Dear Editor:

As has been said, there are three parts to every well crafted story, and that includes the institutional establishment of public education in our country:

First Part: Horace Mann, one of America’s early socialists, fittingly originated the idea of "public education": mandatory attendance, standardized pedagogy, and coerced community participation by virtue of local taxes providing funding, with the noble aims of eliminating public illiteracy, violence and vice.

Second Part: John Dewey, America’s most famous educator, corrupted Mann’s noble vision by replacing subject matter mastery with "self esteem" and "equality" as the primary goals.

Third Part: President Kennedy (D), solely by executive order, paved the way for public sector collective bargaining, thus opening the door to today’s public school monopoly and its politically powerful teachers’ unions, which share a bed with their co-dependent Democrat Party legislators.

A note of caution: don’t think for a minute that this story is in any way concluded, especially if Trump and DeVos continue the writing of it.

Phil Molvar
Southport