I sent the following as a letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal a week ago. Apparently, they didn’t want to run it, so here it is:
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There has been much sound and fury of late from well-meaning Nevadans regarding Governor Sandoval’s proposed budget cuts to education, but in their zeal they may have set up a tragedy.
Many of my fellow teachers and parents have been saying that these budget cuts would prove disastrous to education in Nevada. Dire predictions of doom and gloom abound that, should the budget cuts materialize, Nevada students would be condemned to eternal ignorance.
Perhaps they’re exaggerating to emphasize their point, but can’t these academic Jeremiahs see the danger of their hyperbole? If these budget cuts do pass, what message has this community now sent to our students? Might young people pick up on the idea that their fate has been sealed, and that further effort is hopeless? Might the economic situation, at the very least, be used by some as an excuse for failure?
Lobbying for schools is noble, but hopefully the fatalism so prominent in this conversation won’t turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Gently Hew Stone 
“It’s not my fault. the state didn’t spend enough money on me.”
How unlike my grandparents who were self-educated.
The nanny state does have quite an enervating effect, doesn’t it? As one columnist put it, “My grandfather didn’t have a lifestyle. He had a life.”