SDI Weapons and Education

I was simultaneously attracted to and repelled by Scruton’s column. Scruton scornfully describes the “lukewarm fellow feeling and guilt-ridden skepticism that are now widely propounded as moral ideals” and the “fog of self-indulgence” which characterize the peaceniks. I agree. A blindness to and apathy toward the virtues of our country result in a refusal to sacrifice anything in order to preserve it. These proponents of peace at all costs have little sense of the value of human life.

Scruton blames education for this abysmal decline in patriotism, courage, loyalty and justice. It is here that I cannot agree. Why are the ineptitudes and defects of society always supposedly caused by public education? Educators are individuals. Many are patriots; many are peaceniks. They do not uniformly ascribe to the belief that “no God, government or society is worth dying for” or that “patriotism is a dirty word.”

Public educators do not, thankfully, act as automatons, spewing forth the opinions of their leaders; rather, each teacher directly or indirectly communicates his own values, enabling students to make their own judgments. The ultimate responsibility for the molding of a child lies with his parents, not with his teachers. Perhaps it is many parents’ indifference to their children’s moral education that results in the child’s failure to care about the issues that most profoundly affect him.

SHARON SPIERS

San Juan Capistrano