Mr. Descartes,

While we here at Indre-et-Loire Elementary pride ourselves in the dedication of our teaching and administrative faculty to excellence in education and do not feel that any of our students are incapable of achieving superior academic performance, we feel that some of young Rennie's classroom behavior and overall exam results have become cause for concern. We do not mean to sound alarming, as no doubt your son is a gifted young man with all the potential of his fellow students, though if such patterns are not addressed and corrected at an early age they may very well persist into adulthood when they would be less simple to dismiss. Please take the following evaluation not as a sentence of judgment against Rennie but as a clear, concise to-do list concerning his continued development as a student and a member of society as a whole.

Rennie's primary teacher, Mrs. Gallois, informs us that your son has been having some difficulty with his history lessons. She insists that it is not for a lack of general aptitude, as Rennie's math grades are well above the class average. Instead, Mrs. Gallois believes the source of Rennie's struggle with the humanities has more to do with his overactive imagination. For example, on the recent fourth grade test on Ancient Rome Rennie responded to the short-answer question, "What does 'Crossing the Rubicon' Mean?" with the phrase, "To assign inherent meaning to the act or the metaphor of Crossing the Rubicon is to assume there was in fact a Julius Caesar, a Rubicon River or indeed a city of Rome. I reject the validity of this question."

You can see, Mr. Descartes, that Rennie spends a great deal of time in his own thoughts and he seems to be quite confused. It is obvious that he does not spend enough time studying, as the answer to the relatively simple question above can be found in his course book. Many of the students echoed the passage in the book verbatim, which is acceptable if a bit unoriginal.

Mr. Vordonne, the school guidance counselor, had a talk with Rennie recently that revealed just how dedicated the boy seems to be to his creative though distracting imagination. He described to Mr. Vordonne a "demon" who he blamed for everything from the theft of another child's favorite pencil to the scrawling of some off-color graffiti on the wall of one of the lavatories. We have yet to determine if this "demon" is solely a creation of Rennie's own mind or if he is imitating something from a picture book. Regardless, this behavior cannot continue.

We at Indre-et-Loire Elementary recognize that Rennie's life must be difficult having grown up without his mother, so we have been more lenient with him than we otherwise would have been. However, if his refusal to engage with the full breadth of his academic career persists we may have to suggest his relocation to a program that will better suit his needs as a growing learner. We have heard kind reports of the Jesuit College Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Fleche. If you would like, we can arrange a meeting between their administration and yourself.

Thank you for your time and patience, Mr. Descartes,

-The Staff of Indre-et-Loire Elementary