Below is a letter written to the editor of the Monroe Watchman in Union, WV.

November 10, 2005. I 'd say Monroe County School Superintendent Lyn Guy has been handed, as she stated in her own words, "a nearly impossible task". In the October 6 issue of the Monroe Watchman she wrote about a strategic planning effort involving more than 150 local citizens. Superintendent Guy is to be commended for her efforts and her faithful reporting in this local newspaper. The challenge for educators according to her report is how to deal with risky behavior more so than math scores, for example. The risky behavior she mentioned included alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, and sexual intercourse among school children.

The following paragraph in Ms. Guy's article can help us put things in proper perspective.

"In most cases these are moral issues that have affected children and adults for a very long time. That our students are participating in risky behaviors that their parents are participating in makes it difficult to convince kids that it's wrong or unhealthy. And those involved in this process evidently believe, true or not, that the adults who are purportedly "in charge" of these students, have somehow neglected the responsibility of parenting."

One of the reasons we have problems in America's public schools is because of the major influences of the NEA, pinheaded college professors, and educrats in Washington, D.C. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that after America's public schools abandoned the three R's in favor of social engineering, and then indoctrinated two generations of people with ideas such as situation ethics, no moral absolutes, political correctness, tolerance, diversity, and multicultural claptrap, plus many other wrongheaded ideologies that we would end up 40 years later with a public school system where risky behavior is perceived as the number one problem. Teachers are not allowed to discipline students, Jesus Christ can not be tolerated, all ideas are equivalent, right and wrong don't exist, truth is what you want it to be, parents don't know what's best, unborn babies are an inconvenience to be tossed into a trash bin, and there is no such thing as sexual perversion. Oh, and we are not supposed to be judgmental as I am doing with this letter. You'll have to excuse this 64-year old white heterosexual Christian male native American (I was born here) because I missed out on the sensitivity training and diversity seminars.

It is a sowing and reaping issue and harvest time has arrived. Since God isn't allowed in public schools all I can say is that anyone working on these problems had better have a pretty good tooth fairy because man, under his own power and intellect, will not fix the public school problems, period. Other than that, I don't have any strong feelings about the matter.

Dennis Rowan

....that letter, of course is....

.........My Biased Opinion