Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 4 of 9 · from the scan, no model involved
Our democracy views that all people within the system are citizens, not just those who own land, or farm the land, or pay taxes on property. The writings of great men throughout the ages have provided that one “condition of equality which the status of citizenship demands...is equality of educational opportunity. According to Mill (J.S. Mill), it is ‘almost a self-evident axiom that the State would require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen.’ All men may not be endowed with the same native abilities or talents, but all born with enough intelligence to become citizens deserve the sort of education which fits them for the life of political freedom." (The Great Ideas, A Syntopican, p. 306)
It is becoming more and more evident that many of the large landholding farmers of Rappahannock County wish to unequivocally deny this life of political freedom to the children of the County. If the children are not well educated in the school system it follows logically that these same children as adults will not be able to demand decent jobs which require skills and knowledge, or decent wages. This profits no one but the land owning farmers who need unskilled or semi-skilled laborers who will work for low pay.
Mr. Eastham’s role on the School Board to date has been to avoid the central issues of how to provide adequate education for all the children of the County by raising issue after issue which are peripheral and tangential to this central problem. Mr. Easthams twists statistics and figures to prove his point of view and keeps the School Board and the School System in constant turmoil through use of the ancient Machiavellian technique of “divide and conquer.”
93.0%