According to his memoir, The Teacher Who Couldn't Read, John Corcoran graduated from college in 1961 and taught high school for 17 years, all without being able to read, write or spell. Finally, at age 48, he sought help and now serves as a public speaker and fierce advocate for literacy. The John Corcoran Foundation claims to have trained 300 tutors and tutored more than 2,000 students.

Perhaps Otis Mathis should look into that—or some other organization that’s devoted to adult literacy. Because as president of the Detroit Public Schools board, Mathis clearly needs help. A recent article in the Detroit News revealed his struggle to compose coherent English sentences that aren't rife with egregious errors of usage, punctuation and grammar. Under the headline, "Does DPS leader's writing send wrong message?" the article included portions of a recent e-mail Mathis sent to friends and supporters:

If you saw Sunday's Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason's he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

And there’s this, from another mass e-mail:

Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row's, and who is the watch dog?

With 90,000 children in its system, Detroit stunned the nation late last year with historically low scores on a math assessment test, a result believed to be influenced by poor reading skills. So it's perfectly understandable that some folks were outraged to learn that Mathis can't write. (He told the Detroit News that, "Yes, I can read. I'm capable of reading a lot of information and regurgitation.") Understandably, they expect someone in such an important education position to possess higher skills in written communication. Their answer, as to whether Mathis' writing sends the wrong message, is a resounding, Hell to the yes!