Scorn for Education

As a parent of three school-age children, I think I have a sense of what the problem is with our schools. I’m afraid it goes much deeper than any Band-Aid reforms can help.

We have an essential scorn for education in this country. Intellectual politicians rarely remain popular. Our heroes are sports figures. Poetry, theater, art and music are the province of an elite few and are not supported by either the people or the government. The value of thinking for thinking’s sake and learning for learning’s sake is completely alien to us. We want only external results. We don’t want to be enlightened.

My children have attended both public and private schools and I have learned that the school does not make the kid. My children got out of both experiences what they put in. But in both places, the children who were studious or academically gifted or talented in some way (other than in sports) were the nerds, the outcasts. It’s a struggle as a parent to convince a child that education has a value when the entire society is working against you.

VICTORIA E. KERRIGAN

Pacific Palisades