As far as remedial classes, I must belong in those classes as well because I am STILL trying to figure out why the government has anything to do with the education process. I trying to find the document the Founding Fathers drafted that stated it was the governments responsibility to educate its people. I must be missing a document on my wall. Lets see I have a copy of The Declaration of Indep…..hmm. I have a copy of The Constitution….hmm. I even have a copy of the Gettysburg Address…hmm. No! It’s official, I must be missing one. Maybe it’s in the Magna Carta. I got it! It must be in Hillarity Clinton’s insightfull book called, “It Takes A Village Idiot…..”

Mr. Senator your words make complete sense because they are backed by sound truth and good ol fashioned logic. The man you addressed, however, will never choose to agree with what you’re saying because the above metioned book by the above mentioned Village Idiot is I’m sure proudly displayed on his bookshelf.

Here are the values that made America great and the ones that “e-mail Steve” seems to have forgotten (though he may not have even heard of them in our modern government schools):

1. Governments do not raise children, parents raise children.
2. Increased spending has decreased education effectiveness over the last 60 or so years. I would like to hear “e-mail Steve” objectivly explain to us why we continue to press a failed policy.
3. Truly successful businessmen and leaders-of-men were those who broke the mold and convinced others to follow them.
4. Student dedication is the ONLY clear path to success in school and life. The schools’ job is to guide this, not direct it.
5. School is not the means to success, but a tool to that end.
6. Federal MANDATES? This is the very thing our founding fathers warned us against and the very thing threatening the esablishment of the Constitution (read the Federalist Papers).
7. Our Government was meant only to give everyone a level playing field, not a “chicken in every pot”.
8. Finally, directly applicable to schools, administration does nothing to advance education, only students can do that. Parents and teachers are influencial here, but no part of administration is.

I guess what I am saying is that I would rather see us fail or succeed as individuals pulling for a common goal, not as slaves bowing to a common master. I would rather be a poor free man than a rich slave. Freedon is a gift that the Constitution bestowed upon our posterity, as Franklin said “if we can keep it”. People like “e-mail Steve” send the clear message that freedom takes more than a Revolution, it takes care and feeding by a populace to prevent the rotting from within indicated by the clear subservient attitude of “e-mail Steve”’s letter. When I think of “e-mail Steve”, it reminds me of the Borg from Star Trek (the Borg were a race of people who only did what they were told to do and were kept in a state of suspended animation at other times). I, for one, will die before I become an “e-mail Steve”, but that attitude seems to be fading from the American fabric.

Thank you for this forum. I notice that many of your respondents foray into debate, though some of it is not honest debate. Nevertheless, if we do not discuss it, our society will go the way of other democracies and degenerate into a form of dictatorship.