To the editor:

In “Song of Democracy” Walt Whitman views from the perspective of an old man his early school experience. “Only a lot of boys and girls?” he asks. “Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes? Only a public school?”

As if the poem’s title didn’t itself answer his questions, he responds, “Ah more, infinitely more.”

On the seemingly frail shoulders of public education, Whitman places heavy burdens: the ability of the children to sail like “immortal ships” into an unknown future, preservation of the past, and the fate of democracy and the leadership of this country.

Instead of closing public schools, we would do well to look for other ways to deal with the current shortage of funds. We should reverse policies that concentrate wealth, that promote private excess in the midst of public squalor, that mistake shorting education for fiscal responsibility.

We needn’t share Whitman’s grand vision to know that our current problems and our concerns for the future have roots in education. The distribution of power we call democracy requires the distribution of schools and teachers to our children, not the reverse.