Murder and Information Control as an Educational Aid

    

     Some years ago, I was dating a woman who had a daughter named Emily who was a ‘Freshperson’ at East High School. One day, Emily brought home an assignment from one of her classes. It was a flyer with a story on it, sort of a ‘whodunnit’ type mystery which read something like this as I do my best to paraphrase:

     “Every day, a woman cooks eggs and beans for her husband to eat while he reads his morning newspaper. On this particular day, the husband finds that there is an article that has been cut out of his newspaper, but (for the sake of argument, I guess) he doesn’t question this irregularity. Later that day, the man dies from an unknown cause.”

     The point of the assignment is for the student to deduce why the man had died, and what the missing newspaper article had to do with it. Both Emily and her mother brought it to me and asked me what I thought, as they couldn’t figure it out, bless their innocent hearts.

     I told them that it seemed to me like the article was probably about a food recall, either for the eggs or the beans, and that the wife had removed the article so that the husband would be none-the-wiser as he ate his tainted breakfast. The next day, Emily told me that I was right, and that was exactly what the answer to this grotesque riddle was.

    I told them both that I was going to call the teacher and ask them why, out of all of the ideas that a teacher could have to use to teach something to a freshman class, they would choose one of a wife using information control as part of a tool to murder her husband. Emily pleaded that I do not call her teacher, and I agreed, but I did call an education counselor to ask them if they thought it was appropriate for a freshman class to be taught a lesson involving matricide and censorship. They agreed that it was not, but I never did any follow up to see who else may have been led to consider this question.

     What is the thought process of an educator who believes that a scenario involving the murder of a loved one is the best choice to teach a lesson, when there are so many other ideas available that could serve the same purpose? 

     What message are we trying to send kids with this? That sometimes you just have to murder your husband, and when an opportunity arises, you should know how to identify and take advantage of it? This seems to me like some latent, subconscious, and endemic psychopathy, considering that someone’s grand idea of murder by the numbers was overlooked by so many ‘professionals.’ 

     I think this story represents at least the Diet Coke of evil, that’s my opinion.