Arwen Receives a Common-Core Aligned Letter

I arrived home from work the other evening to find the following letter awaiting me in my mailbox.  I had heard about the cancellation of the Kindergarten play in Elwood, Long Island, but all that had seemed so far away.  As you might well imagine, as you read below, I was somewhat startled by the letter's contents.

April 27, 2014


Dear Ms. Evenstar:

It is with unabashed bravado that we wish to inform you that the Fellowship of the Ring Academy will be cancelling your scholar's childhood.  We hope this missive helps you better comprehend the manner in which the rigorous demands of the 21st century are metamorphosing educational institutes and, more preternaturally, to elucidate upon misapprehensions pertaining to your scholar's childhood.  It is incredibly salient and of paramount importance that you keep in your faculty of consciousness the fact that this issue is not unique to the Fellowship of the Ring Academy.  Although the crusade toward more stringent learning standards has been prevalent in the national news for more than a decade, the effervescent face of education is commencing to feel unsettling for some humanoids.  What and how we teach is ever in fluctuation to meet the prerequisites of a shape-shifting world.

The rationale for exterminating your scholar's childhood is simple.  We are entrusted with prepping preparing biological offspring for college and career with infinitely priceless lifelong skills and have the cognition to appreciate that we can only affirm such superlative attainments through molding your scholars into strong readers, exemplars of expository passages, coworkers, and problem solvers.  Please do not fault us for crafting professional decisions that we know will never be able to please any sentient entity.  But know that we are formulating these directives with the welfare of all children in mind.  

Sincerely,


Mortimer Snerd                             Charlie McCarthy



Effie Klinker

p.s  During the 2014-2014 academic calendar, we have made some changes in the interests of your scholar:

1.  The Annual One-World-Many-Friends Multicultural Festival is canceled.
2.  Items other than #2 pencils and erasers will not be tolerated as show-and-tell items.
3.  The school will participate in only one field trip.  We will march single file to Barnes and Noble to purchase Pearson review books.
4.  The end-of-year Kiddie Olympics is canceled.
5.  The school's Thanksgiving Feast is canceled.  Teepee Ted has been given notice to take his buffalo skins and be on his way.
6.  There will be no birthday parties celebrated in classrooms.
7.  The Holiday Gingerbread Party will now be a Geometry Fest.
8.  The Kindergarten graduation is canceled.
9.  The 135th annual school carnival to raise money for disaster relief is canceled.
10.  The school play will feature one song, a revised edition of "We are the World," sung by the children.  They have been working hard to learn the lyrics to "We are the Test."

cc:  Bill Gates, Commissioner King, Regent Tisch, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and President Obama