To the Editors:
Educated voters were the heart
Of our republic’s system from the start.
How able are new products of our schools?
Continuing to learn? Grow up as fools?
Our Fairfield County has fields fair as Eden
With schools to get our children into Yale
But what goes on in Bridgeport up the road?
What teaching do they get who aren’t pale?
In more than half our states, one child in four
Begins each day ill fed, ill dressed, and more —
Ill housed, ill parented — then goes to school
Where teachers fight to use the golden rule.
Educators must despair in ghettos
Eighth-graders sometimes read as kindergartners
Fifteen-year-olds rank 24th in science
and 38th in math — unfit world partners.
Trump’s buying extra military hardware
Let public schools make local pleas for alms.
Though military planners uniformly
See cyberwar more powerful than bombs.
An ignorant electorate is worse
Than any other threat against our nation.
Fake news will be their only consciousness
Robots will run them off the reservation.
If knowledge brings our best hope for survival
Amidst the rivalries of nukes and spies
Then schools become our treasuries and bastions
Let’s build them up before they vaporize.
Gordon Nugent
Wilton, March 23