Response published l2/9*

Your article "Adviser to mayor also on the ascent" by Mary Lynne Vellinga, outlines exactly what is wrong with the public schools. It was the story of Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of schools in Washington, D.C. For openers, her unfortunate title puts one in mind of Otto von Bismarck ("The Iron Chancellor") of Germany (1871-90), who ruled as a virtual dictator, and, of course, Hitler, who was another infamous German Chancellor (1933-45).

Chancellor Rhee believes that teachers are primarily responsible for their students' performance, and she is scapegoating her way through the D.C. staff on the basis of that false premise. In fact, the teachers are only the fourth most influential factor in the education of the children.

1. The primary responsibility for their education falls to the children themselves. They must come to school prepared to learn, pay attention while they are there, and behave in a socially acceptable manner.

2. The parents bear the second most responsiblity. They must imbue their offspring with the principles of proper behavior, their cultural values, and as many pertinent facts as they have amassed during their life experience.

3. Because not all parents have all the knowledge their children will eventually need, someone in the past asked the government for help, and school boards were established to administer public school buildings that were erected to assist the parents in their task.

4. Finally, school boards are empowered to hire teachers to populate school buildings. They are there to supplement what the parents lack in the area of facts. Based primarily on personality, some teachers are more entertainingly effective at informing their students, but in my twenty years of teaching, I never observed any teacher who was unable or unwilling to educate any receptive child. That chancellor Rhee could find otherwise is incomprehensible.

* Edited down to 200 words, according to Bee rules.