Candidates Should Teach in Classroom

I say to each of the gubernatorial candidates (Richard Riordan, Bill Jones, Bill Simon and Gov. Gray Davis) that if you are so dissatisfied with public education, become a teacher yourself. Perhaps you should obtain a teaching credential and gain some valuable firsthand experience. If any one of these men walked onto a campus as a new teacher, armed with an emergency permit, do you seriously think that the faculty would listen with bated breath to his ideas? Yet we are so eager to hear these suggestions when they come from political candidates. If education is your No. 1 priority, as you purport, then please join our staffs! But I suppose it’s just more convenient and more politically rewarding to ‘reform’ schools with a hearty dose of criticism. And gentlemen, let me tell you, it’s going to take longer than three years to see improvement.

Stephanie Jacobson

Long Beach