I would like to thank the Tribune’s editorial board for the recent piece regarding the importance of receiving an education broader than that considered “efficient” by the Utah Legislature. I heartily agree. “Efficient” translates to flat, monochrome, insular.
I was, however, struck by one sentence in the editorial that began, “We really do not want to live in a culture where our powerful tech innovators, captains of industry, high-finance wizards and corporate lobbyists enter the real world without knowing…,” and then you add eight names representing literature, American history, science, the visual arts and music.
Amen. But did no one notice that every name listed was male? Does that not reveal a certain lack, or bias, in the editorial writer(s)’ education as well?
The rest of that sentence could perhaps reasonably be rewritten to read “…Huck Finn and Elizabeth Bennet (or Celie from The Color Purple), James Madison and Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Darwin and Henrietta Leavitt (look her up), Georgia O’Keeffe and Pablo Picasso, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as his equally gifted sister Maria Anna.” There are many other names that would fit right in, but these are a start.
Now, that is what a well-rounded education looks like.
Michele Margetts, Salt Lake City
