Political Correctness Is Dumbing Down US Public Education

To the Editor:

Another case of educational idiocy appeared in the news recently. Public schools in Reston, Wash., have barred Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn from their reading lists because it uses racial language common to the times. Twain was a racial liberal for his times but portrayed the world as it was in the 19th Century. Still, public schoolchildren have been denied access to one of the greatest literary works ever written.

A invocation at a educational public meet in California may not use the name of Jesus Christ. A blind student in Illinois was suspended for three days for reading the Bible at lunch to students who asked him to read aloud what he was reading with his fingers. He also was given a zero because he included a reference to religious music in a class speech. A school bus driver in New York was fired for witnessing to a student when he answered the student’s question about religion and gave him a Bible. A student in Utah was unconstitutionally told to cover his Bible when he brought it to school. Students in Missouri were told they may not pray over meals or put out Gospel tracts in school.

The dumbing down of US public schools is continuing. The United States used to be No. 1 in the world in education, but now we are at the bottom rung of all the industrialized countries. This is another good reason for home schooling.

If you want to get a better grasp on what’s happening in public schools, read Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto, and The Fall of the Ivory Tower, by George Roche. They will open your eyes.

Marcel LeRoi

474 South Flathill Road, Southbury                      January 19, 2004