Mr. Horton Has Issues

Dear Mr. Mares,

I am a sixth grade student in Evil Mr. Horton's class. You may remember my request last week asking you to ban those dangerous vending machines in the cafeteria. I am back with another letter, dealing with a more serious issue. I am needing to research online the recent treatment of Dr. Henry Louis Gates by the Cambridge, Massachusetts police to examine the larger issue of reports of racial profiling by law enforcement. This is a very important issue to our society, as shown by President Obama's reference in his press conference just the other night. I am interested as well to see if our community deals with this issue.

Using online sources would give me the most recent information about Dr. Gates' situation. Online sources would also give me access to the wide range of sources that may be out there: articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos. This wealth of information would be very useful for my current event issue.

But with all of this information, I would have to be very careful in choosing which sources to use. I'd need to see if the information comes from a reputable author free of bias. Mr. Horton, despite his mean streak, has shown us how to do this. I would need to see if it comes from a respected news agency. I would also want to check to see if there are ads on the site that might lead me to think that the author was not sharing his impartial view (Grandma tells me I have a precocious vocabulary). I would have to understand that a person's views posted on YouTube may not have the same standards as a person writing for a newspaper. Keeping these decisions in mind will help me greatly. And Mr. Horton has taught us these thing--you should give him a raise (maybe he'd treat us more nicely).

Thank you for reading my letter. I'm sure I'll be writing you another one soon.

yours,

Richie Matkins