Kansas Board of Education
1 785 296-3201
FAX: 1 785 296-7933
120 SE 10th Avenue
Topeka KS 66612-1182

My dearest Kansas Board of Education,

Oh sweetheart, we’ve known one another too long for deceipt. We’ve grown apart. It’s sad, and I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but it has and must. While we are both to blame in part, I feel you’ve changed. At first, I remember thinking you were constant – a little flat, but constant, and I liked that about you. You were always there when I needed you. I thought that would always be true.

Now you’ve decided to dabble in superstition and hokus pokus. Oh my old friend, how I hoped you would come back to me and our sensible life! You’ve broken my heart! I can never trust you again. I can’t trust the children you pretend to educate. For their sakes, I hope they’re not interested in science because they’ll be laughed out of any serious polytechnic institute in the world for reciting that drivel – not even the Vatican believes it should be taught in science class. You think this doesn’t matter, but it does. America is falling behind industrialized nations in educating its workforce. Don’t you remember reading about that car company that resorted to drawing pictures for its employees and still couldn’t train them to assemble automobiles? That company built its new factory in Canada, where people can read. Jobs were lost, local economies were further weakened in an already weak area. How can I love you when I can’t respect you? Plainly you love you more than you care about the children in your charge because you’ll be fine, but those kids will graduate fit to pick up trash for a living. Well, except for that pesky gravity thing you attribute to “evil spirits.”

I don’t like children all that much, dear Kansas Board of Education, but what you’re doing sounds like child abuse. And while many children could use an abrupt spanking, you’re undermining their whole lives and the future of the State of Kansas. That’s not even the worst thing you’ve done.

No, what I can’t abide is your insufferable arrogance. CNN caught you playing fast and loose with the English language, and the very idea of proof: “In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.” You know words are the jewels of my heart. If I had caught you in a busy three-way Dirty Sanchez with Kevin and Britney I couldn’t despise you more. I mean, unless I later found that icky tableau captioned on Fark.

Do you know Fark? You’re very popular with the satirists.

I’ll never forget you – or to avoid your kids practicing that dumb voodoo. Whatever: I live in New Jersey.

Always,
Princess Tata