By popular demand

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By popular demand, here comes some student writing.

My juniors read a bit of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (his arrival in Philadelphia and his list of attributes to improve) and some aphorisms from Poor Richard's Almanack.

The textbook also included a section from Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

Since next year is the tricentennial of Franklin's birth, we imagined a B. Franklin Tricentennial Committee. I assigned them to read the page of Fulghum and then to write a letter to the committee for one of two purposes:

1. The committee is considering Fulghum to speak at the festivities and the letter is in support of that idea because Fulghum is his intellectual heir.

2. The committee has chosen Fulghum to speak and the letter is recalling a change of mind because Fulghum is simply not an appropriate choice.

The students were to pick whichever scenario fit their feelings and write a letter, using supporting quotations from the text.

Here are two of those letters.

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To whom it may concern

Hi. My name is [...name...] and I am writing this letter to let you know my opinion about Benjamin Franklin and Robert Fulghum. I think Benjamin Franklin should be voted for the parede thing. The reasons why I picked him was because he is in the one-hundred dollar bill. The other reason is that he is a smart person, so is Robert Fulghum but picked Franklin cause he's in the bill. I heard alot of things about Franklin. I read something about Fulghum and I like some things in the story like how to behave. Thank you for reading my letter.

Sincerlly

[...name...]

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Dear B. Franklin Tricentanial Comitee,

I think you shouldn't hire Robert Fulghum. Why? Because he sounds cynical. He thinks that life is about cooperating with rules you learn during kindergarten. He doesn't know that everything eventually changes. Also not everyone in this world is kind. There will always be a bad person. So you can't expect the whole world to hold hands. We can't all take naps in the afternoon cause there is more important stuff in the afternoon than any other time. These man is probably mentaly retarded. With the mind of a 6 year old kid. It would be a mistake to hire. So think about it really good. Benjamin Franklin has really discovered other, more important things, so he is so much better. On the other hand, B. Franklin is so much better cause he understands that if we wanna get civilized, we need to change. Get mature. Then he also added that lightning is electricity. He made many theorys & he made them facts. He discovered a lot of things. He also knew how to speak in kindda of a riddley way pretty good. Thanks for the cooperation.

Sincerely,

[...name...]