There Are No Simple Solutions to Problems of School Financing

The Times editorial “There Is No Substitute for a Good Teacher” (April 17) highlights one of the major dilemmas of our society and, by extension, elicits serious questions about our concerns, as a nation, as a state, as communities of families and individuals.

Many of us crave the “quick fix,” the convenient solution, the “bottom line.” We give lip service to noble assertions packaged in handsome panaceas for “public” consumption but, still, we are nagged by all these dysfunctions witnessed in our daily lives. The evidence is there, every day, in our news media.

There is yet another crisis in one of our major institutions. Public school education is threatened by a restricted budget. Schools need money, we are told.

I would like to suggest that the lack of money for our schools, as with the other of the societal crises which we face--poverty, homelessness, crime, violence, health care, unemployment, child abuse, etc.--may, in the end, be all attributed to a failure in education.

These are very real symptoms of deep contradictions in our lives. We are shocked when one or another of our supposed leaders or officials is exposed as being dishonest. Yet, these same people were largely beneficiaries of a “good” education.

What I am suggesting is an examination of the values that are the foundation of all we think and do. Each individual must do this alone. I am not talking about being aroused, somewhat vicariously, by a politician’s speech, a minister’s sermon or a newspaper’s editorial, but about an interior search for what is utmost in life.

Ironically, it is one of the major sources of guidance in this area which we threaten if the schools are not actively supported--the teacher. Without the capacity for self-examination that education must foster, we are doomed to perpetuate human suffering.

CHARLES E. HACKWITH, JR.

San Clemente