Letter: End school socialism in public schools

Ending socialism in our public schools should be the nation's first economic priority. Giving children the chance to answer questions they didn't ask, giving them supplies to complete work they didn't prepare, teaching them lessons they can learn on their own and allowing one person to choose what they are taught (big instruction, we'll call it) all lead to a learned dependency on being instructed and informed rather than finding out the truth for themselves. Firsthand accounting for historic events can come from the private sector. All they have to do is travel to those time-periods.

I'm most concerned with classroom handouts — worksheets that are passed out, unearned and printed by someone else. To teach self-reliance, it's time to stop giving our students the answers to questions they didn't ask; to make them think entirely on their own, write their own textbooks, grade themselves and work on their own. No more of this "helping" or "teamwork" nonsense.

This is the cry of a nation in crisis: Stop socializing the information in our schools, end the teacher handouts and teach students to teach themselves. Then, and only then, will they have a chance to truly succeed and thaw our economic climate.

Kent Redford

Plain City