South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

School choice gives parents options, put competitive pressure on schools

Letters to the Editor
Letters+to+the+editor

To the editor:

It is no surprise that the Mehlville Board of Education is against school choice.

In the United States between 2000 and 2019, the number of district administrators grew by a whopping 87.6 percent, far outstripping the growth in the number of students (7.6 percent) and teachers (8.7 percent).

By nature, children require a long time to grow up, and someone must act on their behalf until they mature.  Who is to do that?  Who gets to decide what children learn?  Who decides what we tell children about sex?  Are these decisions the domain of professional educators, or are they the domain of parents, who rely on common sense and love to guide them?

Throughout American history, it has been thought that the family is the primary source of learning, and the cradle of good citizenship.  Public education is as old as our nation – but only lately has it adopted the purpose of subverting the family and controlling parents.  Today, we have children being turned against their country by being indoctrinated to look on its past.  We also increasingly have children being encouraged to speak of their sexual inclinations at an age when they can hardly spell the word “sex”.

Who “owns” the child, then? The choice is between the parents, who have taken the trouble to have and raise the child – and who, in almost all cases, will give their lives to support the child – or the educational bureaucracy who is more likely to look upon the child as an asset in a social engineering project to rearrange government and society.

Contrary to the Mehlville Board of Education, parents want the facility of school choice.  Allow the parents to receive the allotted tuition per child with necessary check and balance procedures.  Good schools will flourish, bad schools will have to do better, if they want to survive. …

Frank Longo
Crestwood

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