‘Schools Fail, Not Our Children’

There is much truth to Gehl’s column about lack of teacher and parent input into public school education, the warehousing of young American children and their consequent indifference and ignorance. His remedy, however, leaves me unconvinced.

Government, he says, should get out of the education business (though the identification note says he plans to run for the post of state superintendent of public instruction--in order to abolish it, I guess) and give parents “education stamps” or tax credits so that they can finance their children’s education in schools of their (the parents’) own choice. And there’s the glitch in the program, you see. If mom and dad are nuclear scientists, they naturally think that Dick and Jane would profit from a school in which science is a required subject from Grade 1. If Dick has a musical bent, and Jane dotes on languages, they will have been rescued from “government thought control” to be blessed by parental thought control, administered by teachers who share their parents’ viewpoint.

If Gehl really believes that privatizing education will enhance students’ chances of a well-rounded (read multiethnic, religiously and culturally diverse) education, I suggest he has far greater faith in parental willingness to encourage free-thinking self-discovery than I do. If public schools fail in opening children’s minds, private ones (specially religiously oriented ones) do an even worse job, since most parents will pay handsomely to have their children brainwashed into carbon copies of themselves.

JUDITH L. BARNEY

Solana Beach