To the editor: Your editorial, “Circling the wagons” of

To the editor:

Your editorial, “Circling the wagons” of Sept. 19 was the first one on public education I can remember, in eight years of reading them, which was completely realistic and dared call a spade a spade.

(Incidentally, Newbill Miller was the first person in this county, to my knowledge, who used that vivid figure of speech of the circling wagons to describe the stonewalling by public school administrators under questioning or criticism.)

You must not hold your breath while waiting for this stonewalling of the public (and, at times, the school board itself) to cease. Public school administrators in Virginia actually receive formal training at the University of Virginia School of Education, and elsewhere, in the politics of public school administration, including manipulation of press and public. They are taught to become the master of the “glittering generality” (e.g. the seven line “response” you received from our current superintendent) and then to draw up their wagons in a defettSive circle wherever specifics are demanded, as you have done in youreditorial.

They are taught to use a special lingo of their own which is not intended for the communication of information or facts but is intended to confuse issues and obfuscate and, thereby, get you off their backs.

It is a sad fact that most public school administrators are more concerned with their own backs than a good education for the pupils placed in their charge, and many of them are not even qualified academically to provide leadership for schools anyway.

In this same issue you report on the “terse” (and foolish) response of the administrators and also report that one of the “Topics for Action” during the coming year presented in August to the school board by the superintendent, in response to the shortcomings cited by the Department of Education survey, was “increased information about schools to the public”!

Are you still holding your breath?

But if you think that Bob Esta