Education Spending

President Bush’s grand plan to “reinvent” education is fatally flawed. Bush reminds me of a bridge designer; he is talking about the best steel, the best design, the best welders, etc. Education is the bridge between home and the “real world.” Bush’s education bridge will crumble, as would any real bridge, because the foundation piers are weak and collapsing.

The school system is supposed to process everyone from “crack babies” to child geniuses. Children who have been exposed to four years of racial, ethnic and social hatred at home are supposed to suddenly get along with some of “them.” How do you convince a white middle-class 16-year-old that education is a great thing when he sees his dad with a college degree and 15 years’ experience laid off?

The pier at the other end of the education bridge is in worse shape. What good is an education if it won’t get you a job or at least fit you into society? Automation means fewer people at every “real” job. Two men run trains that used to take five, smart weapons and super-tanks replace thousands on the battlefield. What good is an education if the police consider all black males to be drug dealers and all Latino males to be car thieves? There are so many jobs that need doing but the “system” keeps teams of young black males from going through the ghetto with caulking guns and weatherstripping. They walk with real guns on their way to jail or the morgue instead of into America.

WOODROW J. HUGHES

Northridge