Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 15, 1994 TAG: 9402150269
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LEONARD MARTIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Wilson states that vouchers are not the friend of public schools. This is very true. Vouchers are the friend of taxpaying parents who have a right to choose the best available education for their children.
The most outspoken friends of government schools are those who are employed by the system, many of whom send their own children to private schools. Also friendly to the system are liberal politicians who bow to the never-ending demands of the powerful school union and those who find public schools to be the best way to advance their socialistic, atheistic agenda for America.
Quite naturally, the financial and career interests of these special-interest groups are best served by loyalty to the system, much to the detriment of the children.
This self-serving environment has created an education monopoly that's insensitive to the financial burden of the taxpayer and, most importantly, to the children's moral and academic needs.
Wilson says that we need to protect ``our'' public schools. Well, it does seem reasonable that schools would belong to local citizens since their taxes build schools and fund the cost of their operations. This, however, isn't the case. Those who pay the bills have no significant voice in the system.
As a parent, you may be asked to serve cookies and punch at the next Parent-Teacher Association meeting, but you'll never be asked to examine the curriculum. The fact is that public schools belong to the bureaucrats in Washington.
As for the need to protect these schools, that hardly seems necessary since they're already the most protected institution in the nation. The full power of the federal bureaucracy protects these schools from all value systems that aren't compatible with a world view that rejects God and embraces evolution.
Government schools are the primary means by which a political system perpetrates itself. The school becomes the vehicle of propaganda and indoctrination that's always favorable to the designs of the power structure.
Some of us remember how efficiently this process worked for Nazi Germany.
No government can continue in power if schools are free to teach from a standard that's at variance with the philosophical position of the government. We have a values-free school system because we have a values-free government. If government rules without God, it's absolutely certain that the schools government controls will teach without God.
No! We don't need to protect public schools. We need to protect our children from public schools.
\ Leonard Martin of Boones Mill is co-owner of an antique shop.
by CNB