Don’t Blame Fate

Lynn Smith’s First Person column (“Pleasant Strangers Relate Their Personal Horror Story,” June 14) compares families being chosen for sorrow to a neighborhood fire skipping some houses and destroying others.

I suggest that it wasn’t fate or luck that destroyed the boy, but lack of parent involvement.

She says the boy didn’t attend school for 50 days before being notified by school officials. Most schools send out report cards after six or eight weeks. Why didn’t the parents ask for a report card? Or ask what was going on in the novel for a lit class, or ask what era he was studying in American history, or ask what projects he was working on in art class?

A parent who buys “nothing’s going on in class” day after day from his kid is either naive, too busy to care or has lost control. Please parents, stop making schools and teachers the scapegoats for your mistakes.

BILL PRESTRIDGE JR., San Clemente