LETTERS: IT'S SCHOOL PAYBACK TIME

To the editor:

It's payback time.

Everyone reading this letter owes a debt of gratitude to a teacher somewhere.

Everyone reading this letter had his or her education paid for by someone else.

Everyone reading this letter had a parent or grandparent who built the schools in which they learned at least the basics of every skill they now possess.

Everyone reading this letter had someone else who paid for the books and supplies and the physical materials which provided the infrastructure by which they now or in the past earned their living.

Everyone reading this letter learned in our schools and homes the basic social mechanics necessary to get ahead in this rough-and-tumble world.

As has been written many times before, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

It's payback time.

At the school election on Tuesday, Cape Girardeau voters will have an opportunity to repay all of those for generations back who have provided us with our education and our livelihoods. We owe them much. It would be gross ingratitude not to repay them for the education they provided us.

But the greatest offense of all would be to deny our children the educational privilege our antecedents gave us. Children are helpless in this matter, yet they are the most deserving. This is a new generation at a time of immense change. They must be -- must be -- educated to meet the changes now and the even greater ones lying ahead as they move on stage in perhaps the most challenging, dangerous time in the history of the world.

Let us not let the children down. Just as our forebears provided us with our education, so it behooves us to do for our children what was done for us. Our buildings are antiquated, long outmoded and certainly not equal to the demands now and ahead of us. It will be expensive. No denying that. It will call for sacrifice on the part of many. Is there a child who is not worth sacrifice? For the sake of a few dollars? I think not.

This of the children, not yourself, when your are in the sanctity of the voting booth Tuesday.

Vote yes on the issues.

JOHN L. BLUE

Cape Girardeau