Tutorial Help in Parochial Schools
John A. Mihan, an education superintendent for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is upset (Letters, July 16) by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Aguilar vs. Felton. He claims it denies economically and academically deprived parochial school students tutorial help in reading and mathematics specifically because they are religious.
Exactly the opposite is true. The public schools and their teachers are available to the children; it is their parents and the Catholic Church who have placed them in parochial schools.
If they need tutorial help, why doesn’t Mihan’s school system provide it? Why doesn’t it cut down on religious programs and hire additional reading and mathematics teachers?
The answer to these questions reveals how fraudulent is his argument that the tutorial program using public school teachers in parochial schools does not advance religion. The archdiocese wants taxpayer money to finance its reading and mathematics programs so it can use its own money to promote the Catholic religion!
H.B. LIVINGSTON
Sherman Oaks
Livingston is president of Atheists United.
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