I’m writing in support of two letters to the editor from March 8, one by Jeanne Dietsch (“Education is not all about tests”) and a second by John Zavgren (“Voucher movement undermines the common good”).
I offer this quote from Yuval Noah Harari’s latest book “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” – “People increasingly believe that the immense systems established more than a century ago to strengthen the nation should actually serve the happiness and well-being of individual citizens. We are not here to serve the state – it is here to serve us. The right to the pursuit of happiness, originally envisaged as a restraint of state power, has imperceptibly morphed into the right to happiness – as if human beings have a natural right to be happy, and anything which makes us dissatisfied is a violation of our basic human rights, so the state should do something about it.”
Thus, some parents might say, “I want ‘X’ kind of education for my child(ren), and you should change the subjects and/or the way you teach,” and “You must subsidize my choice to send my children to private school.”
You have the ability to choose public or private school for your children. Your personal choice is not the responsibility of taxpayers or state/national funding support. Corporatizing our schools and whitewashing history are contributing to the decay of truth and splits apart a larger sense of community. Advocates for various types of segregation subsequently increase the potential for conflict; witness intense contention at some school board meetings. Paraphrasing Dietsch, is this what we truly want? Not me!
Lee Bruder
Hancock