Let Us Praise Teachers, Not Devalue Them
To the Editor:
Re 'Teachers Saved My Life. Why Do We Scorn Them?,' by John B. King Jr. (Opinion guest essay, June 1):
As a retired secondary school teacher and school administrator who now serves as a community college trustee, I commend Mr. King for his personal reflection on how teachers became his lifeline as he navigated the awesome challenges of his young life.
More than that, I applaud how he repaid those teachers a thousandfold by his lifetime as an educator who clearly sees how the Trump administration is trying to destroy public education with no concern for the irreparable damage its actions are taking on the lives of young people.
While there is little hope that this administration will heed Mr. King's call for the federal government to protect and accelerate the transformative power of education, all of us whose lives have been positively changed by great teachers should make our voices heard in every possible forum to challenge the Trump agenda to dismantle public education. The future of our country depends on us.
Peter SchmidtPhillipsburg, N.J.
To the Editor:
John B. King Jr. is not the first and certainly not the last person whose life has been saved by a teacher. That's what teachers do: expand our lives and our outlooks, and open new worlds.
The dedicated nuns who taught me in our small Catholic school and the professors who opened new worlds of literature and mathematics may not have saved my life, but they certainly expanded it manyfold. And perhaps the best gift I received from them was a love of learning.
The Trump administration knows well that an educated population is the death knell for the MAGA movement and must not be permitted to develop. Different viewpoints must not be tolerated, and controversial topics must not be taught, lest the people become aware and, God forbid, thoughtful. Education is no friend to dictators.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
26 minutes ago
- New York Times
We Shouldn't Have Billionaires, Mamdani Says
Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned for mayor on the theme of making New York City more affordable, said in a major national television interview that during a time of rising inequality, 'I don't think we should have billionaires.' Mr. Mamdani, the likely winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, said in an appearance on 'Meet the Press' on Sunday that more equality is needed across the city, state and country, and that he looked forward to working 'with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of them.' At the same time, Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, asserted that he is not a communist, a response to an attack from President Trump. 'I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I'm from, who I am — ultimately because he wants to distract from what I'm fighting for,' Mr. Mamdani said. But one question he continued to sidestep was whether he would denounce the phrase 'globalize the intifada,' after he declined to condemn it during a podcast interview before the primary. The slogan is a rallying cry for liberation among Palestinians and their supporters, but many Jews consider it a call to violence invoking resistance movements of the 1980s and 2000s. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
35 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trade Talks Make Progress in Countdown to US Deadline
Good morning. Trade talks gather pace as Donald Trump's tariff deadline nears. Oil traders are catching their breath. And these robots are really bad at soccer. Listen to the day's top stories.
Bloomberg
39 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Deals Poised to Fall Short of Sweeping Global Trade Reform
With just 10 days to go until President Donald Trump's country-specific tariffs are set to resume, the White House appears poised to fall short of the sweeping global trade reforms it promised to achieve during the three months they were on hold. Agreements with as many as a dozen of the US's largest trading partners are expected to be completed by the July 9 deadline, top Trump advisers said this week. But if Trump's only two other accords, with China and the UK, offer any indication, the pacts likely won't be fulsome deals that resolve core issues, but instead will address a limited set of topics and leave many specifics to be negotiated later.
