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Public education is our future
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If ever there was a time in our state’s and nation’s history to have a populace that is educated, this is it. Issues, events and yes, greed, have produced almost unprecedented dilemmas to be solved.
This letter is specifically about the choice in District 3 to elect a man for state senate who knows how crucial public education is. Marshall Meadors’ primary concern is the support and improvement of education for all South Carolina young people. That means public education. His opponent, Sen. Kevin Bryant, openly supports vouchers and tax credits for parents whose children go to private school or are home-schooled. (He and his wife home-school their children.)
Americans, over the past two centuries, have created the most extensive array of public schools in the world. Our schools are for all our youth, not just the privileged as in France and Britain. American society is multi-class, multi-ethnic. Our students are “democratized” as they rub shoulders with each other in the classroom. We must maintain this laboratory of our democracy at all costs.
Thomas Jefferson said in 1810: “I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1) that of general education, to enable every man to judge to himself what will secure or endanger his freedom; 2) to divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school.”
I rest my case with Jefferson and Meadors.
Margo Cooke, Anderson
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Our model of public education is not a "laboratory of our democracy," it is a one size fits all system that is obsolete at best and broken at worst. On average, the more educated a students parents are in South Carolina, the further behind his peers he scores on the SAT. Half the students in South Carolina will not graduate on time. The current K-12 system is ruining the future of our students ability to be competitive in a global economy.
We need to tap into the passion and creativity of the best teachers to reinvent K-12 education. We need the diversity of education alternatives to reflect the diversity of our students. An essential part of any system that will lead us to world-class education for our children is having money follow the students to empower the best and brightest teachers to create alternatives that meet their distinctive needs.
Since Meadors primary concern is education, he should run for State Superintendent of Education. Keep him out of the Senate though because he's campaigning on raising taxes. Do you want a liberal managing the budget?
Meadors education plan is the same failed plan we have had for years. He is a Jim Rex and the Democratic controlled education systems puppet.
Atleast Bryant has come up with an idea that could help our education system. Meadors is just the same old tired failed philosophy.
I wouldn't mind paying school Taxes if there was a set standard. But SC is in with the Lowest in the nation. Most of the students don't care and only go because they are made to go. But as for the ones that want to learn, They deserve all they can get, I don't mind paying. But the rest of them it is just another waste of our tax money. There is students that Graduate and can't read,no math,JUST DON'T CARE. As far as Meadors he don't need to be in SC period.
I, for one, am not a supporter of the state of our public schools today. Kids do learn at different levels and for the education system here to group them all together, based on age is horrid and the people who say it is okay to put them together need to be strung up. I will say that everyone is not equal, everyone is unique. Some people are more analytical and others are more creative...some excel in math and others in creative writing. Everyone has their own talent, but when everyone is grouped together, talent is hidden or supressed and the less gifted pull the more gifted down. This needs to change and soon. I don't mind paying for the schools, and have five kids myself, but mixing the kids, in my opinion, may make some take less desirable paths than they would if they were appropriately grouped. If the ones in charge don't care enough to do their job right, how do we expect the students to do their job right? Just a thought, and "Thank God for Mississippi" :)
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