No Room for Defeatism in Education

In the letter to The Times from Mr. Terrence W. Halloran (“Like Parents, Like Children,” Oct. 18), it sounds like he wants the teachers and the administrators of the Santa Ana (Unified) School District to give up on their students. To simply say that these families never have and never will be educated is ludicrous.

The Santa Ana School District should not give up on their students because their parents are not as educated or as wealthy as the parents of the Irvine students. There are plenty of stories that show students from uneducated families can become educated. My mom went to high school in Mexico and was never formally educated in the United States, but I am going on to a four-year college as well as graduate school.

The students in the Santa Ana schools should be given more attention and more help than those in the Irvine schools because it is known that graduating from high school is less likely for them. Just because a student is at a disadvantage is no reason to stop trying to educate them.

If we were to take on this defeatist attitude, there would be no reason to educate half of America, but that would be stupid. We need the future of America smart enough to compete with the other countries of the world and to negate the ability of the lower-income students would be to defeat ourselves.

GREGORY ROA

Laguna Niguel