This School Tarnishes The Name of Thomas Jefferson

This School Tarnishes The Name of Thomas

By: The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson

Since my transcendence from the physical plane, I have enjoyed virtual omnipresence of both time and space. There has been much to celebrate, and much to mourn, much to cherish and much to rebuke. The name of your structure, Thomas Jefferson High School, is one such item for the rebuking.

Your so-called institution of learning has been using my name to identify itself as a place of educational enlightenment. My memory is neither honored, nor even ironically humored by this injustice. I require you cease this personal assault on taste and reason post haste.

I begin my discontent with the individuals you have occupying this building. Your “teachers” are nothing more than a collection of numb-headed mynah birds, living wine to mouth until they will someday forget to breathe.

Only Ms. Paulson, justifiably driven to develop science and mathematics in female students, and Mr. Wilson’s free-thinking ingenuity in his current world problems courses are worthy to present any knowledge to the lard-soaked minds of the studentry. The rest, seem satisfied to wait out the calendar until the irrelevant harvest season requires the closure of the school, so they may fritter away their summer months on meaningless skullduggery.

The casual disregard for the French language and it’s abhorrent instruction is a particularly disappointing offense to my legacy. Had I encountered French teacher, Mr. Torrance, speaking to me in a Parisian market during my appointment as Minister to France, I would have immediately inspected his scalp for evidence of deep, traumatic scarring.

What has discontented the hearts of these once passionate educators? Surely the teachers of this school would give all they had to any student that displayed even a passing interest in the truth of knowledge or art.

Tragically it seems any gratification delayed beyond the pressing of a button for this generation appears to be a hopeless cause. Seeing the state of youth today, any scientist might hypothesize that each member of the student body is dimwitted to the extent that their parents may have been first related as brother and sister.

Regardless of intelligence or motivation of either faculty or student, the simple question my spirit form ponders constantly whilst hovering above the campus is: “Do I wish my memory to be represented by this place?”

The answer consistently manifests itself in virtually every endeavor this school attempts. From the utterly abysmal test scores to the track team’s inability to qualify for district level competition, this school seems to be the measuring instrument for which to judge only failure. Had the football coach of this school been placed in command to hold even the smallest parcel of ground during the American Revolution, not only would we have lost that territory, but I fear his own troops would have shot him in the back during his premature retreat.

And what has become of the arts? Are we training our young minds to enter a world without the skills to craft beautiful sound, color or expression of the human condition?

The music program has devolved into attempting to sing along to YouTube videos, with nary a woodwind nor stringed instrument to be seen. Mrs. Katzenbach’s uninspired production of Our Town succeeded singularly in the third act’s graveyard scene where the student’s natural, nebulous emoting only accidentally accomplished the proper atmospheric stage direction.

If only my grievance with the building title concluded with my disdain of the people the building serves, we might be able to salvage the situation by simply flogging the staff and sterilizing every single student. As it stands, my insistent protest far outreaches the unevolved mouth-breathers that inhabit the school.

This collection of building materials crudely thrown together not only insults my former person, but also anyone whom has ever drafted a building schematic. As I’m sure you do not know, I designed my own home of Monticello as an amalgam of French and Italian designs complete with my own innovative touches. This building you have so casually hung my name upon has all of the insightfulness and character of an abandoned stable.

The architecture pains my spectral vision in a way I believed only possible whilst living. Any fool with a protractor and slide rule could prove that the west mezzanine is, at peak capacity, but one more over-ripened sloth of a student away from total collapse into the ugliest atrium this ghost has ever seen, alive or dead. The structure has all the integrity of one Benedict Arnold.

I care not whether you find the above reasons worthy of removing my name from this institution. I require that the action be taken, if for the simple fact that this building stands for none of the values I coveted during my time on Earth.

Might I suggest a name more worthy of the direction and merit I have observed in the classrooms and hallways? A far more accurate moniker befitting your unsound halls of benightedness would be John Adams High School.

Regrettably,

The Posthumas Ghost of President Thomas Jefferson