Readers write: Students' rights versus parents' rights

Dissecting school choice

As I read the cover story in the March 27 Monitor Weekly (“ABCs and GOP”) I was interested in the political tension between rural and urban Texas. I grew up in a small town in one of the poorest counties in Florida. Each time I read the phrase “school choice,” I remember that our town had only one elementary, one junior high, and one high school. Black and white parents, rich and poor, had no other option, and we students did just fine.

“School choice,” “parental choice,” and “home schooling” are solutions in search of a problem – the “problem” being the forced integration of public schools (my town only integrated schools in 1968, according to my mother). Reporter Henry Gass noted the many shortcomings of diverting public funds to private education, including lack of accountability, fiscal limitations, and lax performance standards. But he avoided asking the hard question that would reveal the true motivation of these policies.

I applaud the Monitor’s recent efforts to expand your writers and editors to better reflect the diversity that is the United States of America. Let’s hope that this eventually results in deeper analysis of the many ways that America’s “original sin” continues to undermine public education, public health – indeed almost every facet of our lives.

Rusty Wyrick
Ghivizzano, Italy

Children’s rights in education

Recent articles about parents bills of rights – including “32 states and counting: Why parents bills of rights are sweeping US,” published in the April 10 Monitor Weekly – discuss the balance between school and parents in defining what constitutes an appropriate education. But I am dismayed by the lack of mention of the rights of the students. As humans mature they should be having increasing control over their own lives. Particularly by high school, students should have the right to give input into their education.  

We have laws allowing teens to make autonomous decisions about health care, especially as it relates to birth control and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. If teens are felt to be able to make these important decisions, shouldn’t they be allowed to make decisions about their courses in school?  

The only way we have a population capable of making informed decisions is by practicing decision-making of increasing importance as we age and gain experience.

Carol Blackwood
Chester, Vermont

Where are the parents?

It may seem strange to some – I am 81 years old – but my parents always knew what I was learning in school. Kindergarten through high school. They went to the PTA, talked to the teachers, and knew what books I was reading. At the dinner table, we talked about politics, history, literature, and science. They were plain working-class folks. 

I find it strange that in all the years children have been in school, parents have no idea what they have been studying. My parents took me to the public library. There were some books I could not take out until I was older.

Who is taking these little ones to the public library, I would like to know, and how are they getting into books parents don’t want them to read? Where are the parents then? At the same time, why do some parents think just because they don’t want their child to read a book that they have the right to deny my child the right to read it?

I trust teachers. They work hard and don’t get paid nearly enough. If a person doesn’t want their child to be educated in the public school system, home-school them.

Jacquelyn D. Weddington
Greenville, South Carolina