A Letter Home
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Scott,
As it will be one year tomorrow since Alex became head boy we thought we should write to let you know how he’s been getting on.
As you know, Alex has been a prefect for many years now. Although his record was spotty, it appears that he was the only one the other prefects would work with after some of them refused to accept our re-appointment of Jennifer as head girl. As you can imagine, we were unhappy that the school’s role in choosing the head prefect was challenged in this way, but as it seems this was not done at Alex’s instigation I will not dwell on it further.
Alex started the year well. By making himself more accessible than his predecessor had, staff and pupils quickly warmed to him. For the first three or four months after assuming his role, he was probably one of the most popular head prefects we have had. In October he revealed ambitious plans to improve school life and I know many of the pupils were excited about the ideas he put forward.
Unfortunately, as the year wore on it became apparent that Alex has difficulty turning his ideas into reality. Many of the improvements in school life that he was going to make have not yet materialised and he has allowed himself to become distracted by other, less-pressing issues. His grades have been dropping and a sense of disillusionment seems to be setting in amongst the other pupils. As he has only been in the role for one year, we find this somewhat alarming. While we remain cautiously optimistic about the new paradigm he has promised to introduce, his failure to follow through on this year's promises, together with his announcement that he will continue to spend more time thinking about problems than fixing them, leaves us worried that the school will be no better off a year from now.
We are also concerned about Alex’s attitude. He seems to have let his new position of responsibility go to his head, dealing with issues with less humility and honesty than he used to. Only last week, for example, he was overheard proclaiming that he was “the man” while swaggering around the playground and he has made angry demands for privileges normally reserved for staff. On occasion he has even picked fights with other members of the school. Needless to say, this is not the kind of behaviour the school expects from its head boy.
After such a promising start, these problems have left us disappointed with Alex’s performance over the last year. We hope to see an improvement when he returns to class in the Fall.
Yours faithfully,
D. E. Woters
Headmaster, The Bermuda School
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He's been a naughty little boy,and Mistress Renee will see to it that he is punished,for his arrogance and lies.
Posted by Sal on 29.07.04 at 11:03
Nice re-write of the original there Phil ;-)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1191333,00.html
Posted by lizardfish on 02.08.04 at 23:58