Letter to the Editor

Letter to the editor

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Dear Editor,

It's likely you and I have something in common: we've probably attended at least one of our high school class reunions. High school class reunions are a traditional, widely-shared Idaho and American good time. Old friends, acquaintances and sometimes old rivals gather, often coming from far-flung corners of the world. They meet, eat, drink, dance, and learn about each other's lives as it unfolds. We connect, celebrate and touch the geography of those lives.

The house of memory is the house of meaning, but no memory can exist without the world which gave it life - at a class reunion, the world is an American public school.

Public schools are the single most widely-shared experience in the growth of Americans into contributing citizens. In places like Idaho, where public schools enjoy a modicum of funding and broad public support, they are the anchors of towns and cities. Travel the roads of Idaho, and you will see few poorer and sadder sights than communities whom have lost its public schools.

Those towns have lost their centers - the meaning places and the meeting places - which bring together students, regardless of race, religious persuasion, income level, or capacity. Young people talk together, play, study and learn together under the guiding hand of professionals who have made the development of citizens their life's work.

In the evening hours, school buildings and grounds give double value: they serve as community meeting centers, auditoriums, adult-instruction classrooms, and recreation centers. On election day, they become polling places where young people see adults performing the central ritual of free self-governent: voting.

After graduation, many alumni will never again enjoy an emphasis on their personal enrichment in the company of fellow citizens - their peers. We are Americans. We do not share the same "blood" or ethnicity, religious creed or cultural origins.

Then what does make us Americans? What makes America work?

It is our shared experiences, aspirations and contributions. No other resource in the country can replace the open-enrollment public schools as makers of the community of American people - not charter schools or any of the more or less elitist or corporatist alternatives some advocate for.

Our experiences - at class reunions, on streets in town or in the world of knowledge and wisdom - show us bonds forged in the peoples' schools do not end on graduation day. Public schools stand as the best help in becoming true Americans. They need and deserve our full support. They are, after all, our great meeting place.