Out in the wilderness

I was immediately saddened, then angered, to see that Perry County hasn’t made much progress in the almost 60 years since I graduated from Perryville High School in 1962. As I read about the Bigelow administrator “ripping out the pages” of the current yearbook of a timeline of the school year’s significant events, I thought, who could argue that this has been an extraordinary year, and most appropriate to note in the yearbook? I would call that great journalism and smart, thinking seniors.

I went off to college in the fall of 1962 to Arkansas Tech, and absolutely loved every class I was in. One day my biology professor asked me to stay after class, and when alone stated he did not want to embarrass me in front of the class, but I seemed to be unaware of evolution. I confirmed that, in fact, this was the first time I had ever heard of evolution, but that it answered so many questions I had had, and made perfect sense. That was the kind of poor education I had received, born out of a deliberate withholding of information based on intentional ignorance, and connected to the prevailing religious ideas in the community.

These two events are connected in my mind, and both make me weep for the intellectual wilderness Perry County education remains in. We must provide a quality education to our young people, including ideas, theories and facts to our students. We must trust them to be the recipients of the most current thinking and truths, and know we have equipped them to think and reason for themselves.

What on earth could the Bigelow administrator have been thinking when she ripped those pages out? Did she not understand that there was nothing included that every student and parent had not seen a dozen times plus in the news this past year? Was her head so far down in the sand?

SHARON MARCUM

Little Rock