In the Sept. 29 issue of The Citizen is a letter from H. Dwight Wilson who wants to lay a guilt trip on those who voted against SPLOST. He equates education spending with education excellence.

The U.S. spends more money per student than any other country, and what do we get for it? A third-rate education system where students have difficulty formulating sentences with correctly spelled words. More money will only reward current practices that have been proven to be failures.

Do you take your car to the fanciest, most expensive, repair shop if it is not the best at making repairs? Do you hire the carpenter with the newest tools and best-looking van even though he is not that good as a carpenter? You don't suppose it could be the individuals who, due to their drive, ability and proven performance, we reward with our patronage?

Can you imagine paying a doctor the way we do teachers - “I've done poorly in the past, pay me more money and build me a fancy clinic and I'll (maybe) do better”?

I found Wilson's you've-doomed-our-children invective to be perverse, given that more funding has been proven not to be the answer.

As for not having the most modern computers, what difference does it make if the child cannot formulate a sentence (or parse a complex one), thereby limiting his communications ability, which is, after all, what the computer/Internet revolution is all about.

Silly me, I always thought that the purpose of a primary education was to teach such basic skills and how to learn and reason, not the latest fingerings of a keyboard or mouse button that will be obsolete by the time he graduates.

David Constans
Peachtree City

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