Opinion linking low achievement, farming likely is 'garbled reasoning'

Editor:

The subject analysis in one News-Times editorial leaves something to be desired.

In the Oct. 12 editorial, Farm needs outweigh schools in Georgia? The News-Times wrote that the needs, many years ago, of a then-large farm population in Georgia and Columbia County for a particular school-year calendar are now responsible for the low schools ranking in Georgia.

Even though you wrote that Agriculture ... no longer relies on summertime teen-aged labor, and that there aren't many farmers left in Columbia County, you still pontificated that although most Georgia schools no longer use that school calendar, which you so dislike, and Columbia County's school board has only agreed to study the issue yet again, farmers are the problem.

So it seems you have decided (already in your first paragraph) that the cause of Georgia's school low ranking is farmers, and, by extension, food. A vocal minority of parents longing for the not-so-good ol' days, as you wrote, must then be an offshoot of our rural past, not something for these parents' convenience.

By the way, we do agree don't we, that the source of our food is farmers.

Now I must decide whether, in my opinion, the editorial is merely erudite, or more probably brilliant, or only a mess of garbled reasoning. At first glance, I believe I'm leaning toward the last of these.

Richard Netzley, Evans