Guilderland schools should leave social and political insights at homeMitch Davis Guilderland

To the Editor:

So the Guilderland School Board thinks that it’s a good idea for 10th-grade English students to study a novel, “All American Boys,” that is about race relations and police brutality. Whatever happened to English classes where you learned to conjugate verbs, diagram sentences, practice English composition, and study the great writers and poets?

Apparently, it’s more important to invest classroom time into shaping the students’ thinking about the role and actions of the police rather than teaching English competency.

Admittedly, I haven’t read the book, and I can’t help wondering if all the school board members read it before approving it as part of the Guilderland High School curriculum. However, since the story is about a police officer violently beating a black student wrongly suspected of shoplifting, I doubt that the book casts our police officers in a favorable light.

Thankfully, my children are done with the public school system and don’t have to be subjected to this type of brainwashing. Police officers perform a dangerous and thankless job and deserve the public’s support and full appreciation.

The Guilderland school system should do a better job preparing the students for end-of-year competency testing and leave their social and political insights at home. People are getting sick of this rubbish.

Mitch Davis

Guilderland

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