Governor and Education

Your article “Deukmejian Gets Dunce Cap for Spiking Innovative School Assessment Program” (Opinion, Aug. 19) is another lame attempt to discredit Gov. Deukmejian’s efforts to restore “quality” to education here in California, and stop our present Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig from trying to persuade everyone that he is “Aristotle incarnate”!

Honig should realize that during his tenure in office the quality of California’s education has come to rival Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” with the exception being that the Romans were able to read, write and speak their native tongue unlike here in California where the common language has yet to be determined--but English it ain’t!

After Honig was elected on his “platform” to improve the quality of education in California, we now have more dropouts than any other state; more students who can’t read than most other states and finally--but certainly not least--high school students incapable of even reading the newspaper. What does our Honig say to all of these criticisms? He blames the governor for not wanting to spend more millions and millions of dollars to promote his programs of “scientific education” at the expense of the three R’s!

Deukmejian was correct to cut the California Assessment Program from the budget, and I also think that he was correct in wanting to reduce the amount that Honig could spend next fiscal year by $800 million.

I wonder how Gibbon would have written about “The Decline and Fall of California Education.” I think his problem would have been finding anyone in California capable of writing period! Oh, well--at least the Romans could have written about it--but it’s too bad none of the students under Honig’s guidance ever will!

CHRISTOPHER D. PASCAL

Covina