LETTERS: GOVERNMENT ISN'T ABLE TO `PUT KIDS TOGETHER'

To the editor:

I recently was in the fair city of Sikeston for an education debate. Sen. Peter Kinder and author Peg Luksik faced off against a state school board members and your representative.

The reason I am writing this letter is to address what a local school board member said at the end of the meeting. She told a real sweet story about a little boy and his dad. In this story, the dad made a puzzle from a picture of the world in a magazine. The little boy put the picture together by looking at the kids on the back. He new what the kids looked like, so he could put them together. She ended the story with this morale: That's all we are trying to do -- put the kids together.

The biggest problem I see here is that the government cannot even put itself together, and I am sure most parents do not want the government to put their kids together. School should quit trying to take over the job of the parents. I've heard arguments that schools have to take over because families are doing a terrible job. Schools need to clean up their own houses before moving into our private homes. They can barely do the job they were created to do. Schools were created to educate children in reading, writing and math. When they leave that rack to become family, every child loses. The children at risk lose twice. They don't have a good family at home, and now they don't have a school to give them a good education to help break the cycle. The normal child loses also. He still has a family but no education.

As a last-minute note to the state school board member that could not find a definition for outcome-based education, even in Bill Spady's books (Spady is the father of OBE): Don't look for definitions from Spady. He told a national talk-show host he doesn't even know what patriotism is. Peg Luksik gave a beautiful definition of OBE at the meeting, so I will quote from book "Outcome-Based Education, the State's Assault on Our Children's Values." "What's one difference between a traditional classroom and an outcome-based class? One teaches ideas; the other mandates that a child demonstrate he accepts those ideas." When asked, "Don't you want us to make your children believe democracy is better than totalitarianism," the reply is, "No. I want classes to teach that democracy is better than totalitarianism. But once you mandate my child believe it, that is totalitarianism." Think about it.

VERONICA HUNT

West Plains