Home of Today’s Common Sense

Published - Brownsville Herald 7/27/2003
I just read the viewpoint of Justin Raines entitled “Reasons why taxes going up” with pleasure. Though I don’t agree with the basic arguments raised, I was indeed impressed with the articulate description of his point of view and the amount of work that obviously went into the commentary.
The points raised were substantially, that we have to pay more local taxes to make education better, because the federal government will not give us more money, and that the federal government would be able to do that if the rich would pay more in taxes.
Of the most critical importance to us here in Brownsville at this moment are two positions that I can support easily: You can indeed change things with your vote (if you vote and most don’t) and helping schools to effectively provide a good education is helping yourself and the community as a whole.
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In considering the many articles on education, it would seem that much of the cost and workload of education comes from documenting the programs mandated by our State and Federal benefactors when they give us money. I recently read that it can cost as much as twice the benefit to administer it at the different levels of government. Perhaps it would be better to do away with State and Federal Funding with their accompanying mandates, assuming of coarse a equivalent reduction in tax at those levels. Read the rest of this entry »

Clarification of Sunday Opinion
When I read the article entitled Focus on Teachers, Sunday July 5, I was disturbed at the statement “More money only improves the good programs and initiatives; it does not make stars out of dung.” It could be inferred that some our children are dung. “Oh, that was me that said that!” Shame on me for a lack of clarity, I am sure that some of my former students at U.T.B. are pleased to see that “Clear, concise and persuasive” can be forgotten in the passion of the subject, even by the instructor.
What was meant was that some if not many of the formal programs are little more than dung, that only provide jobs for administrators to “coordinate” them. In fact many programs do little; it is the teacher who stirs the interest in education and self-betterment in the child, even when the family, cannot spend enough time, as they must work just to provide for a survival existence.
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