Re: Student's opinion of Bush, education shows disrespect, letter by Michelle R. Keller, Aug. 6.
I'm not sure where this writer's attitude comes from, but I am sure she doesn't spend much time with teenagers or listen to their views on public matters. She does not realize that kids today are forced to develop adult ideas and attitudes at a younger age.
The writer implies that only those who pay property taxes have a right to criticize the government. This elitist attitude is both morally deficient and illegal (poll taxes were outlawed years ago). This attitude also ignores that kids have to pay Florida's sales tax (the backbone of Florida's tax system) and that they do make a significant contribution to public funding.
The writer is so patronizing that it is scary. In her world, kids can read about public events but should be banned from discussing their views in public. What hogwash! The kids in our schools are better equipped to know the effects of Gov. Jeb Bush's budget bombs than any adult who only reads about things in the paper. I would bet that the letter writer has not visited a public school in years, yet she feels arrogant enough to put down a kid who is actually suffering the consequences of Jeb's follies.
The writer says that the youth who wrote the original letter was disrespectful. Actually, he was being polite. He did not write, as I will, that Jeb Bush is a liar and a cheat who has so politicized our schools that we'll spend decades trying to get back to a workable system. Nor did that teenager write that Jeb Bush is worse than pond scum for the way he sells Florida's environmental heritage to the highest bidder. The kid was polite enough to omit mention that Jeb Bush is vandalizing all of the building blocks of our state government just so he can climb the national political ladder.
No, lady, the teenager who wrote that letter was fairly respectful.
People like the author of the referenced letter tried to shut out our teenage voices in the '70s. Guess what? It didn't work then and it won't work now. In one or two years the teenager the author rips will be of voting age. He'll have an opinion then that counts for more than any newspaper letter - he'll be able to vote.
-- Doug Carter, Palm Harbor
Private schools aren't better, just treated like it
Re: Student's opinion of Bush, education shows disrespect, letter by Michelle R. Keller, Aug. 6.
I doubt the young man meant any disrespect in his words about education. I guess it was just his frustration in what he sees happening.
By the way, I pay taxes and observe from the sidelines what the current state administration does, so blatantly, in the name of education. I've read the word "accountability" in the paper concerning public and private schools. Maybe I'm wrong, but the way I see it, public education, in this administration's term, is slated for a spot on the endangered species list. Give them enough time, and extinction sounds like the next step.
I've said it before: Level the playing field and then show me that public schools are that inferior to private.
-- Joseph Brickman, Largo
[Last modified August 10, 2003, 04:12:16]
