If the Brunswick School Board had any fear of retribution for caving in to the teachers’ union yet again, last week’s budget meeting should have allayed all their anxiety. After being confronted with the facts that the union has been extracting yearly increases in salary and benefits without any commensurate improvement in performance; discouraging, if not prohibiting, the introduction of meaningful measures of performance, and obtaining increases for attainments that have no benefit to the students, more than six parents got up and actually asked the town to increase their taxes, but don’t take away their goodies.

A number of students and parents rose to laud one or two teachers in the gifted and talented programs, giving little heed to the fact that the school administration has no way to reward these obviously outstanding teachers without also rewarding those undeserving. They fail to realize they have been trapped in a system which stifles initiative, focuses undue attention on the slowest learners and traps all in an antiquated system that bears no relation to the needs of the individual.

To those who fear the loss of the manufacturing base of the United States I say fear not, it seems we have a public school system that has an innate ability to turn out a goodly supply of mind-numbed robots.

Fred Blanchard
Brunswick


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