John Perrotto

Weeks after undergoing brain surgery, Ethan Wilson was back at Citi Field last Wednesday doing his job. metsinsider.mlblogs.com/etha…

Today I overheard a teacher telling another teacher about the reading curriculum she's using for her ninth-grade English class and my heart rate skyrocketed and it was all I could do to not go over and start a fight. And now you might be thinking I got mad because that curriculum was too basic or easy. It's the exact opposite. "Oh you know," she said. "Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, the classics." I've now written six books and had published thousands and thousands of words online and this is in spite of my education in reading and writing, which followed the model above and which nearly made me hate reading and writing. When I was in ninth grade, I was reading Tom Clancy and John Grisham for fun and to be fair, that was rare. Most of my classmates weren't reading at all. But then I'd get to school and they'd have us try to decipher books (and plays) like the above. And Beowulf. And the Canterbury Tales. I *loved* reading and I didn't know what was going on with these books and plays and poems that, I would eventually learn, almost no one reads. My classmates *hated* reading and by the end of school, they hated it even more. And that was before phones and social media and the complete destruction of the human attention span. The point of an education in reading (and writing) isn't to make it unpleasant and tedious. The point is to make it possible. Let a kid read whatever the hell book they can get through. If they eventually find their way to Animal Farm, so be it. And for the love of God, don't make anyone read plays. Plays are meant to be watched, not read. You'd think a f*cking English teacher would know that.

We are saddened to share the news that Jerry Koosman has passed away. We send our thoughts and prayers to his family.