After listening to the radio interview mentioned above, I sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. Bradbury. Some of the thoughts from that letter are posted below. Maybe they will give someone else a sense of hope that all is not lost in the public school system:

Ray ...
The positive attitude that you exude in all your public talks I easily find in your stories and that beings me back to the essential lessons that I have gleaned from your works, that the human spirit can be a powerful force for good and can see humanity through the toughest times and take us into the future in space, so that the race can continue to grow, learn and survive.

I am a life-long fan and avid collector of your works. I periodically monitor the doings on the Ray Bradbury website, maintained by that wonderful person otherwise known as �Dandelion�, and have followed the current dialog concerning Michael Moore�s absconding with your famous title for his movie. He has shown no respect and has acted like a selfish fool, interested in exploiting your title for his own gain. I was recently directed to a radio interview that you did for a Boston station where you were asked how Fahrenheit 451 related to our present condition in society. You talked about what should done to ensure that the future in the book does not catch us unaware and become reality. You spoke about education and that the schools need to teach reading skills early on to ensure that we continue to appreciate books and how they give us pleasure by exercising the imagination. I thought I would write to you and give a little hope from a real life experience that I have seen first hand.

My wife has taught elementary school for some 20 years now and currently teaches kindergarten at an elementary School in Costa Mesa, CA, in the Newport-Mesa school district. Her school was built in the late �50s and is now considered one of the �poor schools� in an otherwise wealthy district. The population it currently serves is mostly immigrant children, primarily new arrivals from Mexico. These kids come into her class speaking no English and having had no Pre-school experiences, such as is the norm for children in more affluent neighborhoods. Simple expectations, such as having been read to by their parents, knowing the alphabet, and having some exposure to kindergarten social skills, are lacking and make maintaining a disciplined classroom, ready for the learning to begin, a very difficult job. That said, I want to tell you about some success, even starting from such disadvantaged beginnings, because you have such hope for humanity and I think the story will give you renewed hope that we humans can overcome anything and prosper.

Recently, my wife was visited by a former student, who has the ideal name for his story, of Socrates. My wife taught him in first grade some thirteen years ago and saw in this child of six a spark that she nurtured and reinforced with praise and love. She told his mother, who had some trouble with English, that she knew one day Socrates would do great things. Socrates came back to his old elementary school that day to present to his former teacher a neck scarf from the college that had accepted him for matriculation. The scarf bears the words Harvard as part of the pattern. Needless to say, my wife was overjoyed and very proud of her former student.
Teacher and former student maintain contact on the internet and one day she hopes to hear of his final graduation and then the next chapter in his success story can begin.

This is not the only such story that I am aware of from my wife's teaching efforts. My wife has been invited on several occasions to attend local high school graduation ceremonies by former elementary students who have completed their public school educations and are going on to bigger and better things. The fact that they remember the influence that my wife has had on their life experiences, and have made the effort to come back to her elementary classroom to personally invite her to attend their graduation from high school, is a great testimony to the love and support she has given all her students over the years. These children have now become young adults and can move into our society better prepared to find their own way because they were shown that someone truly cared about them, taught them that it did not matter what social strata they came from, encouraged them to �Be All They Can Be�, and were taught the value of education in achieving their goals in life.

I think there are many such teachers working twelve-hour days, spending their own money to equip the public school classrooms with needed materials not provided by the system, and having positive results after overcoming horrendous odds against success. I have personally witnessed the change in these kids, who came into kindergarten speaking no English, and leave reading and doing simple math. That is a far cry from my own experience in kindergarten, which I remember as a time of having stories read to me, drinking cold milk from a carton and taking a nap on the floor. Kindergarten is now the equivalent of what used to be first grade, and it appears that with the explosion in the knowledge base, society will have to continue to speed up the transfer of learning at an ever increasing rate to equip our future members of society with the skills needed to have good lives. I only hope they do not lose the ability to have fun and use their imaginations, which are needed to create the images from the written word.
With teachers that have the caring and nurturing skills that can work the miracles, as demonstrated in the efforts of my wife to students in her classroom, I am sure that the next generation will learn to love books and knowledge and the joy they can derive from reading and imagining.

I thought this story might give you further hope that no matter what negative messages we are fed on the media, or how big the television screens become, even three walls of a room in surround sound, that good people can, and will continue to, work little miracles and make a real difference in the lives of the children who are becoming new citizens. I know the story has given me joy and reassurance that we, as a race of beings that want to understand the universe, will someday get off the planet and make our way out into space where we can begin to evolve into a higher order intelligence and leave the negative part of our present conditions, war and neglect of the sorrow and sadness in others of our kind, forever behind. You Ray, taught that message in your stories and lectures and I have had the distinct privilege of sharing your words of encouragement.


[This message has been edited by patrask (edited 07-04-2004).]

Oh, man! Dandelion, that is HILARIOUS!

I must admit, not bad at all. Sums up the most controversial movies of this board, that's for sure.

Cheers, Translator