Goals for Education

Best wishes for Trudy Arriaga’s future success as the new superintendent of Ventura Unified School District. Hopefully she will further the basic question, “What is education?”

My first-grade teacher told me that “education is not knowing everything but knowing where to find it and what to do with it after you find it.”

One big thing missing from our schools today is incentive. In order to have good attendance, students must have the incentive to be there. They must believe what they are there for is important to their future.

Students also must be able to freely, without recourse, consult with their administrators when they have a beef about a class or a teacher.

And the most important goal in fundamental education is communication in all forms, including listening. We are burdened today in most all phases of our daily lives with misunderstanding. Without good communication, we cannot search out information if we cannot understand what we find.

Chuck Carlson

Ojai