Them and Us

Received from Them:

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Crow,

Please accept this letter as notification that -------- has been absent two (2) full days from school. These absences have been deemed unexcused. As you know from the Student Code of Conduct and Attendance Policy provided to you and your child on the first day of school, unexcused absences are prohibited. As the absences are unexcused -------- is being documented as truant from school.

Enclosed please find a copy of --------'s attendance record and a copy of the Manchester School District Policy and Regulations regarding attendance. Should -------- continue to be truant from school, it will be necessary to schedule a meeting with you to develop an attendance plan.

The Manchester School District takes the compulsory attendance laws very seriously. We are committed to work with you to address --------'s attendance issues in a timely manner to ensure that -------- receives the maximum benefit from education. Please contact me to confirm that you have received this letter and understand the attendance requirements. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Principal High Muckety Muck"

To Whom It May Concern:

Kindly go fuck yourself. There is no plan we need to develop, here. There's less than a month of school left. Our son has missed two days of compulsory education, for which we made phone calls to you in advance. Since we did not follow up these phone calls with written confirmation, you have (using the cowardly passive voice) decided to attempt to frighten us into compliance with threats of reaction. Like cowards everywhere, you hide behind the law.

It is not our requirement that our children attend school for attendance's sake alone. It's our intent to prepare them for survival, happiness and even joy in an often cold and cruel world. That will occasionally include those courses which you offer by way of mandatory educational incarceration, provided by involuntary taxation which invariably falls hardest on those who benefit least from its collection, who suffer most in the application of your laws and your punishment. But, it will also include knowledge you would never think to offer - knowledge of the land, of the people and kin from whom we come, and most importantly of all, of the class in which we belong. We teach them to identify forthrightly with our class. To accept the reality of the class war which you, in your own small way, represent. We have taught them to distrust you. We have encouraged the mistrust of any system with people like you in charge; people who take a paycheck in order to produce stunted, thwarted mockeries of free women and men. We accept neither your bureaucratic salvationism, nor your industrial education. In fact, we choose to be its adversaries.

If our children also make that choice, we will support them in it. Gladly.

You have not frightened us with your law.

You have given us a most excellent and unexpected opportunity to prove the truth of the lessons we've taught our children about you. A kind of mathematical proof of the logic of degradation.

For that we are deeply grateful.

Still, we ask that you fuck yourself. It's a matter of human decency.