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Hernando Today

No conspiracy in driver's ed

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 13, 2009

I fully understand that none of the contributors to the Op-Ed pages are reporters, and I usually read the columns more for entertainment than enlightenment, just like I listen (under duress) to Rush Limbaugh and others of his persuasion.

Columnists are free to write anything they want and express their own opinions, which is why this page is called "Opinion." John Nash is one of them. He's fully at liberty to express his belief that everything the Obama administration does or says is a socialist/communist conspiracy, but when he claims that teaching driver's education and training in our schools is just one more government takeover, I have to speak up.

He says that when he was growing up, kids in his community were taught to drive by their parents as part of their parental responsibility, just like table manners and scholastic accomplishment. He claims that no one got traffic tickets or trouble of any kind while driving, whereas kids who had taken driver's education at school got tickets and other trouble.

Well, well, well.

Mr. Nash, I had driver's education and training in my high school, as did my classmates. Yes, we did get our share of traffic tickets, but not as a result of poor training. It was always our own fault for disobeying the laws and believing, as most kids that age did and still do, that we were invincible and impatient with grownup rules.

However, while we were taught how to do the mechanical things like braking, steering, etc., we were also taught that the "rules of the road" were even more important, that courtesy was not a weakness and that driving was a privilege, not a right.

Observing the driving behavior of many on our streets and highways today, do you really believe that parents are the best teachers? Who are the red-light runners, the tailgaters, the people who refuse to use their turn signals and their seat belts because "they're too much trouble?" Who are the ones our children observe pounding the steering wheel if they are delayed even a few seconds and swearing at the other idiots on the road? Are these the ones we want teaching driver's ed?

We hire and pay (albeit far too little) people to learn how to do things and how to teach others to do them properly. Some parents may have the skills, knowledge and temperament to teach a teenager how to safely operate a motor vehicle, but most do not.

For most, driving schools are out of the question financially. Driving a car is just another part of a child's education and, like many other skills, is best done by trained professionals. How many parents can teach their kids algebra?

No, Mr. Nash, driver's education in the schools is not, repeat not, a sign of further government takeover. The schools are the proper place for young people to learn to drive, and if responsibility is being shirked as you suggest, it is because of limited budgets, not some socialist agenda.

Please look for conspiracy somewhere else.

Gail B. Leatherwood

Spring Hill

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