About
Purposes of this Blog
Ms. Understanding is shy by nature and almost never gives interviews. Unlike the clear, sincere, well-reasoned responses of her column, the answers that she gives in person often leave much to be desired. In a rare lucid moment, she offered the following goals:
- To begin a national conversation of 21st-century education for teenagers, a conversation that includes all interested parties
- To save the world with sound advice, unsound advice, good humor, and bad humor, and to promote knowledge of the differences between and among them
- To promote argumentative disagreements in classrooms and faculty lounges
- To bring national renewal: Our books are overdue, and we can’t afford the fines
- To transform all weapons into paintball delivery systems and all ammunition into powerpoint bullets
- To bring back old traditions that never were
- To entertain
- To make money
The above points read best in the given order.
The real order may completely differ. Try bottom-to-top.
All of the letters addressed to Ms. Understanding are real. Just how real? She will let the reader decide. Some comments are meant to be taken seriously; others are fatuous. Again, that’s up to the reader. Some comments scale great heights of wisdom; others are most foolish. Yep, the reader decides which are which.
The editors would like to claim that this blog presents a great moral crusade, but that’s simply not true. Perhaps Mark Twain’s early warning to readers of Huckleberry Finn will suffice:
“PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be
prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”