Dear Editor:
How long are we taxpayers going to accept being forced to finance irresponsibility? Many of us can remember when our schools functioned fine with minimal help of bureaucrats from the state.
My formal education for grades one through seven occurred in a one-room school where one teacher, no aides, was responsible for educating an average of 30 children, grades kindergarten through eight.
The quality of my education was such that I had no problem graduating from college with a four-year engineering degree. Of course I was fortunate, I had parents and relatives who valued an education.
More state oversight, and control, of local Missouri schools is being proposed. This will undoubtedly add more people to the state payroll as well as some type of compliance officer at local schools (someone has to fill out all the additional paperwork, and then read and compile it.)
The only reason we taxpayers need to pay the salaries of these additional bureaucrats is because we refuse to hold people accountable for their actions. What is wrong with parents being responsible for the education of their children? That should not be a concept that startles, it worked fine for years.
Do state politicians believe that parents are too ignorant to monitor the education of their children? I suspect that the truth of the matter is that, in the problem localities, parents can't be bothered to do so, and we taxpayers end up paying someone else to do the job of parents, just as we do for Head Start programs, etc. (The government's own study of Head Start has shown that within just a few years all gains made by children in the program have evaporated.) It is just easier for politicians to wring their hands and lament the need for bigger government than it is for them to demand people be responsible.
Is there no one at the state or federal level who will speak out about the lack of personal responsibility that pervades our nation? As long as we taxpayers are willing to meekly hand over our money to pay for programs (or allow the federal government to continue to borrow insane amounts), the need for which is justified by the irresponsibility of others, these programs will continue to grow. I urge you to write your state senator and representative on this issue.