Don't be a 'useful idiot'

Editor,

I have been attending school board meetings for a number of years. While I am convinced that each board member is a sincere dedicated individual, I have less and less hope for the future of public education. As one board member said at a meeting, they spend very little time discussing anything that really matters.

The latest example of this is the emphasis they are placing on the hiring of a new superintendent. Even to the point of spending tax dollars to hire someone to tell them how to do it. The reality is that, under our present system, they could probably go out in the street and hire the first person they saw with little or no effect on the quality of education. Our board members have become little more than pawns of the government. As long as we pursue dumbing down federal programs with high sounding names such as no child left behind, race to the top, and common core, education is not likely to improve. Aside from the fact that there is no constitutional authority for the federal government to be involved in public education, no federal program has ever improved education.

Vladimir Lenin of The Soviet Union had a name for people who enacted and embraced his programs without understanding the real agenda behind them. He called them useful idiots. I believe that we have too many well meaning people on our school boards and in our city, county and state governments that are unwitting useful idiots to an ever increasingly over reaching federal government.

Carl Lee

Encampment