REFORM: Bad idea gone viral

Idaho is about to pass a law that, among other atrocities, will replace 700 high school teachers with computers. This really is grim. I am a product of public education in Idaho, deeply indebted to the teaching I received there. My brother and I both went from Coeur d'Alene High to Brown; both of us were Phi Beta Kappa. When you are from Idaho you are invited over and over again to confess to certain cultural and intellectual deficiencies, so I have had many occasions to consider how much I benefited from my time there and how well it prepared me for a demanding life. Not by some Stalinist rigidity of the kind that is so fashionable now, but by helping me understand how much there is that it is wonderful to know. And that is where the teacher as human being figures so importantly.

It seems as though there is a giant wave of resentment against education itself, as if it isn't really work, as if its only product is arrogance and elitism. Train your children to be factory workers, even if there are no factories, and - what? Well, they may be unemployed, but they will also be narrow and docile. What in the world is happening?

It is happening in the world. The United Kingdom and France are both attacking their educational systems, Britain especially. It is as though people in positions of influence have decided that civilization is a bad idea.

As if there is something offensive about anything that enhances life for the general population. How did we come to this pass? And, in America at least, these are the same people who claim to be patriotic!

To those schools that will suffer because of this, if it makes you feel better to know that someone is grieving with you, then be comforted.

MARILYNNE ROBINSON

Author of Gilead,

Winner of the 2005

Pulitzer Prize for Literature