The public debate over Put Parents in
Charge will take a literal form as state Superintendent of
Education Inez Tenenbaum and Barbara Nielsen, former
superintendent and one-time advisor to Gov. Mark Sanford on
education issues take to the stage for a public discussion.
The meeting, scheduled for March 3 at 6 p.m., will be in
the Christian Activities Center of Boulevard Baptist Church.
Sponsoring organization is the Alliance for Local Leadership
(ALL), a nonpartisan group which encourages discussion and
education on issues that affect all of us. The meeting is open
to the public and those attending will have the opportunity to
ask questions of both participants before the program
concludes.
ALL is an organization of citizens that has made the
commitment to not just being more informed on issues
themselves but seeing that they help create opportunities for
the public to be educated on them as well. And they are doing
it in the right way, bringing experts on the issues and
presenting them in a public forum.
ALL’s Cordes Seabrook said the group’s organizing of such
events was "our civic duty as a group of concerned citizens
... (the speakers) ? will give us a chance to form our
opinions on first-hand information."
He followed that statement with another that is equally
important: That once the public does form an opinion about an
issue that isn’t the end. We then have the right — and the
responsibility — to let those who represent us politically
know how we feel about that issue so that they might cast
their votes with "first-hand information" from their
constituency.
Whether your view of Put Parents in Charge is in the pro or
con column, the opportunity to hear two people who are so
highly experienced in education discuss it may confirm your
view or even change or refine it. But the main goal here is to
become informed — then form an opinion.
Not the other way around.
We don’t know the views of ALL members on this particular
issue, but we thank them for organizing this program
nonetheless. Whether their view coincides with ours isn’t an
issue, because sometimes it’s not as important what one thinks
as simply that we do. The obligation we owe ourselves and our
communities is that we give something careful consideration
based on fact, not conjecture, that we not rely on rumor but
rather find out for ourselves.
