Education is parents' responsibility

Your series on education and children from low income families was interesting, but, I am afraid, that it really didn't offer anything new. Families with greater means have always used those means, either financial or cultural, to enhance the education of their own children and often the children of those less fortunate.

Your series identifies certain schools with high numbers of "low income" students that appear to produce a higher percentage of academic achievers than other schools with students from similar backgrounds. Why should this be? Is it faculty dedication, higher per pupil spending, school administration, or something else? Your series only raises questions.

There are other issues which your series completely ignores such as how U.S. immigration policy has impacted achievement in our schools (and, for that matter, the taxes required for other things such as medical care and welfare). Even more important, you ignore completely what the disintegration of the traditional family has done not only to education, but to the welfare of children.

I submit the following principles, perhaps ideals, which, when pursued, will not only help the education of children, but a great deal more beyond it.

First, parents have the primary responsibility for the education and welfare of their children. This works best when children are raised in a loving family with both a father and a mother. Marriage, the lifelong relationship of one man and one woman defines family. "Family" does not define "marriage" as many confused people, including Illinois lawmakers and our former governor, propose.

Even before that, the family has the primary responsibility for nurturing and providing for the children. This includes the basic necessities of food and clothing. Because of this, marriage requires that those who enter into it to have addressed the basic skills required to provide for the family and its offspring.

Our schools and government should assist and not replace the family in this responsibility. Neither should be using its resources to promote the destruction of the family as in encouraging fatherless families through subsidy. Although perhaps not intended, this, nevertheless, is the legacy of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" and the concepts of "entitlement" and "welfare state" which followed.

Charles E. Glomski

Elk Grove Village