LETTERS: POLITICS OF EDUCATION

To the editor:

For years American education was the envy of the world. Then, in the last fourscore years, pied pipers introduced revised history, modernized math, dumbed-down science etc.

The first of the radical changes was to replace time-tested phonics with more profitable but less effective non-phonics. Now this whole-language experiment is in some 85 percent of our classrooms and has given us an education that, when compared academically with other nations, is a national embarrassment.

On a cost-effective basis alone, a rational, informed person could not support the continued use of this whole-language experiment.

Our schools, once run by school boards responsive to parents, have been consolidated and regimented with control slipping from school to district to state to federal levels resulting in one massive government monopoly influenced by a political horde under the guise of education unions.

A society is judged by the treatment given to those least able to fend for themselves. After the right to life is the right to learn, and the monopoly seems intent to limit the learning of the very young.

Education has been politicized, and we must resort to politics to restore it to local control.

At some point it will take just one more person prodding one more public official to do the right thing and restore phonics to our classrooms. Are you that person?

JOE BLUME

St. Louis