An Open Letter to the Teachers of Golda Och Academy

By Boaz Fox ‘23
    To the teachers of Golda Och Academy,
You have been teaching for years, some of you even for decades. You have been to college and received advanced degrees in your fields of expertise, and show up everyday with an unparalleled enthusiasm for the noble cause of taking loud, immature children and turning them into intelligent, fully-formed adults, ready to live independently, vote for the politicians running the country and contribute to our great nation’s ever-expanding economy.  But you have a fundamental issue plaguing your curricula, your lessons and your life.

You are nothing compared to the New York Times crossword puzzle. 
You can stand in the front of the class and blab all you want about the world, the Torah or whatever it is you tell us about. You can quiz us, test us and make us write essays. However, you will never be able to match the immense educational value of the New York Times crossword puzzle.
Will Shortz and his genius team of editors provides us with seas of 15x15 white squares, spotted with an archipelago of black islands. Every day, subscribers sail into oceans of knowledge and explore the combined works of the Western canon. 
When working in the corporate world, will we regale our coworkers and bosses with stories of how Lord Englishman the Third of Stupidshire married the Lady Princess Useless of Spain? Absolutely not. We will talk about things that matter, like sports or actors from 1980s movies and TV shows. 
Every year, school gets harder and harder. When I was little, I thought reading was hard enough. But life gets worse. Addition and subtraction turns into multiplication and division which turns into algebra and differential calculus. We go from writing our names to writing multi-page essays in a single night. Worrying about what I am going to do on the playground morphs into worrying about standardized tests, colleges and my future. It gets harder and harder until we are all at our breaking points. 
But not the crossword. 
The difficulties of the crossword reset and repeat every single week. I can relive my carefree kindergarten days with the ease of the Monday puzzle. The Wednesday puzzle evokes the manageable struggles of middle school. Friday brings me back to the trials and tribulations of junior year. 
Unlike today’s school system, the puzzle is a cycle. I do not have to dread the coming of Monday because I know that it will be easy again.
Another thing you teachers do wrong is grade everything. Even when I finish another of your pointless and menial tasks to the best of my abilities, I get punished for little failures. Completion is not met with reward. It is just met with more anxiety over what my grade will be. 
But Will Shortz comes to the rescue. When I finish one of his crossword puzzles, I get rewarded with a pleasant burst of smooth jazz. And, as everyone knows, jazz is sophisticated music. The New York Times does not just make me feel satisfied when I finish my work, it makes me a more cultured person. Can school say the same?
No, it cannot.
School only lasts from Monday to Friday. If I am working on a school assignment on a weekend, it is because I am drowning in the mind numbing busywork teachers assign. The crossword comes in handy here too. The New York Times pumps out even more crosswords for everyone to solve on weekends. The crosswords are even bigger! Not only does it continue teaching me on the weekends, the crossword teaches me even more than on the weekdays. Take that, teachers.
I would like anyone who reads this letter to envision a world where curricula are no longer based on pointless concepts and instead are based on the New York Times crossword puzzle. Sure, students may not know how to read or do long division, but do those skills really matter? 
Don’t even get me started on the Spelling Bee.
Sincerely,
Boaz Fox