School funding
I write to thank the Ledger-Transcript for last week’s article on the case to appear before the state supreme court on the funding of public education. The article reminds us of two principles that have supported this republic for 250 years. First, generations of Americans have created and supported public education so that coming generations will acquire the skills to participate as informed citizens in this democracy. Second, the article, with its carefully researched analysis of the arguments over public school funding to come, reminds us of the important service newspapers perform in informing and thereby invigorating the democracy.
For a moment, we might imagine a time when citizens lack the education to participate in the public sphere and when they no longer have newspapers that serve to inform. The guarantees written into constitutions and bills of rights become pieces of paper easily discarded and forgotten. Our forebears imagined such a world and acted accordingly.