Letters to the Editor: California students have been freed from government schools. Now they can learn

To the editor: Rather than being deprived of education because of campus closures, as columnist Robin Abcarian complains, California’s middle school and high school students have been granted a priceless opportunity to learn.

Now, they are free from all the problems that afflict government schools — the teaching to the lowest common denominator, teaching to the test, mediocre textbooks, political correctness and all the rest.

Instead, suddenly liberated and with ample time and few amusements, students can drink from the springs of knowledge as deeply and widely as they wish. At their fingertips is the best of literature, history, politics, biography and autobiography, art and science and every useful subject and skill.

It’s all available free online or inexpensively. I hope these lucky young people seize their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

David Amkraut, Los Angeles

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To the editor: We cannot continue pretending that our children can continue their education as if nothing is happening around them. Administrators and teachers continue their march, dispensing assignments to stressed kids who struggle to meet the expectations of the guardians of academic rigor.

I am old enough to remember that between 30 and 40 years ago, middle school and high school were much, much simpler than they are now.

David Soto, Woodland Hills