Wednesday, October 11, 2000

How unfortunate that you deemed it necessary to publish a letter in your Oct. 4 edition which took one incident and turned it into an indictment of the Fayette County School System. As I read it, I could not help but believe that the writer used it solely to state a position with the politically correct terminology of an agenda he has chosen to believe, adopt and promote.

I speak, of course, of the letter in which the writer charged that the local school system has failed because he encountered students who could not (or did not) tell him what important event occurred on Dec. 7, 1941.

I believe if he had visited my high school during my senior year of 1962-63, he still could have found some students who could not tell him what happened on that date. That would have been the case even though Pearl Harbor was only 21 years removed and World War II was still vivid in the minds of most Americans.

I also believe that had he asked students of that time when the assassination of the Archduke of Austria occurred, igniting World War I, an event roughly in the same time frame from 1962 as 1941 is from 2000, he would have found more students who could not answer that question.

Yet the writer decided to go so far as to use this one encounter to surmise and lay blame on the local school system and "Washington, D.C. [which tells] us how to educate our young people." I guess he was unaware that state government has plenty of input, as evidenced by the school reforms passed here in Georgia earlier this year. Apparently, he forgot that this highly conservative county elects its own school board, which certainly has a major say about what we teach in the Fayette County school system.

Here are just a few examples that dispel the myth that his letter tried to present:

* Fayette County Schools rank among the highest in the state in SAT scores, criteria that universities nationwide use to select incoming students based on academic skills.

* The Fayette County High School academic team, one which encounters many questions much tougher than "What happened Dec. 7, 1941?", ranks high yearly in regional and national competition.

* Fayette County High School has earned the prestigious titles of Georgia School of Excellence and National Blue Ribbon School, honors bestowed upon only a few schools each year.

* Nineteen students at Starr's Mill High School were recognized by the College Board for their exceptional scores on last year's AP exams, examples of success from college level courses taught in Fayette County high schools.

In the local school system, students also learn cognitive and critical thinking skills. For example, when reading "The Scarlet Letter," they recognize that perhaps a hidden sin, like that of the Reverend Dimmesdale's, causes more anguish than a publicly acknowledged one, like Hester Prynne's. They learn that the unwillingness to forgive, as personified by Roger Chillingsworth, can be a greater sin than that committed by the Rev. Dimmesdale and Hester. They learn that humans can often be cruel enough to punish those innocent of the sin, such as the daughter Pearl.

Fayette County students also are quite capable of making judgments on their own. For example, in my ninth grade English classes, many students agree with one possible premise concerning the story of Romeo and Juliet, that dying for something one loves is a sign of integrity. But many of these same students point out that committing suicide for that love, which Romeo and Juliet do, is not a sign of integrity.

Fayette County students also learn at least one other important life skill. They learn that one should do thorough, comprehensive research before jumping ... oops! sorry! wrong word ... coming to a conclusion.

Harry E. Fitch

English teacher

Fayette County High School

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