26 July 2001 
 
As is customary, I received money for my birthday from my grandparents.  Usually, 
I don't do anything special with birthday money - just cash it and attribute the 
money to some usual purchase of books.  This time, however, partly prompted by my 
extreme disgust over the current direction of =Scientific American= and disgust 
over my old issues of =Free Inquiry= (which I have been divesting myself of), I 
decided to try out a new magazine -- =First=Things=.  This is a magazine started 
by Richard Neuhaus (I think that's how he spells his last name), a Roman Catholic 
priest (and former Lutheran, but more on that later), ostensibly to talk about 
the intertwining of religious and public issues, but it's so much more.  In many 
ways, it's a magazine about philosophy more than anything else.  However, to 
those at the more "liberal" Catholic publications, like =Commonweal= and 
=America=, =First Things= is a bastion of traditional, conservative Catholic 
thought.  The truth is, when the editors of FT pick articles according to 
ideology, the quality suffers.  This past issue had a great article about Auden 
and the limits of poetry, in which I ended with more respect for my favorite 
poet.  There was also deep philosophical consideration of beginnings and 
endings, the process of creation, and the like.  It doesn't make for easy reading 
often, but it's not meaningless gibble-gabble.  Usually. 
 
You see, there was one essay in particular in my current issue that was just so 
much political puffery; I fear the writer totally misread his prospective 
audience.  Those who read FT do not lack in logical skills; don't think that 
readers will look kindly on an essay simply because they agree with the opinions 
being expressed.  In fact, I get more ticked off by stupid pieces by people 
espousing concepts =I= hold dear.  The following letter addresses an opinion 
piece I actually =don't= agree with, but the stupidity got me really angry.  I 
expect this kind of crap in newspapers and in contentless partison rags, not such 
a piece of work as FT. 
 
Anyway, if you want to see what kind of pissy letters-to-the-editor I produce, see the below: 
 
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I am greatly disappointed to see such an essay as "Putting Parents in Charge" in 
the Aug/Sept issue.  Actually, I'm more angry than disappointed to see such a 
contentless waste-of-space, because of the high quality of the rest of the pieces 
in your magazine. 
 
"Putting Parents in Charge" is one of those feel-good statements which a writer 
knows one cannot refute without sounding like an unreasonable extremist. However, 
it seems that several important issues are glossed over, most specifically 
extreme vagueness when it comes to the historical and economic arguments. 
 
Where shall I begin?  How about the statement "For the first 230 years of our 
history, parents, not government, were in charge.  Competition kept quality high 
and costs low.  Competence in reading, writing, and arithmetic was nearly 
universal at the time of the American Revolution."  It's difficult to dispute the 
first statement, but the second sentence is laughable.  The costs were low 
because almost universally =the mother= taught her children at home.  High 
quality?  Well, that was restricted to how well the mother could teach, but it 
was not likely for her to get her children to achieve the 3R's, as that was all 
that was required of a literate person of the time.  Children were educated to be 
able to read the Bible, as well as keep household accounts.  None were expected 
to learn algebra or geometry - addition, subtraction, division, and 
multiplication sufficed in math.  Children were expected to write letters to 
family and friends once they got older, not essays on the monologues of Hamlet. 
In the cases there was a "choice" to be made, in that there was a school as an 
alternative to a mother's lessons, the teacher was boarded around the 
neighborhood, given a salary that would not sustain him or her otherwise, and who 
taught lessons not much farther than what was previously learned at mother's 
knee.  Of course, homeschooling, the ultimate in putting parents in charge of 
their children's education and the historical model which worked for 230 years, 
is legal and practiced in all 50 states.  You wouldn't know that from Mr. 
Forstmann's essay. 
 
What Mr. Forstmann seems to ignore is that there is more educational choice 
available now to parents than ever before.  There are the traditional public 
schools, magnet public schools, the new movement of charter schools, religious 
schools, and secular private schools.  I, myself, am a product of the public 
school system, benefitting from movements for educational enrichment in the 
summer and magnet schools (I went to the North Carolina School of Science and 
Mathematics (NCSSM), a public boarding school in Durham, NC).  NCSSM even reaches 
out beyond its buildings to distance learning.  I buy lectures from the Teaching 
Company about anatomy, Chaucer, math, and the history of the English Language (at 
a very reasonable price, I might add).  There are web sites like "How Stuff 
Works" (howstuffworks.com), which explains topics from how MP3 players work to 
how kidneys work; what with libraries across the nation having public internet 
access, this kind of free education is available to almost everyone.  I am 
supposed to think that parental choice in education is lacking? 
 
Of course, all this talk of "parental choice" is really another term for 
"vouchers"; a non-controversial way to term this would be to explain what is 
intended with vouchers - to have government provide the money for education, 
however people want to spend it for their children's education.  I'm sure there 
is a case to be made for these type of vouchers, but trying to make historical 
claims and claims to limitation of educational choice is disingenuous.  If we 
went back to the "old" model, in which parents were in charge, and government had 
no control over education, then we would be in the old situation in which parents 
have to pay for any education outside the home.  The other part of the old model 
is, of course, private benefactors who set up schools in their towns, and there 
are currently private organizations which raise money to pay for private school 
and college for deserving students.  It's obvious that Mr. Forstmann is not 
advocating getting rid of the =government funding= side of education, simply the 
=goverment running= side.  As it is, parents have plenty of choice over their 
children's education, but now instead of one free choice, homeschooling, they 
have a plethora of free choices: public schools, magnet schools, charter schools, 
and homeschooling. 
 
In any case, I suppose the editors ran the piece because Mr. Forstmann founded 
the Children's Scholarship Fund; for his initiative's sake, he should have had 
someone with more facts and better arguments to write the piece or put this essay 
in an entirely different magazine.  The lack of facts and logic stand out in 
stark contrast to the other, excellent articles in the magazine.  The editors did 
Mr. Forstmann a disservice in printing this essay.