Letter: Unification hurts schools (March 15)
On Friday, March 5, Bob Christiansen wrote a letter to the editor regarding our existing school system. He suggested we eliminate unification. What an excellent idea. He said that when he went to school, California had the best schools in the nation, and they weren’t unified schools. How true. Unification was the beginning of the end of our school system.
I also went to school prior to unification. I went to Alpha Grammar School in Madera, which at that time was out in the country on Avenue 11 1/2 and Road 25 1/2. All we had were two teachers and a part-time custodian.
Mrs. Dan taught grades 1 through 4 and Mrs. Chalfant was the principal and taught grades 5 through 8. Mr. Bill Bare was the custodian. We only had two rooms, so grades 1 through 4 were all together in one room and grades 5 through 8 were together in the other room.
We had approximately 80 children year in and year out, with only two teachers. Discipline in the classroom was excellent, because the teachers did not have any politically correct rules to follow. Also they had the authority to discipline. If you got out of line, you got a slap. I know this for a fact because in the eighth grade I was the recipient of one. And by the way, I never told my parents about that because I would have gotten worse at home. Times sure have changed. Today the courts would probably be jam-packed with lawsuits.
We had a cross-section of children in Alpha. There were Irish, German, African, Mexican, Italian, English, French and Japanese, and we all got along fine. We played together and studied together. Of course that was before unification, bussing kids from one school to another and before our government started trying to legislate love.
A few of the subjects they taught us were arithmetic, grammar, spelling, history, (unrevised) geography, civics and others — all things that were important to prepare us to grow up to become independent productive citizens and not dependent on the government.
Mr. Christiansen’s suggestion of eliminating unification is right on target.
If I may, I would like to take this one step further and suggest we shut down government schools altogether and go to a voucher system for private schools. This would serve three prime purposes. One, it would save an unbelieveable amount of taxpayer dollars. Two, private schools would give our children a better education. And last but not least, it would eliminate the school unions and their interference with our children’s education.
The first outcries for the opponents, mainly school union heads and others in the movement to dumb down our kids, would be there are not enough private schools and what would happen to the teachers? First, with this free-enterprise system we have in this great country, private schools would spring up overnight.
Second, the good teachers — and we have many good teachers — would be gobbled up by the private schools.
Now, how would we save that unbelieveable amount of taxpayers’ money? Simple. Private schools can operate for less than half of government schools and still make a profit. Profit, that dirty word that makes the socialists’ knees jerk.
The Madera Unified School District would probably fess up to a cost of about $9,000 per child per year with very little of that going into the classroom. If the real truth were known, it’s probably closer to $12,000 per child per year. In some other California school districts the cost is much higher!
When our great grandson was living with us, we sent him to a private school in Madera for four years. The last year he was there we paid only $2,700. That was about four years ago. It’s probably a little more now. He got an excellent education and they had excellent teachers.
It’s something worth thinking about, isn’t it? Of course if you don’t care about your tax dollars being wasted and your children getting an inferior education then in that case don’t worry about it.
Sam Pistoresi,
Madera
