Can't compare schools to industry

This letter is in reference to Mr. Ruben Navarrette's attack upon teachers. In his mind, the private sector is the way to go.

Let me remind him that industrial producers have the advantage of picking their widgets, stipulating their production needs, specifying the type of raw material they will turn into product, requiring the limits of toleration within the raw material they will accept, and then rejecting all outcomes that do not meet preordained specifications.

Mr. Navarrette, in all respect, it is not teachers who need a reality check, they know the challenges they face every day in classrooms of thirty or more children. Before one has a right to pontificate, one should understand the difference between industrial production and education. Truly sir, it is your kind who need the reality check. Please, before you spout any more ill-conceived ideas about school reform, find out what teachers have to face every day, to use your private sector analysis: What is the raw material like that they are being handed? What tools are at their disposal to build and fine tune, using the industrial vernacular, their product? What are the conditions in which they must do their work? What are the variables that they must ameliorate before they can even begin their work of turning out the most precious "products" in America?

Finally, you completely ignore the important role parents and community must play in the school reform process. There will be little hope of improvement unless groups make a consistent effort to diminish the damaging variables that negatively influence a child's effort in school. In other words, parents and community must take up their responsibilities to send a child to school "ready to learn." If they shirk their duties, school reform will never be all that it can be.

Harry Trumfio

Arlington Heights