What of Children’s Interests?

I have never understood how people like Bill Lewis can reconcile their born-again religious beliefs with their fiscal conservatism (“Use Public Schools for Learning, Not for Social Welfare Programs,” Orange County Voices, April 21). On the one hand, they tell us the breakdown of the traditional family is at the root of our modern problems, that Dad should be the breadwinner and Mom should stay at home with the kids.

But on the other hand, they’re against government assistance to the poor. So if Dad doesn’t earn enough money to support his family, what’s the answer? If the government does not give the family assistance, Mom will have to go to work. But if Mom goes to work, she can’t stay home with the kids.

Maybe the Orange Unified School District should adopt a policy allowing only children from families with a minimum income to attend Orange schools. Better still, why don’t they order all men and women below the poverty line to not procreate.

If they do this at the local level, Lewis’ dreaded federal government won’t have to get involved at all.

JIM THOMPSON

Orange

* Despite his fine rhetoric, Lewis fails to convince that his interests lie with the children rather than furthering his conservative ideology. It would seem axiomatic that an educator or administrator must be something of a scientist, his or her beliefs open to revision in the face of changing cultural conditions and new research findings about what is best for students.

But Lewis, supposing himself to have all the answers, closes the books, to wit: He calls for a national debate about the role of social services in public education--then assures us that school-based clinics lead to a hopeless future for our children. Why bother sharing ideas in debate when he already knows?

Lewis claims medical needs are best addressed by parents; I would have thought doctors and nurses more highly qualified. He suggests social and medical services on campuses “teach children to depend on government.” Has he stopped to think what letting basic needs go unmet (because of a school district’s credo of “it’s up to the parents--however poor or uninformed”) teaches children?

In a perfect world there would be no role for medical, psychological and other services on school campuses; evidently Lewis thinks the students in his district already live in such a world. Lampson school won its grants to meet existing significant and painful needs of children; the grants did not create those needs. Lewis offers not one word to indicate how Orange Unified School District assists or might assist parents in utilizing off-campus services.

Encouraging individual responsibility is great, but to overlook society’s responsibilities to its children is insanely narrow-minded.

DAVID CUPPLES

Santa Ana

* The Orange school district’s self-appointed moral and religious leader, Bill Lewis, does not think that schools should assist poor children with health and nutritional needs so that they can get better educations and ultimately become more productive members of society. Instead, he wants to punish them and teach them a lesson because they live in Orange County and have dared to commit the cardinal sin of not making enough money.

A news flash, Bill: Jesus did not hate and fear the poor. He did not blame them for their poverty. He loved them and cared for them and walked among them. And when a rich man told Jesus that he followed all of the Ten Commandments and asked what else he could do to get into heaven, Jesus told him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor.

You can look it up, Bill. It’s Matthew 19:21.

TODD HAGEN

Orange

* I am the pediatric nurse practitioner with Healthy Tomorrows, which sponsors school-based clinics at 10 Santa Ana elementary schools. Lewis and I can agree that the schools’ main purpose is to educate children--but who can concentrate on spelling lessons while suffering from an itchy fungus covering most of the genital area, as was one young boy whom I treated recently? And what family wants its children studying and playing in a classroom with youngsters suffering contagious scarlet fever? Particularly when the illness is easily diagnosed and treated through the intervention of a school-based clinic?

Lewis and I can agree that children’s medical and social needs are best addressed by their parents; all the young patients in our clinics are accompanied by their parents through all steps of the youngsters’ health care. In addition, however, many families in our community cannot read English and get limited information in their native language regarding health services available to them. They also usually have little money and very limited time and energy to seek such services. They know their children’s school, however, and build rapport with a health service at the school.

VICTORIA J. REISER

Santa Ana