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PROUD TO BE A WACKO
In his June 11 article, "Teach Your Children," David Smigelski misrepresented his conversation with me and perpetuated the anti-homeschool stereotype that purportedly he was trying to break down.
Perhaps catching a clever "sound bite" was more important than truth or intention. By overlooking the context of our discussion, Smigelski portrayed me as maligning certain groups of home schoolers and labeling them as "wackos."
In fact, the pejorative term was brought up by Smigelski himself. The reporter had heard insults to home schoolers being bandied about in our State Capitol. We spoke briefly about slanderous terms we had heard for both conservative and liberal home schoolers. My comment was intended to reflect how uncomfortable and surprising it had been, some years ago, for BOTH conservative and liberal groups to discover how many home schoolers there were in the other group.
It has taken years to discover how much home schoolers share in common, despite many philosophical differences. Building needed trust and communication within this diverse community has taken patience and hard work. I deeply resent careless work that undermines the efforts of diverse home schooling groups who are trying to work together. Perhaps Smigelski misread his notes. In any case, I apologize to anyone who was offended by my carelessness in speaking.
Let me state again: I do not label home schoolers or anyone else with derogatory terms. I am sorry that so many others stand ready to slander and malign home schoolers and make them the butt of little jokes. I do not know what motivates this behavior, but I know this: if home schoolers must be lumped together and labeled wackos by others, then I count myself proud to be a wacko!
For more information about home schooling, I suggest that WW readers pick up a copy of Homeschooling in Oregon: The Handbook or visit my Web site at http://www.teleport.com/~annl/.
Ann Lahrson Fisher
Northeast 11th Avenue
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN MATH
I liked David Smigelski's piece on home schooling and the Legislature ["Teach Your Children," WW, June 11, 1997], but would like to argue one point.
Mr. Smigelski writes, "School districts receive about $400 for every student they enroll, meaning that Oregon's home schoolers take $60 million from public schools." Of course this contains the obvious error that government school per-student costs are $4,000, not $400 (and I have seen estimates ranging up to $7,000, depending on what accounting tricks you use and what side of the argument you are on). However, the second part of the sentence concerns me more.
It is misleading to say home schoolers take money from the government schools; it reveals a certain bias in looking at these things. To take something from someone is at least to imply that that someone first owns it. Government schools do not own our tax dollars.
More correctly, one might say, "Oregon's home schools free taxpayers from having to put an extra $60 million into the public school system." And of course, sending a kid to a private school has the same effect.
Not only do they do this favor for taxpayers; but they assume the costs for educating their children, all the while being required (unfairly, in my opinion) to pay the general education taxes too.
I suspect the heavy opposition from state educrats for this bill is motivated by a desire to make any education option, other than the government schools, as difficult as possible. They don't want any more of their "clients" to escape.
Paul Bonneau
Southwest Gassner Road, Beaverton
YOU WOULDN'T SERVE A MERLOT IN A COFFEE MUG, WOULD YOU?
William Abernathy is right on target with this discourse on beer glasses [The Mash, WW, June 18, 1997]. I wouldn't want to see beer drinkers begin to act like complete snobs, but I do not understand why people wouldn't think of serving wine in a plastic cup, but it's perfectly OK to serve beer in just about anything. With due respect to both beverages, since beer is the more fragile product, it's much more important to serve it in a proper glass. Portland is a town that supposedly takes a certain amount of pride in its great local beers, so why is there so little care given to serving them properly?
Beer poured into a proper clean glass with a proper head of foam is a thing of beauty, even, as William relates, the much-maligned common American lager. Besides, it's absolutely true that if it doesn't look right, it won't taste right. Still, some of the best restaurants in town serve their beer in those miserable mixers. If they can wash wine glasses, what's the problem with washing beer glasses? Maybe it's time we started sending it back.
Fred Bowman
Founder, Portland Brewing Co.
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