Dear Editor,
I am confused. Is it education or evolution? Is it teaching or administering? Is it building empires or minds.
The first week or so Mom and I went to the first grade in our one-room palace of learning was uneventful. But the next five years amazed me.
I could listen to eighth grades as they were being taught. Recesses were spent playing marbles or kick the picket. Then we were hauled to school in LaGrange, population 1,100.
Out school superintendent, S.F. Bonney, did not have brains enough to retire, so at age 75 he taught my Latin class in ninth grade. He employed hands on teaching – if you didn't learn he laid hands on. He could recite Spartacus' speech to the slaves in ancient Rome in perfect Latin – must have been a Broadway actor before teaching. I had the honor of going to contest at Kirksville Teachers College that year in Latin and algebra. To enlighten our teacher and administrators Latin is a dead language – not for let's all trade in Newton.
Latin is the soil in which minds are grown. With the exception of a few doctors and attorneys you do not experience criminals conversing in Latin.
The future of America will soon rest on the shoulders of our next generation. Do they know how to read and write? Can they spell and print in upper and lower case? Can they add and subtract, multiply and divide in their mind? Are they being taught the Constitution or Bill of Rights? Are they being taught how very precious is this freedom we enjoy; and that it was envisioned by our forefathers and paid for by shed blood and sacrifice? Do they know our founding fathers read the Bible and that God inspired and helped America become the only truly free nation in the world?
Gary Job
El Dorado
