My Cup of Tea; J. Natale

My Cup of Tea I HAVE A FANTASY in which all edu cational institutions are free of gov ernment financing, and control. They have been turned over to educators, and to entrepreneurs. All the fight ing stops. People stop making speeches, and marching with plac ards. They stop throwing rocks, and shouting obscenities. With the entry of schools into a free marketplace, the decision about what kind of education my child is to receive is now mine. I have to make compromises; I don't expect to have everything I want in one school. But, I'll come close. I think I will select a school that bans formal prayers. I pray, and en courage my children to, but prayers in school are not quite right for us. Mrs. Natale is an editor and writer in Lombard, Illi nois. Jean L. Natale I like a school that emphasizes phonics, and luckily for me, most of them do. A swimming PQol and gymnasium are important to some people, but those features bring the price up, and since I'm not too' interested, I think I'll look for a school that doesn't have them.

I think I would not mind a school that has an occasional Communist, or other controv~rsial speaker, but my neighbor's chUd attends a school that shuns them. I know a lot of people who use dis count schools, add they get a lot for their money. Als<), the "free" lunches they offer are an, inducement. How ever, I think I w<1>uld rather spend a little more, and ~ave smaller class rooms. There is a chain of schools that 366 THE FREEMAN emphasizes science. That is some thing I might look into. There is a little red, one-room schoolhouse near me which is tempting, but that is something I haven't made up my mInd about. The nice thing about this school is that for recreation and exercise, the chil dren are just turned out into a big empty yard to play. You'd be sur prised at the ingenuity those kids develop. Did you ever hear of "Run Sheep Run"? On the other hand, this school uses McGuffey's Reader. Some of us are not sold on that.

I like co-ed schools, but one of my friends sends her daughter to an all girl school halfway across town. I don't like busing. It's expensive, and time-consuming. I know a teacher who has a few students in her home. This is a bright, happy bunch, and the kids are getting a quality education. Education for 1984 About half the schools I am ac quainted with have sex education programs. Those who are adamantly opposed send their children to the schools that don't. My task is certainly· complicated. I must choose a school from among those that have smoking lounges; those that teach boys to crochet and girls to fix leaky faucets; those that have dress codes; those in which classes are conducted in Spanish, French, or some other language; those that have a portrait of George Washington hanging in the lobby, or Martin Luther King, or Jesus Christ, or Susan B. Anthony; those that guarantee to teach your child to read or you get your money back; those that ... well, you get the idea.

It's a complicated job, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It's a dream that could, and should come true. il IDEAS ON LIBERTY IN that terrifying novel by George Orwell, 1984, the Party of Big Brother developed the ultimate in ruthless dictatorship precisely because it de vised the means of enslaving men's minds. It began by undermining the discipline of history, setting all men adrift in· a world where past expe rience became meaningless. It continued by undermining the discipline of language, debasing speech until it could no longer be the vehicle of independent thought. And the crowning triumph of its torture chambers was the undermining of the disciplines of logic and mathematics, by which it finally brought its victims not only to assert but actually to believe that two plus two equals five. ARTHUR E. BESTOR, JR.