Adams is no saint when it...

Adams is no saint

when it comes to Ellis

Gary Adams must be feeling awfully guilty. What a classic move:

Hire a consultant known to use deceptive tactics, benefit from the

deceptive tactics, get exposed, decry the action, and try to look

like a hero. I am not buying it. If Adams had given explicit

instructions to Ellis to run a clean campaign, one wonders why Ellis,

a businessman, would use his own money to prepare a phony phone

message, reserve a telemarketing phoneline and pay for same in

advance if there was no chance that Adams would use it.

It is one thing that Adams won the election despite the deception,

but it’s quite another for Adams to try to look like a saint after he

has benefited from the wrongdoing. This shows a complete lack of

integrity.

MICHELLE TRAIL

Newport Beach

Blame for poor school system lies with union

I am grateful to the Daily Pilot for the front-page article about

the teachers’ union and whether it has too much political power

(“Teachers’ union flexes political muscle,” Dec. 16).

As a grandmother who was educated in the 1950s, who had children

in the ‘70s and grandchildren in the ‘90s, I can tell you there have

been enormous changes in our public school system. Unfortunately, in

spite of advances in about every other area of our lives, our

children’s educational system has experienced a decline. Who and what

is to blame for that?

It certainly is not individual teachers, as most of them are every

bit as dedicated and intelligent as in the past. There are those who

are quick to claim the fault lies in the home because parents do not

take enough interest in their children’s education to help with

homework, etc. Maybe that is a factor, but then parents in the ‘50s

weren’t all that involved in their child’s schoolwork, either.

Schools took responsibility for enforcing rules, and part of the

education was in making students themselves responsible for their

choices.

I believe the Daily Pilot has touched upon one of the main

problems in the public schools today: the teachers’ union. It has

become extraordinarily powerful, and the leaders of the organization

are quite liberal, as are those who make educational decisions in

Sacramento and Washington, D.C. The teachers’ union has the money to

lobby elected officials to be sure they support its goals.

Problems have been created by the new liberal agenda. Many

classrooms have been turned into chaos because teachers’ hands have

been tied regarding disciplining. We must not hurt their fragile

egos. The moral values that once were woven into the curriculum have

been replaced with liberal ideas, which amount to social engineering.

Proven programs such as “phonics” were thrown out and replaced with

experimental and inferior ideas. Mathematics, language and history

have all suffered a similar fate, resulting in the “dumbing down” of

our students.

When a conservative begins to speak out against the powerful

liberal leaders of our education system, they have been attacked.

Their ideas are ridiculed, even though they are actually the very

ones in place when the education system of America was a beacon of

light to the entire world. The messenger of such information is

branded and battered with titles like “self-righteous right wing,” as

used in a letter to the Pilot in reference to former school board

member Wendy Leece.

Kudos to the Daily Pilot for printing articles that force public

debate on an extremely important issue. It is time for the public to

understand there is a strong undercurrent of extreme liberalism

eating away at our public school system. If we want to return to the

values and effective educational system we once enjoyed, voters must

become educated and energized to support candidates who are not

“puppets” of the current system.

BETTY BROWN

Costa Mesa