Illinois Teacher Calls Art Rainwater’s Recent Message “Misquided”

Bruce Allardice, a public school teacher in Des Plains, ILL wrote a letter to the Capital Times in response to Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater’s recent article on the need for public education:

Dear Editor: If I was grading the Tuesday guest column of Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater titled “Free public education is cornerstone of country,” I’d give the superintendent a D. His rhetoric is nice, but the logic is horribly misguided.

Mr. Rainwater’s mistake comes when he proclaims public education “free.” There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and there’s no such thing as a free education. Public education is paid for by government, which gets the money by taking it from our wallets. School taxes are taking an ever-increasing bite out of all our paychecks, with ever-decreasing results. Free? Ask anyone who pays taxes.
Any school superintendent who claims education is “free” should be sent back to school, preferably to the private schools to which so many public school teachers send their own kids.

One thought on “Illinois Teacher Calls Art Rainwater’s Recent Message “Misquided””

  1. I don’t disagree with the author. In fact, personally, I didn’t even notice that Mr. Rainwater used the word “free” and had to go to the MMSD website to reread his article.
    Rather, I was glad to notice Mr. Rainwater included the following messages:
    “For the first time people are questioning the need to provide for the education of “other people’s children.””
    “Are there problems in our current system? Absolutely!”
    “Certainly our public schools own a share of the solution and must change in many ways.”
    “Through our state constitution the schools belong to all of us — not to parents, or students or superintendents, but to everyone.”

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