Kath Allen’s Sept. 21 letter, “Reasons for enrollment decline,” while perfectly on the mark, should have pointed out that “degrading by defunding” of our public schools is and has been baked into the cake of policymaking by one of our major political parties, at least since the late 1960s.

Following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision and through the 1974 desegregation by busing battles of Boston, the hardcore segregationists adapted by adopting the “withering on the vine” strategy by starving of funds during appropriations at all levels of our government.

The lines drawn are often by color and class and varied depending on local or regional demographics, but the overarching objective of keeping the hoipolloi “in their place” was never lost. It is best accomplished by “dumbing down” the masses, according to the tenets of the high and mighty.

We the people, especially of New England, are proud heirs to the legacy of Horace Mann, the father of American public education and the secretary of the first-in the nation board of public education in Massachusetts in 1848. He, along with Henry Bernard and Catherine Beecher, taught us that education is “the equalizer of the conditions of men,” and we are called upon to resist with the fierce urgency of now, every effort to curtail the right to quality public education from grades K through 12 for all children of this and future generations.

 The wolves of privatization at the door of our schools shall not pass!

Dr. Ahmed Kutty 

Peterborough