We once had a school superintendent who made a huge deal out of making us "First in America" in education. Of course, it involved lots of changes and more money. I asked the simple question, what good is it to be first in the nation if the nation is dead last to almost last in international academic standings? Silence.

The Phyllis Schlafly article, "How Public Schools Have Changed" (http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/aug05/05-08-17.html) of Aug. 17 will raise another huge yawn by an adoring press who can't see any wrong with public schools which indoctrinate, not educate.

What once united us, as Schlafly so brilliantly shows with her reference to the NEA's own handbook of 1951, was God, the Boy Scouts, patriotism, virtue and love of country. Today, schools support every leftist cause in direct opposition to what most Americans believe, and who are forced to pay the bill too.

Doesn't anyone get tired of the media propaganda of how great our schools are doing? For a real truth detector, ask the children, or an old-time teacher how schools are doing. I did, and the kids say they are bored and the teachers say schools have become a travesty, a joke.

I feel sorry for the kids, especially when so many have to go to community college to learn how to read and write. But the system employs lots of people, and that must be more important than the children.

Bonnie Dougherty

Southern Pines