Editor:

There was a comment made by Maureen King, Chairman of the MSAD71 school board that the school has to fund sports, music and art in order to get the kids to go to school. Otherwise, some of them will drop out. Therefore, she is opposed to charging a fee for any sport, music, art or even for student parking.

It may come as somewhat of a shock to many in Kennebunk, but not every school provides these services to the students. When I was in high school, the school that I attended was in a very small town in upstate New Hampshire (nearest town to the Canadian border. If you blink, you will have passed through town without noticing it). The class that graduated just the year before me had only 2 students, so naturally, one was the valedictorian and the other was the salutatorian. Conversely, one was at the top of the class and the other was at the bottom.

Our school, which housed all classes from first grade (there was no kindergarten) through  grade 12, was all in one building. We had one set of restrooms in the basement, one for the girls and one for the boys, all shared by all grades, and one playground for all students. Sports – well, let’s see – we had basketball, basketball and more basketball. There was no hockey, no football, no soccer, no volleyball, no swimming, no archery, no golfing – nothing. If you didn’t play basketball, you didn’t play any sport. If you wanted to swim, you waited for summer, then walked five miles to Indian Stream, or nine miles to Back Lake. Music consisted of learning about composers and listening to records. We had no bandleader (so that eliminated the need for instruments) and no art teacher. We also had no physical education teacher – our basketball coach was our history teacher.

But, guess what, we didn’t quit school – we took pride in getting the best grades that we could get. We didn’t want to have the lowest grade in the classroom. When the tests came back after being graded, we always wanted to know what the next person got – did we do better or worse? It was a matter of pride – we didn’t want to be the dummy and didn’t want to get the lowest grade in class. We wanted to be as close to the top of the class as possible. So, that meant studying hard, to do the best that we could do. The teachers were there to help us to learn, not to amuse us. They made the classes interesting by challenging us to do better.

I was in the military and in basic training, one of the first things that was said to us was, “Do you want some attention? Then, screw up. But, I guarantee you that you won’t like the result.” In other words, you screw up and you get punished somehow – you might end up scrubbing the latrine with a toothbrush (I saw it happen to a couple of girls in my squadron).

Why is it that the students in Turkey and Japan value their education more than the kids here in the U.S.? One of my sons was best friends with a kid from Turkey when we lived in Germany for four years. There were three children in that family and they viewed education as something of value, to be cherished, and every child in that household was studious. Without a good education, you are nothing (they go a bit to the extreme). In Germany, the students have only one month off for vacation – they go to school 11 months of the year.

What has happened to our kids here in the U.S.? They feel that the taxpayers should pay for them (the students) to have a computer (not the parent’s responsibility?), that they should have all kinds of sports, music and art, all for free, plus free parking at the school because, heaven forbid, they should have to ride the school bus with the low-lifes (those kids whose parents can’t afford to buy them a car). So, what are we really teaching the kids here? I guess that is the biggest question. Are we teaching them to be self-sufficient (God only knows that I personally know a young man who graduated in June 2008 who is 19 years old and doesn’t have an ounce of work ethic in his entire body and although he has had two jobs that I know of, he hasn’t been able to hold on to either one of them for more than three months).

It seems to me that we are teaching the kids here in Kennebunk that the world owes them a living (remember the girl at one of the school meetings a few years ago who, in remarking about the fact that some people can’t afford to pay for all of the amenities at the school said, “suck it up.” Unless her family is rich, she inherits a lot of money, gets to be a high-level executive for some company, or marries someone who is, she may change her mind when she retires and has to live on a fixed income and, contrary to the opinion of Maureen King, a fixed income does not include a cost of living increase each year to keep up with the rest of the economy. A fixed income means exactly that – the same amount of income from one year to the next.

So, suffice it to say, our students in Kennebunk need to “suck it up” and view the world from someone else’s perspective – someone who is struggling to put food on the table and pay the rent.

Happy Holidays to one and all. There will be some families in Kennebunk who, unless they get a gift basket from the church, won’t have a Christmas at all. Perhaps we should send the students around to those families so that they can see what they have to be thankful for.

Nancy Auclair

Kennebunk