Obama signed an executive order that essentially mandated that all children living in public housing in DC attend public schools. Was there a hidden codicil that said “Do as I say, not as I do”? [I have oft-times wondered why 50 or 60 homeless folk don’t spend the night in the white4 House. Don’t you agree that it is too big a house for just 4 people? Incidentally, the official DC homeless shelter is literally across the street from the United States Tax Court. Honest.]

I suggest, inter alia, that any system that pays bad employees as much as it pays good employees is doomed to, at best, the worst of all possible world: Mediocrity. How many times have you heard students shouting “We’re number 9”?

I suggest that any system anywhere that pays bad workers anything is offensive to Logic and inimical to the common weal. Am I a fool to assume that the Trivium is still valid in Texas? If it is the present system must be ripped out root and branch and flung as violently as possible from the highest parapet. Although their methods may today seem harsh the good people of Salem, MA solved their witch problem in the late 17th century. The evidence of your own eyes tells you that witches are no longer a problem there. The next project is the Kennedys but that is not on the table here.

Herewith 2 suggestions for helping Texas Johnny read:

#1 – Hazard pay and bonuses up to 100% of their salary for any teacher volunteering to teach in “Blackboard Jungle” schools will be a recruiting tool. Extra consideration will be given to any applicant possessing a valid concealed weapons permit.

#2 - History teachers, math teachers, biology teachers, English teachers…everybody who stands in front of a class room – the children are our future, aren’t they? – and tries to enroll new members in the Western Canon will be held to the same standards as the football coach.

Results, not effort, will the sole criterion for success. I suggest that I can still play football as hard as Johnny Manziel. I know that I can’t play it as well.

Speaking of football, one last thought.

There is still time.

You, as a big time media mogul, must try to get the NFL to cancel the playoff game between Washington and Seattle

It is safe to say that, what with the reelection of President Obama, we are now in a post-post racial society.

Isn’t it time we put away the offensive things of our past?

The only thing the name Washington Redskins has going for it is that it is marginally less offensive that the name and logo of the Cleveland Indians. Saying those names or, worse, having paraphernalia from them must be considered a hate crime and must be prosecuted as such.

How about “Hail to the Beleaguered Long Suffering, Indigenous Persons”? How about the “Washington Abos”? Instead of fans dressing up as Hogs how about having them wear outfits suggesting the benefits of tofu?

It’s almost time to get back to Florida.

My plan to reduce the burden on Medicare by having single elimination senior citizen/python wrestling contests needs to be fine-tuned before being presented to the public.





Kevin Smith