This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Like the typical politician, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney presents us with a false choice from the outset ("DeVos is a smart choice for education," Jan. 10): Either you're for education reform or you're for the money-grubbing teachers' union that stifles it.
Reasoning like this demonstrates a naïve lack of awareness of the matrix of challenges that must be addressed for there to be any substantive improvement in education: poverty, single-parent homes, nutrition, health, unequal educational resources, language barriers, institutionalized over-testing and paucity of arts education are but a few.
Romney's myopic bromides regarding money and class size are not only off the mark, they offer a misleading fragment of the overall picture.
It's this same kind of zero-sum reasoning that has strait-jacketed efforts to produce urgent climate change legislation: Either you're for the economy or you're for the tree huggers who are trying to undermine your jobs. What that hackneyed mantra fails to consider are the new jobs and the boost to the economy the renewable industry will produce, the positive impacts on public health and the restoration of our most precious natural resources: air and water.
It's time for politicians like Romney to educate themselves about education and climate, and to stop politicizing issues that require clear and unbiased thinking.
Gerald Elias
Salt Lake City