KIDS ARE TAUGHT TO BE DUMB

Whatever happened to the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic?

What has happened to our public education system with so many kids ‘graduating’ from high school barely able to read and unable to add, subtract, multiply and divide without the use of a hand-held electronic device?

One reader of the Houston Chronicle seems to have the answer. He says that from kindergarten through the third grade, kids are taught more about self-esteem than ‘the three R’s.’

Here is that reader’s letter to the Chronicle:

BACK TO EDUCATIONAL BASICS

Regarding "A letter to parents of public schoolchildren in Texas," there are more groups trying to fix public education than Heinz has pickles. The only way to detect possibilities of a future for children is to make sure that kids from kindergarten through third grade are getting what used to be called "the three R's."

For the last 30 years, the three R's have been hit and miss, with lots of self-esteem programs put in. One gets self-esteem by knowing one is capable of doing the work put before him. Kids aren't dumb; they are taught to be dumb.

The three R's are the absolute foundation education of training your brain to think and execute for future education. That's what No Child Left Behind was all about, until politics did away with it.

Liney Rotan, Houston