Letter To The Editor In The San Francisco Chronicle

I want to thank you for your Dec. 27 article, "Illiteracy reinforces prisoners' captivity" which provides interesting statistics on the enormous number of prisoners who are poorly educated or illiterate.

The illiterate person is cut off from being able to communicate with or understand the rest of society that he depends on. Too many find crime as their only solution. If we could just get our schools to educate children, we will have fewer people turn to crime and then fewer people in prison, instead of more and more.

My plea is not for money. I am begging parents and school officials to reject the insidious idea that schools are supposed to be mental-health clinics and return to real teaching methods that produce real results: Children who can read, write, do math, and have knowledge of history to make informed political decisions, and sciences to have vocational choices.