Editorial cartoon dead wrong about public education

Published: 03-29-2023 6:43 PM

I was shocked and disappointed to see this morning’s cartoon on the opinion page [“The case for school choice,” March 29], which represents public education as a brutal purveyor of indoctrination from which parents must frantically try to extract their children.

This is a profound misrepresentation of the situation, and does serious damage to one of our most essential American institutions. 

For more than three centuries, free, open public schools have been the foundation of American democracy. Millions of children, in public schools across the country, have been given the opportunity to develop the ability to think critically by examining the sometimes uncomfortable complexities of U.S. and world history, and from the study of science and mathematics.

Their minds have been opened and their lives enriched through their introduction to literature, and they have discovered their own creativity from experiences in art and music. 

Rather than “indoctrination,” what public education makes possible is the kind of freedom that relies on the ability to tell truth from lies, and on an informed understanding of the physical, social and political challenges facing the world today. Public education needs to be protected from the assault it is under from those who fear a critically astute population, not mocked and savaged.

Suzy Q. Groden

Hawley

The writer is a retired educator.

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