Re: Editorial “Take back our schools,” May 21-23 edition:

The first rule in problem solving is to identify the problem by separating it from its symptoms.

For the last 40-plus years, we have blamed our schools and teaching staff for failing to educate our youths. To help the situation, we have generously thrown money at the “problem” by building new facilities, buying new technologies, adding staff to the school system and providing for an increasing level of security in the schools. But the “problem” has only gotten worse.

A fact of life is that “if you always do, what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got!” That would seem to indicate that we have never addressed the real problem. We have only been addressing symptoms of the problem. The problem is the breakdown of the family structure.

How can a child be expected to pay attention in school when they are dwelling on their own physical and emotional needs of survival? Will there be anything to eat when I get home? Will I be bullied on the way home? Will my mother’s boyfriend beat me up or sexually accost me? Should I go to grandma’s house for the night?

It would appear that even after 40 years, no one has been able to come up with an answer to the question of how do you rebuild or substitute for the family structure to provide the basic physical and emotional needs of our children. When that question has been satisfied, the problem will go away by itself.

Until that time, we, the public, will have to accept responsibility for the problem, stop blaming the educational system and demand that our elected representatives appropriate funds to properly address the problem and stop throwing money at its symptoms.

ERIC W. JOHNSON

Richmond